Columns

This is a hell of a situation, no! I mean, one can understand if you take a few inches from your neighbour’s garden or push his fence back without a by-your-leave.

But this is outrageous. I can understand Israel letting loose a Shylock or two, as it has when the Brits and a few others went together with shovel and pick, digging the soil in old Palestine, putting together enough sand, and singing hallelujah, “A new country is born.”

Okay, so that is good for Shakespeare, and he kept his handiwork for Venice, which is a good thing. Otherwise hundreds more Shylocks would be searching the world for their shekels and anybody else’s they can lay their hands on.

In school we had read of this Shakespeare stuff, had a good laugh and went to sleep thanking those merchants of Vienna that they did not travel farther from Balochistan. Otherwise boatloads of Shylocks would be all over Sri Lanka in search of our politicians who had taken some shekels, promising to return them or deduct them from their commissions.

I really thought that this was all utter nonsense manufactured by these chaps called journalists, roaming looking for news stories or manufacturing them for a few dollars by selling them to so-called social media.

That is another misnomer. If you find anything social about them, I will give you the other half of the Allenby Bridge. But that can wait unless one of our businessmen from the private or public sectors with access to the public purse has already got at it.

Right now I am too shocked by a first-hand story I heard from a good friend of mine from Batticaloa who returned to London a couple of days back.

All this time I had heard mainly snippets about Israeli and other Jewish people who had set up temporary stopovers and synagogues for their touristic ventures. These I heard about five or six months back from returnees who had been to the eastern coast, which is a highly patronised surfing area.

Well, if they wish to take a dip riding on a plank or a piece of wood turned into some contraption, that is their funeral.

But to come to Sri Lanka and cordon off part of the sea and its shore—now that is a different kettle of fish—sea fish too. What is worse is what I heard from my friend. There are notices up in front of some of the living places that are demarcated, shutting them off from other tourists.

Worst of all, from Sri Lankans and a diversity of other visitors too, as though this stretch of sand and sea-sand has been reserved for some of these Israeli and Jewish people, gifted by Moses with a heap of commandments which is good advice for miscreant rabble and rabbis to follow.

It would seem that this special enclave has been created for some unknown immigrants by a special resolution of the UN General Assembly and a motion of the Security Council. Maybe they had got it mixed up with the creation of Israel on the soil of Palestine.

If you think that is the end of the storytelling, no, my friend. According to my informant, they saw a board in front of one enclosure which was apparently for an exclusive bunch of Israelis and no others. That notice read “For Israelis Only”, which reminds me of some Russians who planted themselves in seaside places in the deep south and set themselves up as though that was Ukraine. Some I believe are still there, with the stamp of Russian ownership still visible along with a defaced picture of President Zelenskyy.

But what is so demeaning, disgusting and nauseating is the conduct of successive governments and their readiness to bow to foreign leaders and misleaders by kneeling before Chinese emperors in the old courts with their chopsticks in one hand and a bowl of Shanghai noodles in the other.

I can understand earlier governments, or the more pro-western of them from our side, sending some dishes of ambul thiyal and pol sambola with biththera aappa to the capitalist bloodsuckers before starting to plead for a few dollars more in the words of Clint Eastwood.

But this crawling and craving from so-called Marxist-Leninists playing pooja to the capitalist compradore class is too much to accept. After all, the new emerging class was to throw the ancient regime out of their abodes.

Remember the great pre-election promises—nay, gestures and threats—to turn this whole system upside down and produce a whole new sheet of “how to do governance”. In those days campaigning for presidency and parliament was all about the new brooms that will sweep this country like no other and turn it into a country like no other.

I suppose when Comrade Anura and his close-quarter combatants recall the days when they really said they would turn the country on its head, the old guard really meant until master craftsman Junius Richard got hold of them and threw them in the can.

It appears now that they are cardboard leaders, as someonehad called them, having listened to their intellectual battles. If they were really going to throw President Wickremesinghe’ economic juxtapositions, one might say, what the hell has happened to it?

The IMF has turned up as a good friend instead of a foe, though Ranil Baba lost his hearth and home. But he is talking and now and then making a joke of the current occupants of the house of governance.

From what I heard there, Sri Lankan police are providing security to Israeli leader ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu’s Israel citizens, who have been having a nice time, even assaulting a couple Sri Lankans in Batticaloa.

I really don’t know what great khaki men are doing guarding the seashore and its new occupants with our sand, if that is what they are doing. While Sri Lankan politicians and even some bureaucrats had their security withdrawn.

Not only that, but even the former presidents lost many of their perks because of excessive expenditure to maintain presidents.

I don’t know where the great thinkers of the NPP have got to. But if they were to exercise their grey cells, the answer would be quite simple. Do away with the presidency. After all, it is an easy thing to do, especially when you have more than two-thirds of the parliament seats.

If I remember right, there was a time the NPP/JVP was calling for the end of the presidency. Is it true that they prefer to strengthen their foreign policy rather than waste time with amending the constitution?

After all, our country already has a president. Why throw it away when we already have a leader who can shake hands with Netanyahu? And what if a drone comes our way? Who is to blow it up but dear Benjamin?

Poor Trump will not be anywhere to be found—not even in the White House. He would have done a Gotabaya long before the drone droned and sometime before he groaned waiting for his new Air Force 1, thanks to Qatar.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later, he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)