A people with short memories
Velupillai Prabhakaran once quipped that the people of this country have short memories.
I have lived long enough in Sri Lanka to realise that Prabhakaran’s observation was spot on. We Sri Lankans get all worked up and agitated about something. Like a bottle of ginger beer that is ‘all shook up’, we froth and bubble, and after a while, we fizzle out as if nothing has happened.
We see politicians behaving badly; we are well aware of their rapacious behaviour that deprived the lawabiding citizens of this country of food, petrol, and electricity just two years ago. Once these items came back in supply, we forgot the bad times and went back to our complacent ways as if nothing had happened. We continue to pay pooja to the same incompetents who were responsible for the country’s problems in the first place.
Less than two years ago, the people of this country waged an unprecedented struggle—a series of mass protests against the government. We protested against the powers that were for mismanaging the nation’s economy. We were well and truly in crisis. Inflation had soared while we had daily blackouts with shortages of fuel, cooking gas, and other essential goods.
The protests (the Aragalaya) escalated so much that by April, the entire cabinet had resigned, and by July, the President had fled to save his skin, handing over his powers to the only senior politician who was willing to accept the poison-filled chalice. Yet, where are we today? We now have fuel without having to languish for days in queues; we have gas, electricity, and food (at a price), and life goes on. We are managing okay for the moment, and so we have forgotten what led us to agitate in the first place.
The President, who ignominiously fled the country in disgrace in July 2022, is today safely ensconced in a safe house in the capital, with his pension intact and security provided (all at the taxpayer’s expense). Many members of his 25-member cabinet, who in theory are collectively responsible for the mismanagement of the country under his rule, are now serving in Ranil Wickremesinghe’s cabinet (with the opportunity to continue to mismanage the country). People like Nimal Siripala de Silva, Bandula Gunewardena, Douglas Devenanda, Keheliya Rambukwelle, Ali Sabry, and Pavithra Wanniarachchi all served under Gotabhaya. Now, wise in the ways that business is done in cabinet, they are prominent ministers under Ranil.
Should there not be some accountability?
If a cricketer does not perform successfully, he is dropped from the team. In a private company, if financial mismanagement and bankruptcy occur, the shareholders get rid of the directors. Here in Sri Lanka, however, incompetents are not taken to task but are rewarded with further plums of office.
Just consider the case of Keheliya Rambukwella, a man who has taken for himself a respected name associated with the Udadumbara region of Kandy. The dubiety of his dynastic credentials is only matched by the deviousness of his techniques for availing himself of public money.
Just last year, the parliamentary opposition brought a vote of no confidence against him, having reason to believe there was large-scale corruption in his ministry associated with the import of poor-quality medicines that had caused danger and death to the unsuspecting public.
Stealing money is bad enough, but knowingly procuring medicines that do not cure patients but kill patients must be among the lowest of evils that persons bearing responsibility can do. Among the minister’s various acts indicating that he lacked moral rectitude were his bypassing established procedures for drug procurement and using ministerial power to accept unsolicited proposals for the purchase of medicines from foreign companies. Accepting a trip to India and a five-star hotel stay to “inspect” pharmaceutical manufactories (which stretched the bounds of even our gullible public’s credibility) was another of his improper ways of doing things.
A serious fraud that occurred under Keheliya’s watch was the import and distribution to hospitals of bogus vials of human immunoglobulin, a drug that has life-saving therapeutic uses. The vials for which an initial payment of 40 million rupees was made turned out to be not just substandard (they contained no immunoglobulin of therapeutic value) but also to contain chemicals that caused dangerous allergic reactions in patients to whom they were administered.
Thus far, seven officials of the Health Ministry, including the former Secretary to the Ministry, have been arrested and are in remand. However, the minister (who holds ultimate responsibility) remains at large. Far from being sacked from his ministerial office (as happened recently to the Sports Minister who had defied the president), Keheliya has been allowed to continue as a minister and enjoy the perks of ministerial office. The only change was that he was removed from the Health Ministry and transferred to the Environment Ministry.
It is said that a leopard cannot change his spots, and even if the leopard, like the proverbial wolf, comes dressed in the environmentally friendly clothing of a harmless sheep, he still remains a carnivorous predator.
But the way things happen in our country, it just may be that when the next election comes around, lupine predators who come dressed in ovine clothing to seek our votes might just convince us short-memoried bovine electors to vote them back into office—where they will continue their evil ways.