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If the satirical writing of the British poet who penned the words above is not appreciated by those in this country, at least his thoughts have proved to be prophetic even centuries later.

Over the years the words of Alexander Pope have shown that we in Sri Lanka seemed determined to follow the first words of Pope’s saying but not the rest of what he said in that sentence: “Whate’er is best administered is best.”

For those in this country who followed Sri Lanka’s political antics but wisely kept away from it, it has been a great drama, degenerating from B-grade comedy to farce, punctuated now and then with unexpected elements of tragedy.

The more we watched the unfolding of this tragi-comedy, the more one wondered where this country would head with each petty politician trying to carve his or her name in the annals of comic relief despite the damaging effects it has on the people of Sri Lanka.

From the early days of independence to the present, when a hitherto little-known party grasped with alacrity the reins of power, with much jubilation and unending promises, it has been a grand slide down the political landscape with chicanery, bribery, corruption, sheer baloney and a thousand other forms of jiggery-pokery from the time we took our interest in post-independence politics to learn what it was all about. And the government is ready to kick back.

Today this lovely country, which the current government is trying to sell its silver to foreign visitors like a determined pavement hawker for a few dollars more or less, with scant interest in what happens to a tourist or two if they end up in some unexpected calamity.

It is bad enough that right now there is a running debate on who killed Cock Robin. What was confusion right at the start quickly turned into a confounded battle royal when virtually a whole spectrum of turned actors got in on this drama, throwing the troubles facing a struggling people onto a back burner.

The early confusion quickly turned viciously confounded as multiple politicians, academics, professionals and others were keen to jump on the bandwagon to get their names and photographs into public focus so that their participation would be recorded for posterity.

Just now this country is passing through a period of death and destruction, with thousands of people still struggling to survive without a roof over their heads, without food or drinking water and mourning the disappearance of their loved ones without any idea of when they would see or hear of them, if at all.

Whether those who have joined in to provide the wherewithal necessary to keep the wheels of life turning as their valuable share in this virtuous humanitarian effort or are there to make their names and institutions shine off television screens, I don’t know. Perhaps I don’t care, for over the years we have collected donations and provided what we could in terms of packing necessities.

I well remember the devastating tsunami two decades ago, and we were at the London Buddhist Vihara in Chiswick when even Prince Charles, now King Charles, turned up with an unbelievable attachment to the Anagarika Dharmapala Buddhist Vihara, to lend a hand to the thousands of helpers of multiple nationalities who made themselves available where help and support were needed.

To see so many different nationalities stepping forward with even their smallest gift item, like a child’s toy, to share in a cause that must surely touch even the tiniest atom of humanitarianism is what makes such a worthwhile endeavour. They deserve to be thanked for what they have done and are doing in a worthy human cause.

Having gone through that exercise in a couple of diplomatic postings, one has learnt to separate the wheat from the chaff, to put it metaphorically. For there are forms of life among us, not only those who use the most unrelated event to try and make a name for themselves, not only the kind that makes the news.

But to me what stands as a pitiful display of governance and statecraft was the behaviour of a deputy minister of public security who should have known better. In these moments of crisis, only days after President Anura Kumara Dissanayake asked in parliament, “Where is the crisis?” as though taunting a silent opposition, crisis struck as though nature was responding by a dramatic display where the crisis was.

Hardly had the words left his mouth, so to say, when the country was in tatters and under siege by nature, compelling man not to mock nature, a lesson to man not to destroy nature as we have done for decades, and demanding recompense.

Such was the state of the nation that even a hardened politician who has survived through some of the toughest periods in our history had to bow to nature’s wrath and declare an emergency in man’s effort to fight back to save some of man’s endeavours still surviving.

In doing so, President Dissanayake had to invoke some provisions of the law to bring some order into the chaos and to provide food, shelter and wherewithal for survival.

But then not everybody seems to understand the real purpose of these laws. Even if they did, they seem to pretend to misunderstand or take up the position that those laws are applicable for the purpose he had in mind.

And what he had in mind was not to hide away and play with whatever laws he wanted in public knowledge or in the expectation that the vast majority of people being otherwise busy in critical tasks, only those who he had now could be held guilty of offences he was targeting.

Who were they? I don’t think anyone who read or heard of the Deputy Minister of Public Security minister’s own commandments would wonder who his bête noire are—the media and what is widely termed as the social media, I presume.

If I return to the subject, it is not because of the deputy minister concerned, Sumil Watagala, who I know little or nothing about, and I wonder how many of our more informed and intelligent public do either.

But it would appear that the said deputy minister is taking his job as deputy minister of public security so seriously that he is prepared to twist laws invoked to deal with an unprecedented natural disaster which has and is costing our population untold damage, to fling threats at the media using the powers of the police.

If I do not look further into the subject of the use and abuse of the law by governments – and the prevailing of the latter – there seem to be things to say, as the foreign minister revealed in his retreat from Geneva in the face of firepower – time will tell where we are headed.

My fellow columnist Kishali Pinto Jayewardena, who is qualified to deal with these legal issues and the abuse and misuse of the law, did so last week, and I leave it to the superiors on this matter.

But the fact that the deputy minister was trying to use the emergency law to protect criticism of the president and ministers (deputies exempt) by sections of the media just by waving the emergency regulations is the kind of foolish thing that earns public disaffection – to put it mildly.

At least some reaction from President Dissanayake with a public rap on the knuckles of the deputy minister, who looks to be wearing boots too big for him.

One wonders what Alexander Pope would have said if he were alive at this hour. I bet he would have produced some choice words now that he would have met choice candidates that would have coloured the political landscape with words that would have made the English language sparkle like choice Sinhala.

(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 de Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)