Failures galore

Saturday 12th June, 2021

The Covid-19 fatality rate is rising steadily; 101 deaths were reported yesterday. A few weeks ago, not many people may have taken seriously scientists’ prediction that Covid deaths would exceed 100 a day here unless stringent measures were adopted to curb the spread of the pandemic. The government played politics with pandemic control in April and let the grass grow under its feet, and the public took health experts’ warnings lightly, and threw caution to the wind.

It is usually the ruling party/coalition that faces internal problems during national crises, which the Opposition uses to gain traction on the political front. But, today, both the government and the Opposition are up the creek; the former has its approval ratings plummeting rapidly due to the mismanagement of the pandemic, corruption, inefficiency, etc., and the latter is facing a leadership crisis. They are papering over the cracks.

The Opposition would have the public believe that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has failed. Its propagandists have launched an aggressive social media campaign against the government, which, they claim, has failed on every front. If their claim is considered true, then it follows therefrom that 6.9 million people who voted for Rajapaksa at the last presidential election have failed, for they have made a bad choice. The same may be said of those who voted for the SLPP at the last general election.

Some key Opposition figures in the SJB have reportedly turned against their leader Sajith Premadasa, and are expected to join forces with UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe when the latter enters Parliament as a UNP National List MP. The SJB rebels are of the view that the Opposition, under Premadasa’s leadership, has failed to live up to the people’s expectations because it has not become an effective countervailing force against the government, which is bulldozing its way through. One may therefore argue that 5.5 million people who voted for Premadasa at the last presidential election have also failed; the same goes for the voters who backed the SJB at last year’s parliamentary polls.

Thus, it may be seen that not only the elected but also electors have failed. This may explain why this country finds itself in the present predicament and is unable to achieve progress.

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Let actions speak!

Some Opposition MPs refused to be inoculated against Covid-19, declaring that they would wait until the ordinary public had been vaccinated; a few of these politicians have contracted the disease. Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa is one of them. Attending a religious function at Ganagaramaya, Colombo, after being discharged from hospital, Premadasa said he had got infected because he had refused the jab for the sake of the public. He deserves praise for having taken a principled position.

Undergoing quarantine or treatment for Covid-19 at private hospitals is a luxury that ordinary people cannot afford; they are taken to the state-run quarantine facilities or hospitals. Have the Opposition politicians who refused to be given first dibs on the jab, for the sake of the public, and got infected as a result, stayed at the same government quarantine centres or hospitals as the ordinary people? If not, why?

Opposition Leader Premadasa has rightly called upon the government to curtail waste and channel the funds so saved for the country’s fight against Covid-19. He has berated the government both in and outside Parliament for incurring unnecessary expenditure––quite rightly so. He has struck a responsive chord with the right-thinking people, who expect the government to manage public money frugally.

Having talked the talk so eloquently, now the Opposition Leader has got an opportunity to walk the walk. The government has unashamedly decided to buy luxury vehicles for the MPs amidst the worsening national health emergency. The Opposition MPs are among the beneficiaries of what has come to be dubbed the Covid bonanza; they also had no qualms about spending public funds to the tune of billions of rupees on importing vehicles for the MPs in the aftermath of disasters like the Meethotamulla garbage dump collapse and the Salawa armoury blast. They unflinchingly did so while the disaster victims were crying out for assistance. They have shown no remorse for their shameful actions.

Will the Opposition Leader launch a frontal attack against the government, pressuring it to stop the luxury vehicle imports, or at least tell the SJB MPs to refuse the SUVs, etc., to be imported for them?