Shooting ourselves

The newspapers and television news bulletins these days are full of reports of the alleged sugar scam, continuing environmental degradation in many parts of the country, the human-elephant conflict resulting in losses of both human and animal life and crop depredation devastating rural farmers eking a bare living from the land. Today’s rulers who were eloquent about the despicable bond scam under the previous dispensation have been dumbstruck by the megaphone reporting of the imposition and sudden removal of a questionable cess on sugar imports. This had cost the government huge potential revenues but no actual losses, according to what most see as a hair-splitting, self-serving and long delayed explanation by the finance ministry that is now in the public domain. There is little indication of any serious attempt to halt the ever-growing attacks on the environment for which both the bureaucratic and political classes are being blamed. As for the human-elephant conflict, the less said the better.

We carry today several articles by knowledgeable contributors on all these subjects. Much of what they have said deserve the attention of readers as well as the rulers. Mr. Sanjeewa Jayaweera is following the example of his late brother, Rajeewa, who tragically died some months ago, by digging up information on matters that are topical of which he is experienced and presenting his findings in easily digestible form. Having worked for Elephant House for a quarter century and participated in the procurement of sugar for carbonated soft drinks that this venerable business house has been manufacturing since 1866, he is qualified to comment on the various aspects of the so-called sugar scam. Some matters he has raised demands official attention. Among these is his grumble that the public domain in our country, despite its much-vaunted Right to Information Act, lacks information on subjects like imports of essentials, in this case sugar.

The writer has made the point that such information is necessary to find out the pattern of imports of the company that made the killing off changes in the Special Commodity Levy applicable to sugar imports. This is essential to get to the heart of the matter. Was it incompetence, ignorance, lack of due diligence or something much worse? That would establish whether the imports were routine or out of the ordinary. If it was the latter, it would seem to have been done on the basis of profiting from insider information. It has been reported that the biggest ever single cargo of sugar to be landed in the country was cleared at the nominal 25 cent cess, reduced from the previous Rs. 50, providing a wide-open window of profit. This importer had also held a large stock in a bonded warehouse which was cleared at the nominal cess. While Jayaweera has not been able to access this essential information, there is no reason why the finance ministry or the various parliamentary watchdog committees cannot dig it out. Forensic audit is now a term that is commonplace. It is what was done in the case of the bond scam and it is what is being demanded over the sugar deal. Former Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka has alleged that a coconut oil import scam bigger than the sugar deal had preceded the latter. All this must necessarily be properly investigated and the truth established.

This issue of our newspaper also carries the lament by wildlife lover and photographer, Rohan Wijesinha, about the tragedy of the majestic Uda Walawe tusker, Walawe Raja, who disappeared from his regular haunts over a decade ago; and the search for whom had been long called off. He was last seen, the writer says, in 2009 with a terrible gash in his trunk that was so bad that the water would leak out when he drank. Wijesinha says all those who had a wondrous time viewing this beautiful animal had resigned themselves to the fact that he is no more, a possible victim of the human elephant conflict. He has eloquently sounded the warning that “bereft of healthy populations of elephants, the (Uda Walawe) Park will deteriorate into a mass of impenetrable scrubland not habitable by larger animals, and the enormous benefits it once brought to the region, and the country will be lost forever….”. This fate is not only confined to Uda Walawe but also applies, sometimes more forcefully, to other environmentally sensitive areas not excluding Sinharaja.

We also run in this issue a contribution from nonagenarian/scientist, Dr. Upatissa Pethiyagoda, who has recalled a chance encounter in the early seventies with the unforgettable Wijayananda Dahanayaka of Galle at the Perera and Sons outlet where both had sought a drink of iced coffee. Learning that Pethiyagoda worked then at the Tea Research Institute at Talawakelle, Dahanayaka had said that what this country needed to concentrate on was not tea, but rice, pasture, sugarcane, coconut and jak. Pethiyagoda has nostalgically remembered the late Arthur. V. Dias of Panadura, popularly known countrywide as “Kos Dias,” who eloquently advocated growing this cornucopia of Kingdom Plantae, with nearly as many uses as coconuts, whose efforts would have surely led to the planting the planting of jak trees in countless home gardens countrywide. Despite his senior position at the TRI, Pethiyagoda says Dahanayaka was preaching to the converted as himself had at that time turned “traitor to tea.” The felling of the forest cover in our central hills to make way first for coffee and then for tea has cost us incalculably in terms of climate change, water resources, erosion and much more. While paying the price for what was imposed on us by the British Empire, we continue to shoot ourselves not just in the foot but in the head as well with unrestrained assaults on what we still have.