Wednesday 14th July, 2021

Some Sri Lankans throw their crowbars out during thunderstorms; they think lightning will strike these steel implements, and not their houses. The government has apparently adopted this method to deflect criticism following the forcible removal of some teachers’ union leaders for quarantine. It has meted out the crowbar treatment, as it were, to the police.

The government has flayed the police for having forcibly taken away the teachers. Some ministers are even shedding copious tears for the teachers who were bundled into vehicles and taken to faraway quarantine centres while they were returning from courts. They tell the public that the police should not have acted in that manner. Butter wouldn’t melt in the mouths of these politicians!

On seeing the reaction of the government leaders, one would say that it serves the police right as they are ever ready to lick politicians’ boots and sandals.

To claim that the police swooped on the teachers’ union leaders of their own volition is to insult the intelligence of the public. They obviously carried out government orders, and would have received praise from the ruling party politicians if their action had not triggered an avalanche of criticism.

It is at their own risk that the police offer their services as stormtroopers or Nazi Sturmabteilung for their political masters, who never hesitate to throw them to the wolves. They had better realise the danger of carrying out illegal orders, and act within the confines of the law if they are to avoid trouble. It may serve the purpose of some high-ranking police officers seeking promotions, or service extensions, or ambassadorial posts after retirement, to pander to the whims and fancies of the government leaders, but others run the risk of losing their jobs and having to pay compensation in case of being found guilty of violating fundamental rights of citizens.

SLFP and hoppers

Time was when rice and bread caused problems for the SLFP, which failed to make them freely available. The rationing of these two food items, among other things, led to its ignominious defeat in the 1977 general election. One of the main election promises that enabled the SLFP to make a comeback, 17 long years later, was to reduce the bread prices. (That pledge went unfulfilled.) But today it has a problem with hoppers or appa or apam, of all things, puzzling as it may sound.

Hoppers assumed much political significance in late 2014, when the incumbent leader of the SLFP, Maithripala Sirisena, broke ranks with the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa, having eaten hoppers together for dinner. The Rajapaksas and their loyalists have since considered hoppers the food of treachery.

Now, the SLPP MPs who are not well disposed towards the SLFP use an idiomatic expression pertaining to hoppers to impress on their rivals that the SLFP cannot dictate terms to the government. In fact, they do so to light the blue touch paper with the SLFP leaders they have an axe to grind with. They keep telling their SLFP counterparts that a hopper has to take shape of the pan or thachchiya it is baked in, and never can a hopper change the shape of the pan. SLPP MP Tissa Kuttiarachchi used this expression, on Monday, to ridicule the SLFP, while the SLFP leaders were planning to meet President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to discuss their grievances.

Adjectitiously, as for the utensils used for baking food, one may recall that the late Ven. Maduluwawe Sobitha, who masterminded the 2015 regime change, used an idiom related thereto in cranking up pressure on the then President Sirisena to carry out his election pledges. The straight-talking monk famously told President Sirisena to use the griddle, which had been heated, to bake the promised roti instead of using it to warm himself. (By time the Thera realised that he had been used by a bunch of crafty politicians to compass their political ends, it was too late. He died a worried man.)

SLFP leader Sirisena cannot be unaware of the fact that what he and his party are experiencing is the revenge of the powers that be, who have not forgiven him for what he did to them in 2014/15. The SLPP MPs who are ridiculing them are only ventriloquists’ dummies, and their voices are in fact those of their masters.