The Island Editorial

Beggars’ at-home

29 September 2016

President Maithripala Sirisena has become a spoilsport of sorts for some politicians. Troubled by colossal amounts of public funds being spent on politicians’ foreign junkets, he has ordered that the Central Provincial (CP) Council members’ tour of Russia scheduled for mid October be cancelled forthwith. He has asked CP Governor Niluka Ekanayake to explain why councillors are allowed to see the world without his permission in this manner.

The Provincial Council system has been a massive drain on state resources with their recurrent expenditure accounting for almost all their revenue plus financial allocations from the government. It serves only the purpose of politicians whose progeny use it as a training ground and a stepping stone to Parliament.

We at present have 380 sitting provincial councillors in addition to 225 parliamentarians and 4,414 local government members. These numbers are bound to increase owing to electoral reforms.

Travel is said to broaden mind. If so, how come our politicians are so narrow-minded? Their foreign junkets cannot be justified on any grounds. They never learn from their hosts how to tackle problems this country is faced with. We have so many politicians visiting Singapore, but they haven’t cared to learn how the city state handles its municipal waste, which is detoxified and used to reclaim land from the sea. Here, we see many a mountain of garbage, which is a monument to the crass stupidity of globe-trotting politicians and officials.

The government is reportedly planning to set up an office for ethics and morality. We don’t question the wisdom of those behind this project. Suffice it to say that ethics and morality cannot be brought about by government fiat. However, there is no harm in providing some entertainment, through such projects, to the public in these difficult times. What the country is badly in need of is a Ministry of Crabs, as it were, in that government leaders are like crabs which urge their offspring to walk straight while they themselves are moving sideways.

Will the public be told how many foreign trips the President, the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers have been on since the change of government last year? Most of them, we believe, have been more overseas, pressing flesh with powerful leaders, than here. These tours only help boost their elephantine egos. As we keep saying in these columns, at the rate they are junketing at the expense of the hapless taxpayer they, while going out of the BIA, must be knocking against themselves returning from overseas.

Politicians, at all three levels of government, are having a whale of a time with public funds. This, they are doing while asking Citizen Perera to tighten his belt for the sake of the country. Shame on them!

ETCA: To ink or not to ink

Minister of Commerce and Industry of India Nirmala Sitharaman has, at a media briefing in Colombo, sought to allay fears in the minds of concerned Sri Lankans about the controversial Indo-Lanka Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement (ETCA). She has said the pact won’t be signed in a hurry and Sri Lanka will benefit therefrom in that it will be able to tap the huge Indian market.

However, the question is whether the discerning Sri Lankans, especially local professionals, will buy into the visiting Indian minister’s claims. Once bitten, twice shy, as they say. Going by the chaos the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord has plunged this country into one may be justified in looking askance at the ETCA, which the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government is going hell for leather to ink.

Gift bearing Greeks may be more trustworthy, in the eyes of Sri Lankans, than Indian diplomats and politicians undertaking to solve this country’s problems. For, their solutions are usually far worse than the problems. The provincial council system is a case in point.

The day may not be far off when the Modi jackets some politicians here put themselves in, to curry favour with New Delhi, in a desperate bid to effect last year’s regime change will turn out to be straitjackets. They will find themselves in the same predicament as the person who sold his soul to the devil.

Diplomats and politicians of powerful nations dealing with smaller countries, where resistance emerges to their schemes, act like the ancient mounted Parthian archers who would pretend to flee from battle and then suddenly turn around at full gallop and shoot at the pursuing enemies and have the last laugh. So, the opponent of ETCA had better brace for Parthian tactics.