This feline cannot help but feel for the yahapalanaya bods from the President down to the bright sparks of the UNP who are vociferous, and let’s admit it, intelligent and educated. On Tuesday, TV news during the focus on the President’s diary, noted, or a statement made by the President was reported in the newspapers, as he having said that the media focuses on the negatives and can’t-help-situations of the government, and does not mention positives and developments that have been done. This cat deliberately avoided the use of the verb ‘bemoaned’ in referring to what the Pres said, as he never bemoans; he states facts. Yes, it’s true what he said. The electronic media particularly, is so adept at presenting the dismal side of situations. They firmly uphold a truism of journalism that dog bites man is no news, but man bites dog is. Worse than that, they apparently love pessimism.
Daniel Kahneman (whoever he be) said, “The brains of humans contain a certain mechanism that is designed to give priority to bad news.” We’ll have to ask the brain specialist Dr Padeniya (he is one, isn’t he?) whether there is such a section in the human brain. It looks like it is so, since people guzzle bad news and soon forget good news.”Bad news is not wine; it does not improve with age.”
Apologies for that long rambling aside, this feline is losing her touch obviously, going off on diversions when so much is happening right now in this Paradise Island of ours.
And the news that must be broadcast constantly until it sinks into people’s brains is that the present government is somewhat like an unfortunate son paying for his father’s sins. The yahapalanaya government is paying for the extravagances of the previous regime dominated by the brothers and sons of the previous President.
The latest disastrous venture costing so much (really inflated prices so there would have been a flow into private pockets whether in kapati suits or western garb) is the Uma Oya project which adds itself to the other white elephants of the sataka government: Ham-ban-tot harbour and airport, cricket grounds and garden. The damming of the Uma Oya seems to have started dubiously. Its cost escalated and its detrimental side effects are widespread and tragic.
Strike postponed
The GMOA announced that since the government was not doing what they wanted: closing down or nationalizing SAITM and ceasing medical education there though one batch has already passed out and the medical college is full of students at all levels, it was calling for a general strike of its members serving all over the Island this week. Then, they said, they were postponing their strike by a week. They threatened they would view the scene and if the government does not capitulate to them, they would strike work next week.
Fortunately, the highest of the Catholic Church asked the GMOA not to strike. I got the expression very much in mind that “a drowning man clings onto even a straw” in an attempt to save himself. Any excuse but the real reason. So, they are abiding by what the Catholic Church of Sri Lanka advocates. Saving their houses and vehicles from the wrath of the people is more like it. People were angry at the total disruption of the medical service due to their intermittent striking and threatened counter action. Mob rule versus unfair rule!
Saffronisation of politics
The Asgirya Chapter has been holding meetings and discussing the current political situation. They can do so since their role has been to advice the government as they advised the kings long ago. They came up with a sandeshaya that sort of seemed approving of the actions of the BBS, but only censored the manner in which the Secretary Gnanasara went about the business of putting those of religions other than Buddhism in their place. Then, a couple of days ago they had a Sangha council and came up with opposition to the introduction of a revised Constitution. The government has put that aside and says they will go ahead with Constitution amending. What about the Malwatte Chapter? Present at this Sangha Council, or absent?
Yours truly has been reading Arundathi Roy’s second novel, written twenty years after the first, The God of Small Things. In Roy’s new novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, she subsumes her novel writing skills to polemic writing about the various issues that have plagued India and of them the most severe: religious intolerance by one political party in particular. She calls the nationalists saffron parakeets. She writes on many issues relevant to Sri Lanka too, like the eviction of people from urban slums: “So, surplus people were banned. ‘Where shall we go?’ the surplus people asked ‘You can kill us, but we won’t move’ they said. There were too many of them to be killed outright.”
She even writes irreverently about the present Prime Minister. “The Chief Minister with cold eyes and a vermilion forehead would go on to win the next elections. … He won election after election in Gujarat. Some people believed they ought to be held responsible for mass murder, but his voters called him Gujarat ka Lalla. Gujarat’s Beloved.” Nothing is sacrosanct to her.
And here in Sri Lanka, we stumble from one problem to another, most man-made, so more’s the pity.
- Menika