Runaway virus and maudlin ramblings

Wednesday 4th November 2020

Yesterday’s parliamentary sitting was limited to about three hours. Serious thought should be given to shortening the House proceedings even after the pandemic is over. Parliament is characterised by absenteeism, and not many MPs come prepared for debates, which are an insult to the intelligence of the taxpaying public. Our representatives have mastered the art of saying so little in so many words, and their blether is sickening. After all, the country did without Parliament for months, thanks to the virus, which caused the general election to be postponed.

Having bungled on the health front, the government is now seeking divine interventions to curb the raging wave of COVID-19. If it had maintained the momentum of its campaign against the pandemic without resting on its oars after the first wave of infections was over, it would have been able to rid the country of the virus, and there would have been no need for it to kneel in supplication or ‘drop pots into rivers’. The Opposition yesterday ridiculed the government’s resort to rituals to beat the virus. One of the SJB MPs reportedly asked Health Minister Pavithradevi Wanniarachchi to sacrifice herself to the sea to save the country from COVID-19. This is how the Opposition is trying to help solve the problem!

One is reminded of former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s wisecrack about MPs and water pollution. During his general election campaign, he said people really wanted all MPs thrown into the Diyawanna lake, but he asked them to refrain from doing so lest they should pollute not only the Diyawanna water but also the Kelani Ganga. So, the Opposition MPs should be careful what they wish for!

The Health Minister declared that she was ready to sacrifice herself to the sea if she could stop the viral wave that way. Barbs, rhetoric, repartee, etc., will not help solve the problem, and the government and the Opposition should stop using the virus as a political football. They should not waste time in Parliament as one sitting costs Citizen Perera an arm and a leg. However, the Health Minister’s offer to sacrifice herself is worth analysing.

Pavithradevi is apparently trying to achieve greatness by offering to do what Viharamahadevi is believed to have done to save the country. Viharamahadevi volunteered to be sacrificed to the sea to help her father, King Kelanitissa, propitiate the angry deities who caused a tsunami by way of a divine retribution for killing a Buddhist monk. Is it that the Health Minister wants to have us believe that she cannot be held responsible for the rising wave of COVID-19, but is willing to be a sacrificial lamb to save the powers that be?

Will the government be able to secure divine assistance to tackle the pandemic? The Wuhan wet market is believed to be the cradle of the pandemic. The Peliyagoda wet market is mainly responsible for the second wave of infections ripping through this country. How can the government reconcile its efforts to invoke divine blessings for its battle against COVID-19 with its commitment to promoting the killing of fish and other creatures for food? Do the Health Minister and other pious Buddhists in the Cabinet think they can take deities for a ride by performing rituals while raking in taxes from the fish and meat trade, which the Buddha asked his followers not to engage in?

Having studied novel coronavirus clusters in various countries, a few months ago, scientists said that cold-chain food storage and transport boosted the transmission of the virus, which lives longer in low temperatures. There have been repeated clusters of infections around slaughterhouses in China, Germany, etc. A cluster was seen forming in the Peliyagoda fish market during the first wave of COVID-19, and immediate action was taken to snuff it out. But the health authorities went into a slumber thereafter and the place was not monitored, and we are now witnessing what could be the beginning of a tsunami of infections.

What is needed at this hour is not maudlin rambling or political fencing in Parliament, but a concerted effort to beat the virus decisively.