Columns

I wish I were there. I wish the whole nation had taken a holiday to watch how highly placed public servants cringed before our highest courts of justice, having on previous occasions meted out what they considered their form of justice.

These were people who did the bidding of their masters, a ragtag team of pompous asses who will bend at the knees of those who might very well use their positions and places among the wielders of power, never mind if they contaminated the names and reputations of their families.

In the days of ancient Greece and Rome, those who ruled nations made spectacles of such people, throwing them into arenas for the weekly carnivals of the lords and ladies as barrels of wine were pushed around.

So where are they now, those who for the last few years donned their brand-new black ties or the sparkling fashionable new long coats, like the thousands of Bombay wallahs who then moved with Colombo’s glitterati and their shining-red Maserati—duty-free or squeezed free through Customs while the Motor Registrar brothers watched gleefully until a super sleuth grabbed them from elsewhere unknown of the secret raid?

While the other day the country’s principal passport mudalali was paying obeisance to Sri Lanka’s highest court, which only some months ago he sneered at, whatever happened to that Empire Queen who crash-landed in Lanka claiming to be a 24-carat Lanka gemstone that had been so mistaken?

I mean, see the skin colour; her native habitués from somewhere down deep in hill-country English mutter to a nearby gem buyer in a Nuwara Eliya Hill Club accent, definitely out of the King’s College accent of the early days.

This self-sustained fashion, and Drama Queen, who in her early years had threatened to turn Colombo’s Cinnamon Gardens—better known among the Mariakade Mamas as the Kudugahana Rata—into “Ganja Garden.”

While troops were out in the courtyard, the Drama Queen, the country’s principal passport mudalalis, and others were cocking the snook at money makers and trying to identify the new spooks loitering in the courtyard before long and haul them away to a new place of entertainment. The new Famous Grouse might well serve the task. Then the fun will begin.

We might be thousands of kilometres away, but as Donald Trump would say, he smells where the buck lies. And he seems to own most of the bucks.

But then there are the buck pushers and those who roll the barrel. They may not pay the taxes and can surely turn around the machine wheels. How long did the money printers and money wielders know where the money was? So why did they not escape from under the mattress? It could not have been too far from those comfortable pillows under the hamas pettiya?

That is a simple answer that even the top class of the now increasingly rich know. They have cleared out hiding places of their mamma, women, and their keeps and friends now. They might still get a nice drink or two, which the real mahattaya poked at the bottom of the cupboard barrel that she cannot remember.

I don’t mind my French Embassy No. 2’s butler having a quick swig at it when we are away. That I will not allow, especially when she gulps before I go.

So that is kaput—even if I say so in Deutsch. What we have in common is a blood civil service—and this was the Immigration Department. A lot of hanky-panky has been going on, and we know who has been poking their fingers into all the pies, including politicians and ministers, though not necessarily from the same office room.

Let me tell you a story that should be an example to not just the Immigration and Emigration Department.

In Mrs. Bandaranaike’s first term she had W.W.W. Tillekeratne as Controller of Immigration and Emigration, one of the best, cleverest, most upstart, and most upright public servants I have known, and he rose to be Controller of his service, head of the service, and Sri Lanka High Commissioner to India. WT also had an excellent junior who later headed the Immigration and thereafter became ambassador in Japan when I was many years in Tokyo.

They were excellent civil servants, just like the batch of civil servants whom I associated with often and discussed development with as part of my development training.

I wish I could continue more very soon about the quality of the civil servants today, the recent incident that led to my trying to obtain a genuine Sri Lankan passport from the Colombo Immigration Office, and the holy mess I encountered despite having made no error.

But unless the mistakes that burucrats make are exposed, they will continue, but time calls for a halt.