Old and New Normal ways of dangerous mismanagement

It’s bang on January 1st 2021, right on the first day of the New Year. Cass with kindness overriding her usual acidity, wishes each and every one of you a much better year than 2020 was. It started off bright and clear with a well matching 2020 label to it. But soon the Covid 19, curse its vey name, which had already sprung up in Wuhan and even now suspected Europe, raged forth. Little Sri Lanka was one country that managed to contain it well, with a superb presidential task force and the public health service working dedicatedly from midwife upwards to the admired Dr Jasinghe, assisted by armed forces personnel. Cass believes that the usual malady that hits us, Sinhalese particularly, took hold: complacency following initial success and we let the virus return with a vengeance. Answer of the Minster of Health to this rising crisis was throwing pots of water into rivers. She should have carried out the threatened self-sacrifice that was torn out from her by criticism in Parliament. For she did harm, not only act stupid. She imbibed, demonstrating approval of a paniya concocted by a kapurala, claimed by him to be both preventive and curative against C-19. So, we ordinary folk have much to contend with including incompetent people wielding power. But let us all unite in hoping for a better 2021 just dawned.

Probably causing infection rather than stemming it

That Kegalla kapurala was enough of a charlatan offering his five-ingredient cure for Covid- 19 that was endorsed by no less than the Minister of Health and Speaker. Mercifully doctors questioned its being distributed with no testing etc. The kapurala has done worse: surely facilitating further infection with people flocking to his home for the peniya. The worst was on Friday last week. A horde had collected and were jostling around, far too close to each other, when he appearedto announce he was not distributing the touted elixir. Run out of ingredients. For heaven’s sake! Did he not know this before the first aspirant could enter his garden? Why did he not say no distribution would occur that day before people crowded in to his premises? Boards or a person should have announced this on the main road. He waits till crowds surge, then he makes his announcement. He should be charged for just this offence, nay crime.

New Normal import of muck to add to our overflowing mountains of it

The editorial of The Island of Monday December 28 succinctly titled Muck, bucks and impunity, followed by Wednesday’s Part 2, commented on the recently detected containers, all 28 of them, with agricultural garbage. More rubbish to add to the already mountains of unmanageable waste in this so-called Paradise. Corrupt persons, politicians included, are fast making this small island that could be so wonderful, suit Trump’s name for Third Worlders: cesspits. The containers so easily could have passed customs but most mercifully, intrepid and competent Custom’s officials got one opened and examined. Lo and behold! Waste instead of stated coriander. Cass uses the descriptive ‘intrepid’ to these officials whose duty it is to examine and pass what enters the Island via sea and air. It is now only the brave official who will declare a cheat because in the cheating chain there will invariably be a politician or person with political clout, relative, great buddy or sponsor.

Now we have received tourists, infected or otherwise, from Ukraine. A host arrived on Sunday and later too. They were welcomed with garlands and dancers and no less a person than Udayanga W himself in person. Cass thought he was evading this country. The tourists are to be in bubbles, whatever that means. Cass recalls it was a Ukranian air pilot or co, who caused infection down South at about the same time as the disaster in the Brandix factory. The Minister of Tourism is in favour. What do high ups in the industry say about this maybe too hasty arrival of tourists? And the Health Services? The expected Russian tourists cancelled their tour. We need to revive in-coming tourism but absolutely safely and not only to enrich certain bus and hotel owners. The high officials of the Ministry of Tourism must give their go-ahead as also an unbiased health sector.

A truly smelly country

The Island

of Thursday 24 December carried this sub headline at the bottom of page 1: JVP too smells a rat in selecting India’s Adani Group to run Colombo Port East Terminal. Cass won’t discuss details but she has read this Indian business has been blacklisted in Aussie Land and among farmers in India. That speaks for itself for those who know more than meets the eye.

The JVP has a keen collective nose that smells out stinky rats and subgroups, also other carrion and is unafraid to call public attention to smells resulting from shady business deals. It names acts of corruption; corruption even if it borders too close to high ups. One thought and hoped sincerely with the election of the new President, that the stink of corruption would be minimized, if not eradicated. Sadly, disappointment is ours. He may be honest, but there is still hanky panky for lucre going on. What millions of us do is ask the question: is ‘very much’ not enough? How much do you want to amass and more so in these times when very life is uncertain and there is no way to splurge on travelling nor even on the very good life?

Our dear country has always been smelly with rotting rats and reached a peak in 2010 to 2015. Then dawned the yahapalanaya era. Chain snatchers and rapists were out of governing but in spite of the likes of Harsha de Silva and Eran Wickremasinghe and a host of others who were accepted by all as honest, corruption crept in. Attempts were made to punish the corrupt. The judicial service exonerated most, recently. Thu,s smelly rats continued, uncleared nor disinfected. Methinks, muses Cass, the smelly rats are a pandemic in themselves: less virulent than Covid-19 but prevalent enough to earn a name of its own: SR20; SR21 in this year and so on. When will it be stemmed? At SR25? As viruses mutate so does SR (Smelly Rat). They will not be quelled with charms or paniyas. Just as Covid 19 is accepted to be a result of indiscriminate greed for flesh and environmental damage, SR is the result of greed for wealth and power. Honesty and intrepidity for exposing and condemning are the equivalent of Pfizer and Oxford vaccines. (Somehow, I don’t want Sputnik). Will honesty and really considering what one can do for the country and not the reverse, never come to pass? We were SR free soon after independence. It really took root about the 1970s. JR’s open economy is blamed. No. What has to be blamed is man’s inherent blackness that was made blacker by those prone to corruption and allowed to grow by weakness and fear, and also, let it not be forgotten, innate laziness, non-caring and the inevitable refrain: “Oh just make the most of a bad situ.”

So Cass says, let’s you and I make a fuss over stinky situations and hope they will be sanitized in the new year just dawned. Bye for now and best to you! Must end on a cautionary note – TV 1, after its night news telecast on 28/12 televised a clip of an Afro hair-styled Dr Mumbi declaring that Namibia is now a Chinese colony. Yes, China was very much in Africa with its neocolonialistic brand of financial assistance and infrastructure development.