Editorial
Mass murder?
Monday 22nd March, 2021
Saturday’s bus tragedy, which shook the nation, cannot be considered a mere road accident. Going by a widely circulated video of the incident, one wonders whether it was a case of mass murder; the driver of the bus that plunged down a steep precipice, killing 14 passengers and injuring about 53 others, obviously knew what he was doing; was deliberately endangering the lives of passengers when he sped maniacally and swerved the bus without reducing speed on seeing an oncoming vehicle. Moving towards the speeding bus recklessly was a tipper truck, whose driver was apparently not in his proper senses; he did not leave enough room for the bus to pass safely, and bolted after the incident.
The police were prompt to blame the bus driver for the tragedy and explained in detail how the incident had happened. But aren’t there others who should take the blame for the tragedy? A boulder has been obstructing a part of the road, following a rockfall, for over two months, we are told. Apart from a few traffic cones placed near the boulder, there were no warning signs on the other side of road skirting the precipice. Why didn’t the police take action to have the road cleared to prevent accidents? It is not possible that they were unaware of the rockfall and the boulder. Instead of having two sleeping policemen (aka speed bumps) to deter speeding at the dangerous double bend, the police slumbered. The traffic police must be made to explain their serious lapse, which, in our book, amounts to criminal negligence, which should not go unpunished.
No sooner had the tragedy occurred than some workers who looked like the Road Development Authority (RDA) personnel rushed to the scene and taped off the road shoulder that had given way. The RDA was busy putting up a safety fence there yesterday, according to media reports. Had it taken such action earlier, Saturday’s disaster could have been averted. Why didn’t the RDA remove the boulder for two months? Action is called for against the RDA as well. The possibility of the RDA being made to compensate the families of the victims must be explored.
A government MP from Badulla has claimed he sought to have the boulder removed, but in vain. He once made a female school principal kneel before him for refusing to carry out his illegal orders. Why didn’t he go the whole hog to have the road cleared?
A World Bank survey has revealed that Sri Lanka has the worst road fatality rate among its immediate neighbours in the South Asian region; about 38,000 crashes occur annually causing around 3,000 deaths and 8,000 serious injuries, it says. The survey report informs us that the country’s poor road safety performance is a symptom of underinvestment in targeted initiatives. But we hear some political leaders boast of having carried out many road development projects! They seem unable to understand that road development does not mean mere road surface rehabilitation. Many are the roads that have been newly carpeted without sidewalks on either side to ensure the safety of pedestrians. Some of them are arterial roads running through bustling townships; no wonder there so many killer accidents.
Many private bus and truck drivers are addicted to drugs. The police nab only drunk drivers. Druggies behind the wheel can be equally dangerous, but they never get caught because there are no facilities for roadside drug testing. The Lanka Private Bus Owners’ Association itself has called for action against drug addicts among bus workers. Successive governments have ignored this call. The need for conducting random drug tests on drivers and riders cannot be overemphasised.
We have witnessed many killer accidents over the last few years, but curiously they have not jolted the police, the RDA, governments and others responsible for ensuring road safety into adopting preventive measures. How many more people do they think should die before they decide to take action?
Editorial
Self-proclaimed messiahs
Wednesday 17th April, 2024
The SJB and the JVP-led NPP have been challenging each other to a debate on the economy, for the past several weeks. They are like two boisterous tipplers engaged in a shebeen brawl. The NPP is said to be trying to drag President Ranil Wickremesinghe also into the debate, which is not likely to take place before the next presidential election.
President Wickremesinghe has already unveiled his economic recovery plan for all practical purposes. In fact, he is implementing it and has shown some tangible results. He has made quite a few unpopular decisions to straighten up the economy; the political fallout thereof has become grist for the mill where the Opposition is concerned.
The SJB and the NPP have been shedding copious tears for the public and promising to deliver them from their suffering. It looks as if they were competing with each other to make the highest number of promises in the shortest possible time. Both of them have pledged to bring the cost of living down, and grant relief to the public. But they will not reveal how they are going to do so without derailing the ongoing efforts to rebuild the economy. They are blowing hot and cold on the IMF bailout programme, which hurts the public but is a prerequisite for economic recovery. They would have us believe that they will renegotiate the IMF programme, if they are voted into office, but there is no guarantee that they will succeed in their endeavour. They have stopped short of revealing what they intend to do in case the IMF refuses to renegotiate bailout terms.
There is no gainsaying that the SLPP-UNP government has become a metaphor for corruption and ineptitude, and it will have to rid itself of the corrupt elements in its ranks and mend its ways if it is to be able to revitalise the economy. But that does not mean its rivals are paragons of virtue and mavens capable of turning the economy around overnight.
The Yahapalana government (2015-2019) failed mainly because its ministers could not run their ministries properly, much less live up to the people’s expectations. Many of them are currently in the SJB, whose seniors also have a history of defending the corrupt; they unflinchingly backed the Treasury bond racketeers to the hilt. They are also responsible for the reckless borrowing during the Yahapalana government, in which they were Cabinet ministers. That regime issued International Sovereign Bonds to the tune of more than USD 10 billion, according to former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Thus, the SJB worthies, too, have made a huge contribution to the country’s debt burden.
The JVP claims to be able to govern the country and manage the economy better than any other party. But it is caught up in a duality of socialism and capitalism. It has not abandoned its original Revolutionary Policy Declaration based on Marxist ideals. It will have to sort out its economic policy contradictions and explain why it failed to retain control over the Tissamaharama Pradeshiya Sabha (PS), which it won more than two decades ago by promising to turn it into a model local government authority. If it had run that PS to the satisfaction of the public, it would have been able to remain unbeaten therein. So, the biggest challenge before the JVP will be to convince the public that it is equal to the much bigger task of governing the country and resolving the economic crisis. Talking the talk is one thing, but walking the walk is quite another.
Political parties are notorious for infusing the public with false hopes ahead of elections. The SLFP once went to the extent of promising ‘rice from the moon’ to win elections. So, the season of promises has dawned with only a few months to go before the next presidential election.
One can only hope that the people, who are usually easy prey for crafty politicians, will act wisely and make rational decisions when they vote next time. But this is a country where tens of thousand of people, including the so-called educated ones, flocked to a faraway village, a few years ago, and jostled and shoved to secure bottles of Dhammika peniya, a kind of herbal syrup, produced by a carpenter-turned shaman, and touted as a cure for Covid-19. There’s the rub.
Editorial
A Norwegian example worthy of emulation
Tuesday 16th April, 2024
Ruling party politicians in Sri Lanka are unarguably more equal than others, like the Pigs in Orwell’s Animal Farm, but their counterparts in the developed world are not so lucky. Not that all politicians in the so-called five-star democracies are much better than the ones we are burdened with; the developed nations, too, have tainted politicians to contend with, but never can such characters rise above the law.
Norway’s Health Minister Ingvild Kjerkol had to resign the other day. What prompted her to step down had nothing to do with malpractices in the health sector under her purview. She had to resign owing to an allegation that she had plagiarised some academic works in her Master’s thesis, submitted in 2021. No sooner had Nord University launched a probe into the allegation against her than she tendered her resignation. She did so at the behest of Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
Going by the stern action the Norwegian government has taken against Kjerkol over a plagiarism allegation, it is not difficult to imagine what would have befallen her if she had been accused of being involved in a procurement racket at the expense of the lives of patients and the public purse. This is in sharp contrast to the manner in which the government of Sri Lanka has chosen to act in respect of the prosecution of its former Health Minister.
Keheliya Rambukwella remains a Cabinet minister in spite of facing prosecution and being held on remand for a procurement racket carried out on his watch as the Minister of Health. The allegation against Kjerkol pales into insignificance in comparison to the charges against Rambukwella, the most damning one being the purchase of a consignment of fake immunoglobulin, which has reportedly claimed several lives in government hospitals and caused huge losses to the state coffers. Having failed to prevent the prosecution of Rambukwella, the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government is now doing everything in its power to make his stay in remand prison comfortable. The government unashamedly defended Rambukwella when a motion of no confidence was moved against him last year.
Curiously, the Prison Department experiences a shortage of buses whenever it has to take Rambukwella to court, and uses a van to transport him! Politicians with links to the government in power never languish in crowded cells in remand prisons; they stay in prison hospitals, instead.
Kjerkol is not alone in her predicament. Plagiarism has cost another Norwegian politician her Cabinet post. In January, 2024, Norwegian Minister of Research and Higher Education Sandra Borch had to resign when it was revealed that some sections of her Master’s thesis had been plagiarised. She lost her degree as a result. In this country, politicians’ children are said to be able to sit examinations, unsupervised, in separate rooms, where they receive help from their private tutors to answer questions, pass out and practise law, of all things.
Last year, Prime Minister Støre dismissed Norway’s Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt, whose husband was exposed for making questionable financial deals that could have had some influence on her ministerial duties. Several other Norwegian ministers have also had to step down over allegations of various malpractices. Such is Norway’s determination to ensure the probity and integrity of its politicians.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is the head of government, is known for his affinity for Norwegians. He went so far as to involve them in conflict resolution here in the early noughties though they were accused of being partial to the LTTE. Special Norwegian peace envoy, Erik Solheim, made no bones about his partiality to the LTTE, but President Wickremesinghe has appointed him a Presidential Advisor on Climate Change. Shouldn’t Wickremesinghe emulate Norwegian PM Støre and remove Rambukwella from the Cabinet forthwith?
Most of all, how can Sri Lanka’s creditors, whose consent for external debt restructuring is a prerequisite for economic revival here, be expected to repose trust in a government, which allows its members to enrich themselves at the expense of the public and the state coffers, and even function as members of the Cabinet from behind bars?
Editorial
Blind faith in seers
Thursday 11th April, 2024
Astrologers were clashing over the traditional New Year auspicious times or nekath, at the time of writing. Some of them are of the view that the nekath prepared by what is described as the State Astrologers’ Committee of the Department of Cultural Affairs will have malefic effects on the country. However, Minister of Buddha Sasana, and Religious and Cultural Affairs Vudura Wickremanayake has ceremonially handed over the nekath seettuwa or the table of auspicious time to President Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Everything is done in an astrologically-prescribed manner in this country. In fact, astrologers are the real eminences grises; they have politicians, including government leaders, eating out of their hand. It is they who decide when elections should be held, the only exception being the presidential polls during the tenure of a President elected by Parliament. There have been instances where they had Presidents advance presidential elections. Most citizens are also believers in astrology, which influences their lives from the cradle to the grave. If it is true that benefits accrue from auspicious times to those who observe them, how can one explain Sri Lanka’s current predicament? Why has the country had to beg for dollars and plead with its creditors to reschedule its debts in spite of following astrological guidelines to the letter?
There is no way Sri Lanka can come out of the current economic crisis without enhancing national productivity, which is the be-all and end-all of economic progress, and this is a task that requires hard work, longer working hours, and, above all, a radical attitudinal change. Everyone has to move out of his or her comfort zone and work harder if he or she is to help the country achieve economic progress. A prerequisite for realising this ambitious goal is to stop blaming others and planets and stars, and act responsibly while seeking guidance from real experts, and not self-proclaimed seers who are a dime a dozen.
The rice trick
Sri Lankan politicians do a Santa during election years. They throw public funds around generously as if they were spending their own money. They have mastered the art of bribing Citizen Perera with his own money and cheating him out of his vote. This has been going on for more than seven decades.
The SLPP-UNP government has allocated funds with a generous hand for poor relief in this election year. It has undertaken to distribute free rice among the needy families during the current festive season.
The rice trick has worked since Independence. In 1953, Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake had to resign amidst a mass uprising triggered by an increase in the price of a measure of rice, among other things. His successor, Sir John Kotelawala, had to restore the rice subsidy partially to bring the situation under control. Sirimavo Bandaranaike also played the rice trick to win elections. She promised what has come to be dubbed ‘rice from the moon’; she promised that rice would be made available even if it had to be brought from the moon, but later she imposed restrictions on the consumption and transport of rice.
In the run-up to the 1977 general election, J. R. Jayewardene promised eight pounds of cereal or eta raththal atak per week to alleviate poverty under a UNP government. His pledges were like pie crust made to be broken, and the people got nothing by way of free cereal. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga undertook to lower the bread prices, and did not care to make good on her promise. President Mahinda Rajapaksa turned Temple Trees into a dansela of sorts by giving away food, especially on days of religious significance. His gastronomic bribes yielded the desired results, and he managed to win elections until his overconfidence overtook him.
The incumbent government, which has ruined the economy and inflicted unprecedented suffering on the public, is playing the rice trick in a bid to assuage public anger ahead of elections. But the poor do not live by rice alone, and they eat rice throughout the year, and not just during festive seasons. The vast majority of people who are struggling to dull the pangs of hunger will not get free rice even as a temporary measure. There’s the rub for the government.
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