Tuesday 4th March, 2025

There is no dearth of depressing news these days both at home and overseas. Cheerful tidings that buoy up the public are very rare. Thankfully, some positive news has come at last amidst doom-mongering and doomscrolling. A special exhibition of the sacred tooth relic is to be held from April 18 to 27 at the Dalada Maligawa, Kandy. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has said on X that he is honoured to announce that the special relic exhibition is being held at his request. He deserves the credit for being so considerate as to grant the public an opportunity to find some spiritual solace, in these difficult times.

Is it that the custodians of the Dalada Maligawa cannot organise relic exhibitions of their own volition? President Dissanayake’s aforesaid social media post reminds us of a religious analogy President Ranasinghe Premadasa once used to convince an aide, who became the head of a state media institution subsequently, of the importance of obtaining maximum possible publicity for anything good politicians did; he said that when devotees put coins into bronze tills in temples, a reverberating sound emanated, filling the places with its echo and drawing the attention of others to the donor. Politicians, he added, should toot their own horn to make sure that everyone around became aware of the good they did. Members of the incumbent government are doing likewise. They are fast learners. In what could be considered a major policy U-turn, they now allow their names to be inscribed on ceremonial plaques and travel long distances to attend opening ceremonies; they solemnly pledged not to do so during their election campaigns last year.

One would have expected the special Dalada exhibition to take place in May, which is of immense significance to Buddhists, and not in April, which is an election month this year. One may recall that time was when the JVP, as an opposition party, would deride what it called Sri Lankan rulers’ over-religiosity, reflected in organising relic exhibitions, etc., which, it claimed, they leveraged to garner favour with the majority religious community and make up for lost ground on the political front. Its criticism was valid in that the governments under previous Presidents earned notoriety for using religious events and even prelates of all faiths to gain political mileage and distract the public from unsolved burning issues. President J. R. Jayewardene promised to create a righteous society and held relic exhibitions, which attracted huge crowds. But his dictatorial rule was marred by political violence, election malpractices, race riots and a protracted bloodbath, which left thousands of young men and women, and even children dead. Worse, in the late 1980s, under his watch, counterterror units invented a savage method, which they dubbed ‘dharma chakraya’ to torture Buddhist monks and others abducted on suspicion of their involvement in southern terrorism. The JVP also sought to ridicule previous leaders’ habit of visiting temples carrying trays of flowers and atapirikara as gimmicks to flaunt their religiosity and boost their declining popularity. It would also frown on politicians visiting holy shrines and religious leaders, with television crews in tow, seeking cheap publicity—a practice that is far from over despite last year’s regime change.

Kandy is bound to come alive with huge throngs gathering both in and around the Dalada Maligawa amidst significant challenges to public security when the upcoming relic exhibition gets underway. The past few weeks have witnessed a surge in organised crime, and the government has hinted at the possibility of a conspiracy to destabilise the country; people are gripped by a sense of foreboding. We are wary of sounding alarmist, but potential security risks need to be acknowledged and precautions taken in view of the relic exhibition to be held.

Let President Dissanayake be thanked for having remembered people’s spiritual needs amidst his heavy workload and extensive campaigning for his party in view of the upcoming local government polls also to be held in April.

Monday 3rd March, 2025

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky must be regretting that he ever tried to obtain NATO membership for his country and confronted Russia. Having received rousing welcomes in western capitals including Washington during Joe Biden’s presidency, he may not have expected to be thrown into a gauntlet at the White House last Friday. A meeting that was aimed at strengthening US-Ukraine relations and inking some agreements ended in disaster, with President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance berating Zelensky in full view of journalists before showing him the door. Trump told Zelensky in no uncertain terms that Ukraine would lose the ongoing war.

Zelensky apparently did not properly read Trump’s patronising remarks about his attire at the entrance to the White House, much less guard himself against his host’s volatile temper. Had he done so, he might have chosen to tread cautiously during their discussion on contentious issues. In his wisdom, he gave Trump and Vance an opportunity to castigate him.

President Trump has drawn fire from Europe for the way he treated Zelensky at the White House, but his assessment of Ukraine’s military strength and his prognostication about the war are bound to take their toll on the morale of the Ukrainian soldiers. There is no way Ukraine can sustain its military campaign against Russia effectively, without US help. Zelensky himself has said so.

European leaders have reportedly rallied behind Zelensky after his humiliation in Washington. European Union Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas lost no time in declaring, “The free world needs a new leader’. The transatlantic alliance has thus suffered a serious setback. But there is little that Europe can do to contain Russia without US backing. Trump accused Zelensky of ‘gambling with World War III’, and therefore any country that aids Ukraine’s continued military campaign will be seen by Washington as being complicit in that dangerous pursuit!

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Europe of trying to sabotage rapprochement between Russia and the US. However, Trump is not doing Russia a favour by pressuring Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire. Besides his antipathy towards war, he does not want to keep pouring dollars into a bottomless pit in Ukraine; he is seeking to recover, through a deal on Ukraine’s minerals, what the US has spent. His approach to any issue is transactional; his focus is always on what’s in it for the US. His announcement that the US will acquire the Gaza strip is also case in point.

Russia’s aggression cannot be countenanced, but Zelensky should not have provoked Russia by recklessly furthering the interests of NATO and providing Moscow with a casus belli in the process. An experienced leader would have been mindful of the disastrous consequences of fighting a war with a military superpower.

Trump apparently has some other reasons for his refusal to help Ukraine unconditionally. He is not well-disposed towards NATO, which he considers a liability. In 2019, he failed to make Zelensky endorse his claims about wrongdoing on the part of some of his political rivals, and he faced impeachment over that. Trump has given a big boost to the Ukrainian Opposition by calling Zelensky a dictator and creating uncertainty about the continuation of the lifeline of US arms to Kyiv. The New York Times has reported that when Zelensky visited the White House, he was aware that the flow of weapons and military hardware from the US to Ukraine had essentially stopped.

Now that Trump has told Zelensky it is his way or the highway, chances are that the latter will have to agree to a ceasefire and a peace deal with Russia. Might is right in this world. The United Nations exemplifies the perversion of equality one comes across in Orwell’s dystopian, allegorical novella, Animal Farm. All countries are said to be equal, but, in reality, the permanent members of the UN Security Council are ‘more equal than’ others owing to their wealth and power. So, the outcomes of conflicts among nations are determined not by the notions of right and wrong or justice and fair play but by military strength and economic prowess of the parties thereto. Hence, the need for the not-so-powerful countries to come to terms with this reality and tread cautiously without endangering the lives of their people.

The Committee stage of Budget 2025 began in the House on Thursday with cartloads of mud – if mud it really was – thrown at past leaders of this country by the present incumbents. It can be credibly argued that what was on display was not plain mud slinging but an expose of the scandalous profligacy of past presidents of this country, chief among them President Mahinda (born Percy Mahendra) Rajapaksa, and Ranil Wickremesinghe upon whom the presidency of this country was fortuitously bestowed months after he himself had been defeated in his Colombo bastion and had led the UNP to an ignominious zero elected seat defeat at the 2020 parliamentary election. After much foot dragging, Wickremesinghe took the UNP’s single National List slot and ended up as President of the Republic! “Fortuitous circumstances,” as one time Prime Minister W. Dahanayake called his own ascendancy to the prime ministry.

All that, of course, is water under the bridges. An outspoken former prime minister of yesteryear, Sir. John Kotelawela, is remembered, among other things, for his homespun Sinhala remark, “henda athey thiyanakam bedagnilla (as long as the spoon is in your hand, serve yourselves); and serve themselves they did – and how! The public was not unaware of how their elected leaders, pledged to serve the voter, have lavished tax rupees on themselves. But they were not privy to exactly how much – and the amounts are stupendous – the national exchequer had to bear in rupees and cents terms. The new regime had the opportunity to get the show on the road when the president’s votes came up for discussion at the committee stage of the budget and it seized it with both hands.

Travel on the official account has long been a favorite pastime of Lankan from presidents and prime ministers downwards, and also the private sector, attributable partly to the foreign exchange restrictions enforced for long years. A policeman of a bygone era said of his boss, a famed investigator of yesteryear, that if any foreign travel was involved in any matter investigated, the file stopped at his desk. Foreign suppliers of equipment have long been aware that one of the best ways of winning contracts is tossing a couple of freebies in the direction of prospective decision takers..

How many engineers in the employment of the state have gone abroad on equipment factory visits and for test runs on the supplier’s account? Who can forget the greed for places on the board of board of directors of first Air Ceylon, then Air Lanka and finally SriLankan Airlines. Why? The free travel perk not only for the directors themselves but also for members of their families.

Thursdays revelatory numbers were eloquent. President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who served two terms and unsuccessfully sought a third after amending the constitution for the purpose, had spent over Rs. 3.57 billion on travel in four years (2010 to 2014) of his second term. What this was in his first term has not been stated by the incumbents who had obviously got a lot of midnight oil burnt to dig out the figures brandished on Thursday by Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya.

The voters (and the party that elected him as president locum tenens) did not give Wickremesinghe, despite his success in restoring a semblance of normalcy after the aragalaya, any more than the balance of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s term when GR fled the country. In the limited two years he had from 2023 to 2024, his foreign travel bill was Rs. 531 million. He attended Queen Elizabeth’s and the Japanese Emperor’s funerals and King Charles’ coronation apart from other overseas visits.

Maithripala Sirisena and Gotabaya Rajapaksa have not done badly either. The former spent Rs. 384 million between 2015 and 2019 while Gotabaya cost the taxpayer Rs. 128 million from 2020 to 2022. We do not know whether the cost of operating an SLN ship to ferry him and his wife from Colombo to Trincomalee and an SLAF aircraft to fly them to the Maldives from where GR went to Singapore and resigned have been included in the figures given to parliament.

But we are sure that the cost incurred by SriLankan Airlines to divert a flight to Zurich to pick up a puppy dog for his wife was not included in the figures on offer. All this number crunching led up to the flag waving climax of the story: President Aura Kumara Dissanayake’s trips for the months from September 2024 to February 2025, including two state visits to India and China and a Governance Summit in Dubai had cost Rs. 1.8 million. Whether the hosts bore the air fares was not stated. Perhaps the question may be raised as the debate proceeds.

Let us also not forget that apart from his official travel, MR wanted paid passengers bounced off a SriLankan flight to accommodate his entourage. That sorry story ended Emirates’ partnership with SriLankan being terminated after the national carrier had been turned round to profit by its managing partner. The billions SriLankan lost subsequently was money down the drain; the now abandoned attempt to privatize the airline attracted no takers.

Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara said RW had 39 presidential advisers with his adviser on parliamentary affairs in school when RW entered parliament! He asked whether the former president knew anything at all if he needed so many advisors. While these patronage appointees had lavish pay and perks, the president has three advisors all working for free!

The ongoing debate promises to be a “full serial” as offered to film-goers once upon a time. Whether an emasculated opposition can give as much as it gets remains to be seen as the new messiahs give themselves a sheen.