Syrup promoters in the soup

Monday 25th January, 2021

So, it should now be clear that the Dhammika peniya or syrup, which the Department of Ayurveda has undertaken to test, is no cure for COVID-19. All intelligent people knew it was fake, but others including some government politicians were convinced otherwise. Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi, who swigged the syrup to protect herself against coronavirus, has contracted COVID-19. Several other MPs who ingested it have also tested positive for the virus. The Health Minister is currently at a treatment centre, we are told. We wish her as well as all other patients a speedy recovery, but cannot help wondering why she did not opt for treatment at shaman Dhammika Bandara’s shrine, where a goddess is said to have revealed the COVID-19 cure to him while he was in a trance state.

A previous Rajapaksa government (2010-2015) collapsed as it took the advice of shamans and astrologers seriously and even advanced a presidential election at their behest. Everything it did was astrologically determined. It, however, was not alone in falling for astrological advice, etc., hook, line, and sinker. Its predecessors had even launched military operations according to schedules prepared by astrologers. Most of those offensives ended in disaster. It is said that the launching of operations in Eelam War IV was based on sound military advice; that may be the reason why they succeeded.

The incumbent government is the old Dhammika peniya in a new bottle, as it were, in that it consists of the superstitious elements who were in the aforesaid ill-fated Rajapaksa regime. It has sought to banish coronavirus with the help of some rituals such as dropping pots into rivers. Thankfully, it has stopped short of appointing a minister for superstitious affairs.

Health Minister Wanniarachchi committed something unpardonable by promoting the shaman’s concoction. Wanniarachchi was responsible for triggering mass hysteria by ingesting the peniya at an official event together with some of her SLPP parliamentary colleagues. Thereafter, tens of thousands of people from different parts of the country converged on a village where the shaman distributed the syrup free of charge. They blatantly violated the quarantine laws, but the police looked on. Perhaps, the government let that happen as it wanted public attention distracted from its failure to contain the pandemic and other burning issues such as the soaring cost of living. There may have been many coronavirus infections in that seething mass of humans near the shaman’s syrup distribution centre, and that may be one of the reasons why the pandemic has spread throughout the country.

Nothing could be more disgraceful to a country than to be ruled by a bunch of superstitious politicians who fall for false claims of quacks and deify shamans. The question is whether the Health Minister who promoted a quack’s concoction without any scientific evidence to prove its efficacy and misled the public should be allowed to continue to be in that position.

Some government ministers took on the critics of the Dhammika peniya, calling them traitors. They mixed their brand of patriotism with the untested syrup. They have cut pathetic figures. Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena ought to act cautiously hereafter without letting intellectually challenged ministers and MPs use Parliament to promote concoctions touted as remedies for diseases. We are afraid that he, too, has blotted his copybook.

Another fake indigenous physician has claimed to have found a cure for COVID-19. His potion is said to contain hawks’ eggs. If so, the quack must be arrested forthwith, for hawks are a protected species and it is an offence to destroy their eggs. Will the Department of Wildlife get cracking?

Given the sheer number of superstitious politicians in the present government, one can only hope that the new Constitution being drafted will not have a provision for giving superstition the foremost place.