Coming colour?

As this is being written on Friday morning, the country is awaiting signals of what the future holds. Those who think that Gota will go are more than optimists. How can a man who admits blunders that have plunged this country to depths far below the worst we have ever known, even when LTTE terror was at its zenith, who says as he did recently that he cannot go as a failed president, ever see the light? Not until his head is held towards the sun. He will not go until he is driven out. Whether what is ballooning at the present moment, with organizers/participants saying the agitation will continue until their objective, will have the stamina for a very long march remains to be seen.

Meanwhile the people and economy are reeling. Over a dozen people have died in fuel queues that stretch for kilometers. The press reported on Friday that a woman had nearly delivered her baby at the passport office where the queues admittedly are not as long those outside petrol sheds. But the situation is comparable. Tens of thousands of people are as desperate as those in fuel queues to get a few liters into their tanks to get the hell out of this country where a man now sitting in splendid isolation promised “vistas of splendour and prosperity” not very long ago.

We do not know whether or not the president showed up in parliament last week as a response to a Wimal Weerawansa statement that he is in hiding. But as a former Deputy Solicitor General Srinath Perera told a television talk show a few days ago, the president and prime minister together in the chamber – one seated, one standing – looked like “a newly married couple sweet talking to each other.” Mahinda Rajapaksa was also there, perhaps to give the lie to social media posts that he’s quite ill and had been in hospital. What happens in parliament now is totally irrelevant to what is happening in the country outside. We hear smart aleck remarks like the prime minister’s, telling the presiding member to allow the JVP leader who’s time was running out to “give him five minutes more to blackguard me,” but nothing of plans or solutions to resolve the problems holding the nation in a death grip. No Ranil Wickremesinghe is needed to tell us that the situation is grim and will become grimmer. There’s no Lankan alive who does not know that.

There is no need to labour the harsh reality that the fuel shortage has wide ranging implications for the whole economy. The effects that are already evident range from schools being closed and public servants asked to stay at home. The whole country is privy to television visuals of people riding on the top of railway compartments and others clinging for dear life on the foot-boards of jam packed buses. Some desperate innovators sitting in the luggage spaces in buses with their legs dangling out are also in the news. As the haulage fleet becomes near non-operational for want of fuel, scarcities of essentials and resultant price increases are felt across the board. With the demand for fuel what it is, attempts to give identified “essential services” priority in dispensing what little that is available has turned out to be a nightmarish flop. If you start with doctors, you can’t forget nurses, paramedics, pharmacists and what have you. Various other sectors, also essential but not so classified, are making a deuce of a row demanding equity and threatening to or already have withdrawn services. On top of that the whole country is treated to images every day of policemen forming special queues for themselves at filling stations infuriating other consumers lining up not for hours but days.

Where do we go from here? Although we’ve had some sugary statements about staff level negotiations with the IMF concluding satisfactorily, there is very little positive news. Given the dollar crunch throttling the country that is inevitable. The two major dilemmas confronting us today are economic and political. It is common knowledge that our public sector is obscenely bloated. But an area that lacks sufficient focus is the incompetence that is apparent at the top of its management hierarchy. The ehei hamaduruwaney syndrome and subservience to the political establishment has now become so deeply ingrained that it will not be easy matter to root it out. But for starters, let’s look at getting the best available technocrats to sit in the public service at its commanding heights. A start was made with the new governor of the central bank. Rumour has it that there was resistance from the prime minister, who is also finance minister, to recommending Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe for a new full term after he had served out the balance term of his predecessor. Has nothing been learned from the bond scams and the Arjuna Mahendran experiences?

How the events that are now panning out will eventually end remains to be seen. There may be a signal over the weekend. After losing the presidency in 20215, the Rajapaksas did not lie down and die. Nor did the UNP and its yahapalana lot drive the last nail into the coffin. Older readers would remember that SWRD Bandaranaike claimed in 1956 that “the last nail had been driven into the UNP coffin.” He didn’t live long enough to see that it had not. The Rajapaksas may be taking comfort from what happened in the Philippines where it took the Marcos’ 30 years to come back. Judging from a recent article published by the Guardian in the UK, the rats have begun to squeal with some sitting members of the cabinet and other ex-members singing like canaries. Are they seeing the coming colour?