I rest my case

BY RAJITHA RATWATTE

fromoutsidethepearl@gmail.com

Just to interrupt the loud cheers and other forms of celebration that those of you who thought that I was going to cease writing from this article onwards, sorry, that is not what I mean by my headline! What I mean is that I made a call many months ago that Joe Biden would be sworn in on time despite the worst efforts of the then incumbent President and the best efforts of the media Moghuls to create as much drama as possible and milk as much as possible from advertising revenue.

Well, it has happened and there seems to be an avalanche of ‘positive’ things been done within the first few hours, let alone the first 100 days. Being a confirmed sceptic, I don’t believe in rhetoric and even surface actions. I will wait and see if Biden and Kamala Harris are really able to make a difference. That will take a few years. During the first press conference given by the new administration, the new press secretary, said that the first things they would do would be to regain America’s place in the world forum. They have realised the importance of this for such a huge country, let alone a minuscule country like the Pearl. We in the Pearl think that we can proceed with a President who has publicly admitted to having two personalities and a cohort of “educated” and uneducated politicians who have sold their souls to greed and avarice.

I will never rest my case, or my attempts to expose misgovernance, corruption, misinformation and general cow manure that is dished out on a regular basis by those who try to ‘rule’ us. A recent article in this newspaper by a well-respected, Harvard qualified (PhD), a senior statistician who spent many years working for the Central Bank of Sri Lanka when she could have earned much more money elsewhere, casting terrible aspersions on the recent fiscal budget presented by this government, has left me horrified. Does nobody except this heroic lady care about where we are heading? Do none of the ‘captains of the industry’ and all other so-called leaders who award themselves so many great accolades every year, care about what is going on? May I suggest that those of you who haven’t read this piece do so immediately and those of you who have, started digging up your gardens and growing things you and your family can EAT as soon as possible. What are you going to do when the Pearl reached pariah status in the eyes of the world and international financiers and lending institutions refuse to deal with us? Do we have a single politician or even a civil servant for that matter who has enough international recognition to even make a stand at an international forum?

Let’s move on to another ‘favourite’ subject of mine. I use the word favourite for want of a better word to describe my sheer loathing for what is going on in the field of the HEC, or the Human-Elephant Conflict. Big talk on how it was going to be solved in a matter of months and ‘high powered’ committees being appointed have all led to nothing. I am told there is one appointee who is talking around town saying he can solve the problem within six months if there is no political interference. I am horrified again to think that this person, who, I always thought, was one of our best hopes to address this problem, has spoken such rubbish. Six months to solve a problem that has got worse by the day for decades? No way my friends and firstly you have to find people who are not afraid of elephants, who understand the behaviour and thinking of elephants, not those who cower behind electric fences and inside their expensive vehicles! It is also necessary to have enough commitment and love for these wonderful animals, to stand up to at least one of the first politicians, who try to throw their weight around.

The rubbish that is going on around the Lankan cricket team or should I say poker team, if that was the card game they were photographed playing while the team was being thrashed on the field. I presume the game was poker since all these players are paid so much and they must be having lots of spare cash to gamble with! Sure, cricket teams and individual players, play cards and read books and even sing during rain interruptions and such like delays in the game but to play cards during a debacle happening live on the field only reflects the level to which the standards and even the leadership has sunk to in recent times. Do any of you think members of the Indian cricket team would have played cards during their batting debacle, when they were dismissed for the lowest score EVER scored by an Indian team, during their recent tour of Australia? All I can say is this same team won in style and they had nine ‘star players’ missing and that included the incumbent captain! The team manager when speaking to the team in the dressing room thanked everybody down to the masseurs and the physiotherapists, but Ravi Shastri didn’t really mention the selectors! Maybe, it was an oversight as building a team like that doesn’t happen overnight.

I hate to make a call of a total economic collapse for our beloved mother country. Remember the stories of Zimbabwe, when people literarily had to take wheelbarrows full of money to buy a loaf of bread? You don’t think that can happen to us in the ex-pearl of the Indian Ocean? Well, I think it can, and it is time to blow the whistle and ask those in charge to admit that things are out of control and to ask for answers to the hard questions with regard to that set of numbers that has been presented to parliament under the guise of a fiscal budget.

We have a case of the South African variant of the virus that seems to have got out into the community. There is a certain amount of concern and yes, even panic in the community in Aotearoa. We have enjoyed our summer to the maximum, with no restrictions but now that the school holidays are almost over and Kiwis’ are going back to work, the bleak reality of life with the virus is about to strike.