‘Slave Island’

Friday 3rd February, 2023

Sri Lankan political leaders exude ‘patriotism’ from every pore. These rotund grandees never miss an opportunity to suck in their stomachs, puff out their chests and sing the national anthem with gusto, making as they do a public display of their brand of patriotism. We will see them in action again tomorrow, when they are celebrating what the country does not have—independence—on a grand scale.

Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena has, in what may be considered an outburst of patriotism with nationalism thrown in for good measure, ordered that the use of the place name, ‘Slave Island’ for ‘Kompagngna Veediya’ be discontinued immediately on account of the country’s 75th anniversary of Independence. He has decreed that ‘Kompagngna Veediya’ be used in all three languages—Sinhala, Tamil and English. Curiously, it seems to have escaped the Prime Minister’s attention that successive governments have turned the entire country into a ‘slave island’ of sorts. The incumbent dispensation has presided over the completion of the process of the country’s enslavement, which gathered momentum after the 1977 regime change and received a boost from every government thereafter.

PM Gunawardena is known for wrapping himself in the flag and his fiery oratory replete with patriotism and nationalism. He has, in his wisdom, defended the government’s decision to spend the country’s scarce resources to the tune of Rs. 200 million on tomorrow’s Independence Day extravagance in the name of patriotism. These funds could have been utilised to buy medicines and food for the sick in government hospitals.

The PM finds himself in the exalted company of a bunch of politicians who made preparations for a grand ceremony to mark the quincentennial of the arrival of the Portuguese here. Thankfully, the UNP-led UNF government was dislodged in 2004, and the event did not come to pass. So much for the present-day leaders’ love for the country and its independence!

Thanks to decades of economic mismanagement, waste, corruption, abuse of power and reckless borrowing under successive governments led by the ‘patriotic’ leaders of all political hues, the country has become a bankrupt vassal state, which has to take orders from other nations. It has to do what is good for others at the expense of its national interest and is now under Indian pressure to ensure the full implementation of a constitutional amendment that New Delhi rammed down its throat in late 1980s. When President Ranil Wickremesinghe undertook to implement the 13th Amendment fully, at a recent party leaders’ meeting, Gunawardena, who was present there, chose to remain silent!

The Mahinda Rajapaksa government, in which Gunawardena was a key figure, stood accused of turning the country into a ‘Chinese colony’ much to the consternation of India and the western powers that are averse to the rise of the Dragon. The current administration has made it a lackey of the US-led Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue). When China got the Hambantota Harbour in return for a loan, the US media said Sri Lanka had been made to cough up a port. But the country has since been made to cough up a container terminal, an oil tank farm, etc., in return for financial aid, but those deals have not made headlines internationally!

Has the SLPP-UNP government, which is averse to a part of the Colombo City being called ‘Slave Island’, forgotten that the country is heavily dependent on remittances from its women reduced to slavery in West Asia. It is also the sweat and tears of women slaving away for paltry wages on estates and in factories here that fuel the export sector, bringing in much-needed forex, with which the super luxury vehicles carrying the government politicians to the venue of the Independence Day ceremony, today, have been purchased.

Let the self-proclaimed patriots in the current regime be told that they cannot hoodwink the public.

from The Island https://ift.tt/Z3idEuD