Govt. tilting at windmills

Saturday 8th January, 2022

A government in trouble becomes so paranoid that it sees more devils than vast hell can hold. This may explain why the current dispensation and its backers are concocting various conspiracy theories almost on a daily basis to cover up their failings, which are legion.

Chief Government Whip and Minister of Highways, Johnston Fernando, has declared at a recent school function that there is more to gas explosions than meets the eye; he would have the public believe that there is a conspiracy behind these incidents. A probe has got underway, at the behest of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa himself into the gas-related accidents, Fernando has said.

Curiously, going by Minister Fernando’s contention, one wonders whether the members of the special presidential committee, which probed the gas explosions, etc., are also party to the grand conspiracy, for they have concluded that the mishaps at issue are due to a change in the gas composition, etc.

Litro Gas Chairman Theshara Jayasinghe has gone on record as saying there has been a tenfold increase in the number of the valves of cylinders his company has to replace daily because of the new safety regulations stipulated by the Sri Lanka Standards Institution and the Consumer Affairs Authority. Daily valve replacements number 3,000 at present, according to him. This may be considered proof that cylinders with defective valves were released to the market previously, exposing consumers to danger owing to lax safety regulations. Both Litro and Laugfs have admitted that their production processes have slowed down as they are required to adopt new safety measures. Reading between the lines, they did not conduct strict safety checks before being ordered to do so.

Thus, it is clear that a change in the composition of gas, defective valves, etc., are the main reasons for gas explosions, and the conspiracy Minister Fernando is talking about is only a figment of his imagination.

In a bid to bolster his argument, Minister Fernando has claimed that there have been no gas explosions in Colombo 07, Kurunegala, Kandy and the Northern province. Has he forgotten that a 51-year-old woman died in a gas explosion in Kandy, and a major gas blast occurred at a restaurant in Colombo 07?

To claim that there is a conspiracy behind gas explosions simply because they have not been reported from some parts of the country is tantamount to maintaining that not all smokers die of cancers and other such non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and, therefore, the medical opinion that smoking causes NCDs is wrong, and there is a conspiracy against the tobacco industry!

Minister Fernando’s conspiracy theory is self-defeating; it serves as an indictment of the government. National security is the current leaders’ long suit, or at least they say so. Their rise to power received a turbo boost from the Easter Sunday blasts in 2019. Claiming that terrorist bombings would not have happened if they had been in power, they undertook to strengthen the state intelligence agencies. They have vowed to ensure that there will be no threats to national security and public safety. Shouldn’t they be ashamed that they have not been able to find out those involved in the conspiracy which, Fernando says, is behind the gas explosions?

What made the President order a secret probe into gas explosions? It should have been conducted in a transparent manner for its findings to be credible. One needs not be surprised if its findings will help endorse the government’s position that the gas explosions are not due to a change in the LPG composition! If the investigation happens to confirm the conclusions of the special presidential committee, by any chance, its report will never see the light of day. Swallowing reports, as it were, is one of the few things Sri Lankan Presidents are adept at doing.