All hat and no cattle

Thursday 30th December, 2021

There has been a considerable increase in the country’s foreign reserves, which have risen to USD 3.1 billion from USD 1.6 billion, according to the Central Bank. This is good news, and it is hoped that the forex situation will continue to improve. But it is said that one swallow doesn’t make a summer. On seeing widespread chaos in the country, one wonders whether there is a government at all. Traders are jacking up prices whimsically. Rice millers have become a law unto themselves; they resort to market manipulations with impunity and earn enormous profits at the expense of both the farmer and the consumer. The Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA) is just looking on.

Following recent fuel price hikes, trishaw operators have increased fares arbitrarily, and the private bus operators have also won their demand for a disproportionate fare hike.

Minister of Agriculture Mahindananda Aluthgamage is running around like a headless chicken. Instead of doing something to resolve the fertiliser crisis, he is cursing farmers who are up in arms, unable to bear crop losses. Protesting cultivators are burning the cantankerous minister in effigy to canalise their resentment. Hoarded chemical fertiliser stocks are being sold openly at exorbitant prices in some areas. Experts have sounded dire warnings of an impending food crisis, but the government carries on regardless exactly the way the yahapalana government did despite warnings of the Easter Sunday attacks in 2019.

Trains ran for several days recently with hundreds of thousands of people enjoying free travel as there was no one to issue tickets. The government remained nonchalant, and finally made an intervention to end the Station Masters’ strike. If the Transport Ministry had cared to arrive at a negotiated settlement earlier when the warring Station Masters gave notice of their trade union action, a great deal of public funds could have been saved. The government, however, does not have to worry about losses; it can always pass them on to the hapless public.

There was a drama in Pettah yesterday. Trade Minister Bandula Gunawardena visited rice wholesalers’ warehouses. He declared that there were enough stocks, and the rice market was being manipulated to keep prices high. He was stressing the obvious. The question is how the government proposes to solve the problem. Will it order the CAA to carry out raids?

Government leaders brag that 6.9 million people have voted for them. The 20th Amendment has restored the executive powers of the President. So, why doesn’t the government take on the traders’ Mafia with might and main for the sake of the people who voted for it and enabled its leaders and their kith and kin to live high on the hog?

Why should the Trade Minister visit the Pettah warehouses? It is the CAA that has to inspect them to prevent market manipulations. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?

There are winding queues all over the country due to the prevailing cooking gas shortage. People join queues as early as midnight in a bid to buy gas and return home empty-handed. The government insists that there are enough gas stocks, but there is no gas available in the market. Who is running the country? Is it the gas companies or the politicians who flaunt their popular mandates?

The country has come to such a pass that there is no one the public can turn to, for relief. Many ruling party politicians are holidaying overseas as if the whole country were ‘cooking with gas’, so to speak. It is popularly believed that Sri Lankan politicians are not far-sighted, but that cannot certainly be said about those currently in power; they retained their foreign citizenships so that they and their loved ones could leave this country in case of the economy collapsing, and live happily abroad.