Editorial

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This gallows humour may have its upside, and the fact that the Sinhalaese can laugh at themselves is probably good. But a joke can have its serious connotations.

Last week's airport fiasco had the element of the surreal written into it. For fifteen guerrillas dressed like Airmen to enter one of the country's most fortified airbases and the only international airport, and to blow up within two hours eight military aircraft and two civilian aircraft was an audacious exercise of the sort that is generally associated only with Rambo movies. 

The cost to the nation was over Rs 15,000 million. In last weeks' comment in this space, we asked the government to reconsider holding a referendum because it costs close to a billion rupees, but this looks miniscule in the context that 15 referendums could have been held with the money that was blown up in last week's attack on the airstrip.

That arithmetic is no doubt not with the intention of justifying the referendum, but it would show how surreally out of proportion the numbers have got in this country. There are hundreds dying in a war, millions are wasted through mismanagement in the Ceylon Electricity Board and money goes up in smoke in an unnecessary referendum and a preventable attack at the country's major airport. We as a nation are losing all sense of proportion about the price accrued by a wasteful war and by profligate spending. Absolutely no accountability exists regarding the cost to property, lives and to the public exchequer through irresolute governance.

The manthara of course is "what did the UNP do?'' which of course is a rejoinder about which the less is said it is the better. 

The travel advisory of the US and British government's probably are a telling comment on what foreign countries think of the burgeoning chaotic conditions in this country. In a oblique way, these countries are telling this government to put it's house in order. 

Unfortunately the Government Sri Lanka is not in any position to issue a travel advisory to Sri Lankans to desist from travelling to England because there is violence in Bradford, or to stop going to Italy because a demonstrator was shot dead in Genoa. Or ask India to see that violence in Kashmir and terrorism against an MP is ended.

We have to stomach the advise of the West and of India whether it comes by way of a travel advisory or a statement in response to a question at the Foreign Office, because these countries are our donors, and so-called friends. Yet, there is no gainsaying that we deserve this treatment, because a government that does not know how to govern has ruined this country through its vituperative and tendentious politics.

There was nobody to take responsibility when over a hundred soldiers were killed when the Mullativu camp was overrun, when Elephant Pass was overrun last year and when the Kolonnawa oil storage tanks were hit, and now there is none to take responsibility when there is another sickening attack on the airport in which the forces are again sitting ducks. There are no lessons learnt from previous debacles, and this country seems perennially condemned to repeating the disasters of the past. Who cares, anyway.

The Political Column

Editorial/ Opinion Contents