BY NEVILLE DE SILVA

As children we often heard our elders using a Sinhala saying “koheda yanne, malle pol.” Though its meaning eluded us at the time in later years it became much more meaningful, especially as we started listening to politicians yelping at each other in argument.

Reading a statement from the Foreign Ministry the other day in response to a media query regarding Lord Naseby’s revealing speech in the House of Lords last month, I was reminded of the pithy old Sinhala saying etched in our minds from those early days.

But given the cost of coconuts in Sri Lanka today, it seemed too much of a price to pay for a bundle of obfuscation and verbiage. The statement starts with the new government’s 100- day programme and treats it with great reverence as though it was the present-day Sri Lanka’s Magna Carta.

The next time Lord Naseby unearths, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, some vital information that lies buried in piles of confidential documentation in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office one could well imagine the Foreign Ministry’s curious narrative beginning from the Dutugemunu and Elara encounter forgetting that we are dealing with the here and now and future.

Maybe the ministry, so engaged with the affairs of the world from North Korea to Spain has forgotten to count. It is almost three years since the 100- day programme was launched with great flourish like a Kim Jong-un missile. While the missile took off into the Pacific the 100-day promises tailed off like one of our local sky-rockets.

We are dealing with two of the leading sponsors of the 1st October 2015 UNHRC resolution