Thoughts from London

For this comic relief much thanks
So another year has passed. Our blessed isle, though bruised and battered, has somehow survived no thanks to its politicians. This being the season of good cheer we should be charitable to all, even parlour patriots and assorted self-proclaimed thinkers who fellow columnist Thalif Deen prefers to call third rate intellectuals.

This is the time of year when we must be magnanimous to those who have filled our dreary days with jollity, made us burst into uncontrollable laughter with their sayings and doings. To them we offer our humble thanks for the unintended humour that made life more bearable.

Never mind that the much-vaunted peace process lies still and the set piece dialogues have come to a studied halt. Never mind that all the king's men and Akashi too cannot make the Wanni Nayakar change his sullen mind.

Never mind that the political 'confrontasi' between the President and the Prime Minister remains unresolved despite two unknowns named Malik and Mano behaving like an amateur dance hall duo performing a difficult pirouette.

Never mind that our MPs partaking of the subsidised food with Falstaffian relish at the Diyawanna Oya rest house, are fighting a losing battle against their expanding waistline while the public is desperately struggling to keep its collective head above the poverty line.

Never mind all that. These have been difficult times, they have been troubling times. But for the political peccadilloes of our leaders where would the denizens of this paradise be but sulking in some corner like Achilles.

So to them we pay obeisance this first Sabbath of the new year. It is no easy task to name them all, the list of cabinet ministers, ministers assisting this and ministers not assisting anything, deputies, bureaucrats, diplomutts (oops sorry, diplomats) fawning faithfuls and parasitic hangers-on reads like the passenger manifest of a jumbo jet.

Shakespeare was done with one Malvolio. But that will hardly fit the bill in paradise where the competition for unappreciated comedy is so fierce. Despite possible charges of political bias, bribery and corruption and a hundred other sins, we shall undertake this arduous task of honouring where honour is due.

Should we choose President Kumaratunga and her faithful followers who berated the government and the Mass Communication Ministry for granting an operating licence for an LTTE radio station in Kilinochchi. Some even went to court over it. But as minister in charge now has she cancelled that licence which was temporary anyway? Not on your life.

What about Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe who belatedly discovered that his knowledge of English grammar and that of his speechwriters failed the crucial test. Some blame it on the school attended. Others say this is the trouble when you depend on foreign speech writers, be they of British origin or discards from British politics.

Enough has been said in this column about Minister Milinda Moragoda whose penchant for anything American makes one wonder which country he owes allegiance to and if he has a green card that has turned greener in our pastures. Still he has provided us with enough laughs during the year we have ruled him out of this contest.

Talking of the United States how can one ever forget that memorable speech of Consumer Affairs Minister Ravi Karunanayake at the WTO conference in Cancun earlier this year that had most knowledgeable persons, including, I suppose, some Third World intellectuals, rocking and rolling with laughter.

Hailed by a section of a sycophantic press, Karunanayake certainly made an epoch-making speech. But it was epoch-making for all the wrong reasons. But then it should come as no surprise. He is selling off so many of the assets that come under his ministry. So selling Sri Lanka down the river is no big deal compared to some other deals.

If it is true, as some say, that he has an American as a speech writer, it might be one reason for the volte face. It seems we can't even write our own pro-western speeches these days and have to hire an American to praise American policies. What a laugh that.

But for consistently providing us with bellyaches my vote goes to Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando. His recent reply in parliament on the foreign ministry votes would have been voted the joke of the year if the matter was not so serious. Faced with "financial constraints" the ministry is "embarking on a rationalization of our missions abroad".

"I particularly find when I travel around that many of our missions are overstaffed". Jokes apart, if money is a problem why is Minister Fernando travelling around so much. After all he does not have to do so to discover that our missions are overstaffed or that there is plenty of dead wood lying around in them. He can do so from home by asking a simple question- who started this rot?

During his current tenure he has packed our missions with persons from Moratuwa and other party hangers-on. I wrote last year how the foreign ministry in Colombo asked for 13 visas to send recruits to our High Commission in London causing consternation among British authorities. Eventually Sri Lanka had to beat an ignominious retreat and change the status of those being sent, mainly from Moratuwa.

They came several months before the existing staff were terminated, resulting in Sri Lanka paying out additional salaries costing the High Commission around £10,000 a month. Surely there would be "financial constraints" when taxpayers money is wasted on jobs for the boys and girls.

A so-called gardener was sent to a mission that had no garden, and receptionists who could only speak Sinhala and were of little or no help at the reception, to other capitals. Some unnamed foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying that political appointees had always been posted. What he didn't say was what two deputy high commissioners were doing in our Australian High Commission or how a driver recruited from Sri Lanka to our New York mission was elevated to protocol officer.

Joining battle on behalf of the government our UN representative Charlie Mahendran was quoted in news reports as saying that one reason for the financial problems was the opening of several new missions by the previous foreign minister.

If that is true one-time career diplomat Mahendran appears to have forgotten the value of keeping his mouth closed-and his ears and mind open- on political issues. As our man in New York he might be better suited to say how the "grammatical error" slipped into Ranil Wickremesinghe's UN speech. Or is he not consulted on these matters and his job is to make sure that Wickremesinghe's former STF bodyguard is elevated from driver to protocol officer.

Instead of trying to pass the blame on to the Treasury, Mahendran might explain how foreign ministry money was spent on accommodating a dozen Sri Lankan journalists at the Ritz-Carlton during the Wickremesinghe visit and how much had to be coughed up for unpaid telephone and other bills by journalists and delegates. But then Mahendran has given up diplomacy for politics. That explains his unexpected and spurious defence of the establishment. There is always room for more Malvolios.

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