BY NEVILLE DE SILVA

From where does the UNP, the major partner of the yahapalanaya government, produce such wunder kinder? Since King Kekille made his remarkable contributions to jurisprudence we have not seen much original thought except perhaps in our great institution by the Oya which will soon be celebrating its 70th anniversary.

That is until now. Today we have men of many words strutting around like politically-anointed popinjays. The other day the great pundits in charge of education are said to have decided that those who fail the GCE “O” level examination be allowed to sit for the “A” level examination or some such thing.

There is originality for you. The idea seems to have been picked up from our political practices. Persons who are rejected by the people at elections end up in parliament. Not only that, they even find themselves in the cabinet. So what does it matter if those who fail to pass the “O” level go a few steps higher.

The current crop of MPs who have failed the O level can now claim to have studied at A level. Why stop at the A level, why not give them places at the universities and even confer a degree on the blessed lot.

But not even such a decision can out do the audacious call of Suren Ratwatte, CEO of SriLankan Airlines who wants the national carrier run essentially by the board of directors and for the government to keep its filthy paws off the airline.

For a man who was a pilot at Emirates and has little or no experience in running an airline this surely was several steps up the ladder. Some say it was a ‘call’ from political high ups from the same alma mater that deposited him in the chair of the CEO.

So the top three at SriLankan Airlines are from the same college and are identified by the letters FRCS which has gained such notoriety that the many jokes about it have spread far and wide.

Alas, some of those flyby–nights who were placed in positions of power and privilege, fell by the wayside. They were declared not fit for purpose though they were certainly fit for other purposes which are now under inquiry by a presidential commission.

Others are clinging on for dear life hoping the grey clouds above will soon roll by and they will be able to continue in the arbitrary ways of their predecessors.

If one might pick a single example as proof of how rules and regulations are thrown to the four winds what better illustration than our own national carrier known to the world of aviation and tourism as SriLankan Airlines.

In the two and half years that SriLankan has been afloat under the yahapalanaya administration it has already gone down in history as perhaps the only national airline of a democratic country whose directors were summoned before the country’s president and cabinet ministers and berated for failure to carry out recommendations of a board of inquiry.

They were closely questioned over its management practices and methods (or lack of them) and a host of failures including the habit of sidelining the Minister of Public Enterprise and Development. His ministry oversees the national carrier which some knowledgeable people in the industry call the national corpse and others the national curse.

Whichever sobriquet is chosen to describe the airline even the most ill-educated would know that it is no compliment to the airline especially so when its chairman and chief executive officer seem to be in cahoots trying to stay away from stormy weather.

Chairman Ajith Dias has thankfully taken a vow of silence, at least in recent days. But the irrepressible CEO Suren Ratwatte, a pilot who seems to think he has descended from Olympus instead from 35,000 feet and came to occupy the CEO post, keeps shooting his mouth off like he was a born again Pericles.

What drew attention to the health of the national airline was an interview given to a Sri Lankan website by Suren Ratwatte trying to talk his way out of the pitiful state of the airline and trying to pass the buck without accepting responsibility for not acting on the Weliamuna report.

It is nothing new, of course, for the national carrier, under the present administration which has developed a tendency to say “not I sir” when its big wigs are caught with their fingers in the jam jar. In the interview Ratwatte sets out four issues that need to be dealt with if the airline is to “return to financial health”.

Those issues have been debated by more knowledgeable persons and however much Ratwatte tries to sweep the present administration’s faults under the bed he is hardly likely to succeed mostly because his arrogance, pomposity and treatment of staff including pilots have antagonised many at the airline.

Our interest however is not on these issues but Ratwatte’s attempts show that the airline could be lifted out of the morass in which it finds itself if the airline’s board of directors is allowed to function independently without others monitoring its decision-making and activities from above.

I dare say that this Ratwatte will make a good stand-up comedian if ever he loses his position at the airline. Let the maestro on airline resuscitation characterise himself in his own words:

“I believe the board of directors should be in charge of running the airline. At the end of the day we need to function in such a way. If we have to seek higher approvals further up the tree because of the shareholding it changes the entire structure and makes it very difficult to run a commercial company. Then we become something else.”

Is this guy for real or has he just picked a few phrases from the commercial world and is trying to impress some reporter when the real problem is the board of directors to whom he wants the running of the airline handed over lock, stock and barrel.