Politicians heal thyselves and those doctors too
gales-in-trousers have struck work in different parts of the country at different times.
People have lost their patience with the obnoxious conduct of these stethoscope-wielders who are an insult to the medical profession which thankfully still has doctors who conscientiously perform their duties and responsibilities and are an honour and credit to their profession and the oath they took.
While pampering these men and women who have confronted the government on several occasions little or no action has been taken against them. However President Sirisena who not too long ago claimed he has a backbone seems to display it only when some poor citizens who have suffered humiliation, indignities and deprivation for years stand up in protest against all this mistreatment.
Just the other day President Sirisena used the Public Security Ordinance to declare certain services connected with the Meethotamulla tragedy essential and threatened violators with punitive action.
Yet no such action has been taken against doctors who abandoned their posts and duties and did not treat patients in need of medical attention? Why? Are some people, as Orwell observed, more equal than others? Are the moneyed professionals more important to the politicians than simple ordinary people to whom they turn only at voting time?
I vaguely recall that sometime in the 1980s President J.R. Jayewardene taught threatening doctors a lesson when he invoked the Essential Public Services Act of 1979 the night before the doctors were due to go on strike. The doctors capitulated under JR’s sudden move and that was that.
That Act states among other provisions:
(2) Where a person is convicted by any court for an offence under this Act, the court may, in addition to any other penalty that it imposes under subsection (1), make one or both of the following orders:
( a) that all property, movable or immovable, of the person convicted shall be forfeited to the Republic;
(b) in any case where the person convicted is registered in any register
maintained under any written law as entitling such person to practise any profession or vocation, that the name of such person be removed from such register.
if the court is of opinion that there are sufficient grounds for the making of any such order.
Is the unhealthy connection between politician and state physician as seen in the government’s reluctance to act against striking or threatening doctors because politicians fear that one day they might well have to seek medical assistance and treatment from the very people against whom they have invoked the law for dereliction of professional responsibilities?
The president wields the law against the poor and deprived but not the provisions of the Essential Public Services Act which permit the courts to confiscate the property of those found guilty of violating the Act.
That is because the doctors have much to lose and so they are let off the hook despite the fact the doctors perform an essential public service which they are disrupting by their despicable behavior that is nothing but depravity on display.
I am not certain whether this is true or not but I remember reading somewhere that the Ministry of Disaster Management which should also have a responsible role like so many other ministries and institutions for the Meethotamulla fiasco had observed that the coffins used for the burial of some of the dead were of poor quality.
If the coffins take priority over the management of this disaster is it any wonder that people are fast losing faith in politicians and yahapalanaya.
Somebody writing to the media had suggested that the garbage should be deposited at Diyawanna Oya. That seems to me a non- starter. After all there is already so much garbage there. One would not want to over burden the place with more of the same and cause more environmental damage. It is already costing the State enough as it is.
Someone else suggested that government sends the garbage abroad like some countries send their nuclear waste elsewhere. That could be a good idea if we could convince foreign governments to accept the kind of rubbish that we send.
Some say that the UNP’s yahapalanites so imbued in globalisation and neoliberalism have already started the process sending some rubbish to foreign lands. Maybe the GSP Plus trade concession might be of help in this regard.
If that is so, as some claim, then the further such rubbish is kept away from the Sri Lanka diaspora in foreign lands until this waste is disposed of some day it might seem a poor approximation of a temporary solution to ridding the country of its rubbish by heaping it in somebody else’s backyard.