Changing the pillow

I have been musing these days about Sinhala proverbs – the “Prasthaa Pirulu” we learned from our childhood. This homespun Sinhala can pithily draw attention to the current happenings in our country that cannot adequately be described or explained – not even if one were to use words of learned length and thundering sound used by people like Professor G.L. Pieris.

Take for example that saying “Hisaradeyta kottay maarukaranava vagey” - about changing one’s pillow to cure a headache – and that other proverb that has been uppermost in my mind as I view with dismay the frightening economic mismanagement that has taken place in our country. It is what the local people used to say after they invited the Dutch to help them get rid of the Portuguese - ”Inguru deela miris gaththa vage”) and found the former to be as bad, if not worse, than the latter.

The disastrous lack of foreign reserves in our country is certainly a headache of massive proportions, comparable to a severe migraine or a malignant brain tumour. This problem will either keep recurring and harassing our country like a migraine or, if left untreated, will gradually kill our economy like the brain tumour.

And while our poor nation is suffering from this massive headache, what are the “doctors” in charge of our economy doing? Those who have the responsibility for decision making in Sri Lanka today do not have neither the expertise to handle this financial crisis nor the wisdom to listen to the subject matter experts who can advise them. From minister to governor to the economically unqualified Economic Council, they are simply trying out various pillows, borrowed from Washington or Bangladesh or India, instead of attempting to diagnose the cause for the headache and taking measures to cure it.

It may be that soon we citizens will need to swallow some bitter pills or that the economy will require some drastic surgery. However, simply taking new or second hand pillows on loan – whether it be from the IMF (that is based in the land of which our finance minister is a citizen) or the land of Modi where our prime minister regularly visits the Hindu temple near Tirupati – it makes no difference. All these loaned pillows may ease our headache temporarily until the strings attached to the pillows give us other ailments.

As for the exchange of ginger for chilli, is that not what we have been doing in our so called democracy ever since independence? We elected Mahinda and were elated when during his presidency the LTTE terrorists were finally defeated. We then became disillusioned by Mahinda’s corrupt cronies and rejected him by electing Maithripala – only to find that he and his cronies were even worse. We then replaced Maithripala with Gotabhaya – and after just two years the citizens are staging protests and strikes and calling for change. But to whom can we turn for change? Just consider the foot-soldiers sent to fight in Afghanistan. Whether it is the poor black American soldier from Arkansas or Brooklyn under General Stanley McCrystal or the conscripted chorny from the non-Russian Soviet republics like Chechnya or Tajikistan under General Boris Gromov, these soldiers on the ground are but pawns in the power games of those in power. While thousands of soldiers – both Americans and Soviets – died in Afghanistan, Generals like Gromov (who went on to become a successful politician) and McCrystal (who went on to take up lucrative appointments on corporate boards) gained prominence and riches out of their wars.

Many of the folk we in Sri Lanka have elected to govern us have ensured that they themselves become much better off financially during and after their political careers compared to before they were elected to power. They certainly ensure that they are much better off financially than we poor citizens.

So to whom do we turn in this time of need? Getting rid of one set of politicians is easy in a democracy – all we need to do is to exercise our vote (when and if we get the chance to vote) but with whom do we replace incompetent and corrupt politicians? When one set of Sirs fails to deliver the goods, leaving us without diesel, gas, electricity, fertiliser and even paper, what guarantee do we have that the Sirs (or Madams) we elect to replace them are not equally incompetent?

Worse still, when we vote to get rid of one set of rulers, we find that the new rulers we replace the old ones with often take the old ones on and cohabit with them! Just look at Maithripala Sirisena following his rejection as president now sitting with the Podujana Peramuna government in parliament – and SJB secretary Madduma Bandara earlier this month openly inviting the two ministers who were just sacked from the SLPP to come and join them!.

At the risk of quoting more proverbs, when we face a situation such as we are now in, do we accept the devil we know rather than turn to the devil we don’t?

For us poor suffering citizens, it is nothing more than Hobson’s choice.