‘Rising up with fleas’

Thursday 11th November, 2021

Politics usually has on the reputations of eminent scholars the same effect as a smidgen of cow dung on a pot of milk. Some learned men and women, in their wisdom, choose to go out of their way to work under semi-literate politicians and demean themselves, thereby, making students wonder why they should study hard when they can drop out of school, take to politics and boss the learned people around.

One of our columnists says, in an article published in this newspaper today, a former Deputy Central Bank (CB) Governor has blamed Prof. W. D. Lakshman for turning the CB into a printing press while he was the CB Governor. Many a true word is said to be spoken in jest.

But how fair is it to single out Prof. Laskshman for criticism? He certainly cannot absolve himself of the blame for ‘rampant money printing’, but there are others who should be held responsible for what the Central Bank did during his tenure as the Governor. In this country, no state official is free to carry out his or her duties and functions according to his or her conscience. Dirty politics has eaten into the vitals of the state service and reduced public officials to mere puppets. But Prof. Lakshman should have known better than to undertake to head the Central Bank under the current government leaders who have a history of landing public officials in trouble.

In this country, politicians in power, regardless of the parties they represent, consider themselves omniscient and infallible simply because they have mandates, and even those who have not passed the GCE O/L examination think they are fit to hold vital Cabinet portfolios; when things go wrong due to their incompetence, rackets and blunders, they blame others including public officials.

The educated politicians are no better. They have mastered the art of using public officials as a cat’s paw. The blame for Treasury bond scams (2015-16) has been laid at the feet of Arjuna Mahendran, who was the CB Governor at the time. True, he was responsible for the mega racket, but he did not act on his own initiative. His political masters obviously masterminded the fraud, and had him carry it out, but neither the COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) nor the Presidential Commission of Inquiry that probed the bond scams cared to trace the mastermind. Rogues in the yahapalana government did not go the whole hog to have their immediate predecessors thrown behind bars for various rackets, and the latter have returned the favour; no serious effort has been made to bring Mahendran here to stand trial so that his erstwhile political bosses will be safe.

The need for excessive money printing has arisen, and the country is in an economic mess today because the SLPP effected huge tax cuts immediately after the 2019 regime change, and threw money around during the early stages of the pandemic to win the general election that came a few months later. The economy suffered a double whammy; government revenue decreased due to a sharp drop in tax revenue, and money had to be printed to distribute cash by way of relief. The country would not have come to this pass if the government had not carried out its general election campaign at the expense of the economy.

There is no gainsaying that the pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the economy, and all countries are experiencing economic difficulties, but the situation would not have been this bad here if the government had acted wisely. Mega rackets such as the sugar tax racket have also cost the country dear.

Let the public officials who get too close to politicians, and do the latter’s bidding be urged to remember the adage: ‘He that lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.’