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Culture Shock:
Whilst our politicians often ask the poor masses not to expect
hand-outs, they themselves travel the world with their begging
bowls in hand.
But they may now be in for a rude shock – there may be a squeeze
on the aid that is funding not a nation, but its crooked
politicians... |
 he
government’s profligacy and misrule is taking a toll. To sustain public
expenditure, the Governor of the Central Bank, another crony of Mr.
Rajapaksa, has printed lots of new money. This has helped drive
inflation to around 15 per cent,” the 7 June edition of The Economist
observes, in a feature that made for a scathing review of the state of
our nation. In fact, a parliamentarian here at home went as far as to
propose that we demand an apology from the publisher of what is amongst
the most widely read and highly regarded magazines in the world – such,
as we know, is how pig-headed our guardian angels have become!
Only weeks later, the spotlight
turned once again on to the goings-on in our island of shame.
A US-based journal (Foreign Policy,
published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) unveiled
its ‘indicators of instability’, with Sri Lanka coming in at No. 25 with
a score of 93 – out of a maximum of 120! What is even more shocking is
that the Republic of Congo, Lebanon, Rwanda and two of the poorest
nations on earth (Eritrea and Bhutan) are perceived as being less
unstable than Sri Lanka.
And then, Transparency International’s
(TI) highly publicised Corruption Perception Index – which ranked 160
nations around the world – put Sri Lanka in 84th place
globally, with a score of just over three points. To put this in
perspective, the least-corrupt nation on earth (New Zealand) notched up
9.6 points, which is more than three times as much.
The Economist describes Sri Lanka as
“an unusually delightful war-torn country”. It notes: “Half a million
tourists last year are a sign of that. It has well-watered hills,
rolling green tea estates and miles of palm-fringed white sands. Sri
Lanka’s almost wholly literate inhabitants, 75 per cent of them
Sinhalese and 12 per cent Sri Lankan Tamils, share an understandable
pride in their island. Away from the war zone – despite a history of
pogroms and other discrimination against the minority group – they seem
to rub along reasonably well…”
So, where does all this publicity
leave us?
For starters, the tourists are finding
safer havens to spend their hard-earned leisure money. Then, some of the
big players on the world stage have, intermittently, vowed not to poke
their fingers in our rotten pie.
Sumal, a city cabbie, puts this in
perspective. “If we were oil-rich, the international powers that be
would be at our doorstep, and they [our politicians] would be taking the
backdoor out of the country – and into exile in a rogue state where
their dirty money probably is – in a jiffy…”
He adds: “But then, there’s a glimmer
of hope that we may some day be a treasured oil-producing nation – and
that this may entice some amongst the global powers (for example, our
precious donors) to come to the rescue of nearly 20 million people who
are living in fear.” And the hope amongst the straight-minded citizenry
(which, sadly, may not be anywhere near 20 million) is that this foreign
interest will put a lid on tender money that is probably being siphoned
out – not for drilling oil, but for bolstering the bank balances of
corrupt politicians.
In the meantime, the people are
shedding the pride they once shared about their little paradise at an
unsurprisingly rapid pace.
As Amantha Perera writes in this
edition of LMD: “The climate now seems worse than it was in 2002: the
airport ceased to function after 10 p.m., albeit temporarily, power
outages cause near-panic at the fear of aerial bombings and the police
department has been accused of ethnic profiling by dint of its forcible
eviction of innocent civilians to the north-east. Even a passing
meteoroid causes havoc among jittery citizens, as it recently did in the
North-Western Province … So, the Sri Lankan conflict continues to
confound and confuse every analyst, commentator and so-called expert out
there.”
Thankfully, there’s been a show of
what many right-minded Sri Lankans are now desperately hoping for.
This extremely negative publicity puts
us fairly and squarely amongst the international basket cases that the
likes of the United Nations (UN) are mandated to keep an eye on. There’s
little point, then, in our politicians telling the world that we can
mind our business – because, as it transpires, we surely can’t. And
then, there’s the ‘H’ word… in that the world at large and the UN in
particular have an obligation to watch over states that are proving to
be dumping grounds for crimes against humanity. Our politicians,
therefore, don’t have the right to expect the international community to
turn a blind eye to what’s happening in our “unusually delightful
island”.
Even the UN Security Council, we are
told, is watching the horrific events unfold in our neck of the woods.
In late June, it called on the International Criminal Court of Justice
to play its part in putting an end to the growing culture of impunity.
We must, by now, also be the
laughing stock of the world’s powers that be.
Take the speeches our representatives
make on the global stage these days. It’s bad enough that they say just
about anything they want to say to the people at home (like ‘we are
pursuing a political solution to the conflict’, when there’s a war
raging in the north and east, not to mention the chaos in Colombo), but
this baggage is also taken overseas. For instance, we told an eminent
group of human-rights experts, in Geneva not long ago, that Sri Lanka is
a model worth looking at as far as the rights of people go!
It was only a week earlier that several
rallies were staged in and around the commercial capital, protesting
vehemently about the highly unacceptable deterioration of law and order,
accusing the authorities of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and restricting the
people’s right to freedom of movement, and calling for action to stem
the tide of abductions that have created a fear psychosis amongst not
only ordinary citizens, but certain sections of the rich and famous as
well.
We hear more and more, these days,
about ‘people power’ – or, perhaps, the lack of it. But there’s been a
groundswell of opinion in recent weeks. So, perhaps, lessons are being
learnt not only about how desperate things have become, but also about
how the status quo can be changed for the better – and this can
only be for the better of a war-torn nation and its desperate people.
We may well be on the brink of becoming
a failed state… but as the saying goes, failures are the pillars of
success.
– Editor-In-Chief
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