Bare truth; national woes and Kalu Kaputas taking off

Cass pleaded with the powers that be that the people be told of the parlous state our state coffers are in: empty of dollars, refilled constantly by newly printed SLRs. Almost every speaker from the government side made it out that all was fine and dandy in the island and we were riding a cloud of prosperity. The wind underneath it was the Central Bank Governor. We were on a cloud true enough; it was a cloud of wishful thinking, soon to disintegrate and descend as national bankruptcy with Finance and Foreign Affairs Ministers running hither and thither at full speed, often across the Palk Strait, to beg Modi to help with loans of dollars and money to buy fuel. Cass heaved a sigh of relief when she heard, on night news on Wednesday or Thursday last week, 16 or 17 February, the President, at a meeting with high-ups over health workers’ strike, stating clearly that the country was in financial difficulty and could not increase salaries. This should have been admitted long ago and particularly when the nurses and then teachers and principals demanded pay hikes while the financial situ in the country was worsening by the hour. The people must be told the truth. Always! They are no fools or sheep-like sycophants.

No docs day of disaster

As usual the GMOA went its peculiar way; it severely criticised the health workers and others for striking and then announced it was set on a token strike for Monday, 21 February as I started my weekly ramble. Night news will detail the suffering caused to the poorer people of this Paradise Lost and Gone (forever? No, for goodness sake. We have such potential to nurture and realise; national potential not of a dynastic family member or two or three or too numerous to count).

Bad day for gold chain snatcher

On Monday, February 21 The Island carried a news item headlined, ‘Gold chain snatcher apprehended’. Aha! jubilated Cass; the big bad wolf of a government pontificator whose previous nimble fingers are substituted for by his loud tongue, has been apprehended. Cass ran her eye rapidly over the article to find that it was a no-good Johnny of no clout who was caught by the Nugegoda police. He seems to be addicted to this style of earning his daily rice and pol sambol. With gold prices what they are, a lucrative business; but of course not half as bother free as having palms oiled by willing go-betweens. No need to roam around railway stations having eyes out for bedecked feminine necks.

Litany of national woes

Even Cass, who boasts she is elephantine in memory, has forgotten or pushed out of mind some of the woes we Sri Lankans have undergone within the last one or two years. We will never forget the Easter attacks on churches and hotels; it is kept in the public eye, thanks to His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjit, who is genuinely concerned about his flock and the country too. But no real arrests or attempt is made even to get to the bottom of it, to identify who is to blame for the deaths and maiming of so very many innocents.

Cass also had forgotten some of the tribulations of the recent past. MTV Channel I, on its English news broadcast at 9.00 pm on Tuesday 22, itemised these and had Cass gasping at the enormity of the crimes, and how very serious, with dire repercussions, most of them were.

The sudden ban of chemical fertilisers and the resultant ordering of organic stuff from China, which proved to be inferior and of long-term danger to our soil, was another major crisis. We refused to accept the order, but the ship carrying the rejected load of supposedly seaweed-based organic fertiliser persisted in its surreptitious ocean voyage. In the end Sri Lanka was the double loser, no fertiliser for both the Yala and more recent Maha crops with a huge dollar payment for cancelling the order; never mind tests proving we cannot accept the stuff. That stunned us Ordinaries and then the knockout blow of re-ordering organic stuff from the same Chinese company. The sugar and garlic scams had fingers of proven accusation pointed at an individual trader and an organisation. Nothing done: Only the gains made remained with the crooked brains behind the scam. Domestic gas cylinders metamorphosing to lethal bombs resulted in much damage, but no company or individual was hauled over the coals: Scott free they all go. The present fuel crises necessitates power cuts of more than four hours per day. All due to dollar shortages it is said, but the rulers put the entire blame on COVID-19. Rather was it lack of foresight, planning and carefully crafted long-term policy.

Somebody in some cases and some institution in others are to blame. But no blame is laid, no recompense demanded, no punishment meted out.

A video clip received had a Singaporean (of Indian descent, Cass surmised) cite reasons for Singapore’s rapid rise under one leader from a Third World underdeveloped nation to a foremost developed country, with very little natural resources, but plenty clever, national minded persons of dual racial descent. He said that the success was due to official posts being awarded based on meritocracy, honesty and third being, as far as Cass remembers, true national-mindedness. Look at the first two. Do we in Sri Lanka have these in force? If Cass gives full vehemence to her answer, she will, like a defective gas cylinder, explode with her mixture of abhorrence at so many square pegs (dishonest too) in round holes and the extent of corruption in the country.

Let’s laugh

Inventive persons have gone to town about a VVIP political Minister, considered the financial wizard-saviour of sunken-in-debt Lanka, who said that ka-ka-kaputas from refuse dumps in Seeduwa would take off on planes and damage them. Hence Kaputa is in current derisive usage lending itself to a beauty pageant where the winner was Miss Sri Lanka, a sexily gyrating kalu kaputi. It has overshadowed the rhetorical question: Den sepada? We used to roar with laughter every time Prez JRJ said ‘koronova’, his Sinhala term for doing or achieving; and this long before Sinhalafied COVID-19. Also, his sacrilegious ‘my garment’, meaning his batch of governing persons.

So, on that lively note, Cassandra wishes you ‘bye till we meet again on the first Friday of March, which month carries the Ides with it.