Columns

When our masterminds in the Agriculture and Livestock Ministry asked the nation to stand by on the forthcoming Saturday for the launch into a strategic exercise that would not only keep Sri Lanka Clean but keep the brains of our national thinkers ticking as efficiently as a Rolex watch, one thought sprang to mind.

Who is the genius in the political or bureaucratic frontline who, in his/her first flush of enthusiasm to contribute his widely known brain cells, thought of selecting March 15 for the launch of such an earth-shaking venture that would surely awaken the world?

Donald Trump inviting a fellow leader to the White House and then throwing him out before virtually throttling him might be considered modern-day American courtesy and Trumping supremacy.

For all the animal excreta that Downing Street and Elysee Palace threw at then President Mahinda Rajapaksa for treating their envoys with sambal, manioc and vada on the banks of an ancient tank in the deep south when they came carrying messages that Sri Lanka called a ceasefire to the LTTE war, Mahinda Rajapaksa was not ready to bend to western diktats. At least he provided them with food from both sides of the terrible war before packing them off home.

It might well be that those who picked the day had little knowledge of European history, just like the expert advisers that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa surrounded himself with, and so deduced that organic fertiliser was an instant producer of better and more luscious crops overnight than any rattana sutta that some are ready to recite is likely to produce.

One cannot be surprised at the lack of knowledge circulating in the gatherings of advisers and experts in circles where public money is wasted in hiring those so-called experts. The other day it was said in parliament that President Ranil Wickremesinghe had hired 39 experts and some 67 directors.

We are still to hear what these experts advised on. Could it be the IMF, which President AKD seems to follow with great diligence and increasing faith now? If it has been raising loud laughter in some quarters, it appears to be the growing faith in the IMF and that chap Trump’s attempts to grab anybody’s real estate, never mind whose.

But right now the laugh is largely on the other foot, as it were. It has become the basis for domestic comedy that people were laughing all the way to the Mustang enclosure at the Royal Thomian 146th encounter. I have heard from hardened old boys of both schools who travelled to Colombo on special Sri Lankan flights from London and Melbourne.

What caused mirth on the aircraft was a report some of them had read at home and had exchanged with others who had not—the Agriculture and Livestock Ministry has declared March 15 as the day on which a national census would be conducted when massive counting of monkeys, giant squirrels, peafowl, porcupines, and other eaters of farmers’ crops would be listed.

Apparently these are the animals that most destroy the crops of farmers and landowners who have larger acres that need to be safeguarded. For the sake of argument, let it be argued that these crops need safeguarding.

But did nobody in that galaxy of experts/directors know that the 15th of March represents the Ides of March, the day Julius Caesar was assassinated in the capital in Rome?

Let’s step back in history into the days of the Roman Empire, when those with dictatorial propensities ruled those ancient territories that went to war to acquire or usurp kingdoms and expand their power.

A soothsayer had already warned Caesar of the dangers awaiting him and pinpointed 15th March as the day of reckoning. On that morn, an imperious Caesar on his way to the Senate confronted the soothsayer, saying, “The Ides of March have come.”

“Aye,” said the soothsayer, “but not yet gone,” a rejoinder that Caesar ignored. The rest is history.

The question that comes to mind is whether 15th March was named as the day for the national sweep by an ignorant expert who knew little or nothing of the tragic end of Julius Caesar or a local Casca and perhaps a Cassius hiding in the shadows of political chicanery.

Who can tell these days, particularly when even courtrooms are not safe from a growing nexus of politics and crime, like that admixture of the military and the new complex that served to promote war around the globe?

What is worrying is that now a new war is beginning to emerge, and at the heart of this is a growing confrontation between humans and animals, a confrontation that could only end in one way—the elimination of our wildlife.

It might be recalled that this is not the first time that the Agriculture and Livestock Ministry has been engaged in an attempt to rid the country of the monkeys by ostensibly selling these animals to zoos in China.

Whether they were intended for zoos in China for the edification of the Chinese people or for their dinner has never been clearly stated by those who tried to ship out thousands of our animals.

But making all this a subplot to what is said in the august assembly and already planned in the name of the census is turning out to be a heavy joke. If one looks at the list of animals and birds listed to be named and probably shamed before some kind of process of elimination is planned, why not take a look at Hansard or even pay an ear to what is said in parliament when sudden outbursts of anger and supposed political wit end up with shouts of wandura, rilava, booruwa, and even more choice epithets rent the air?

In these circumstances, would it not be more appropriate to start the census at Diyawanna Oya or even ask Gnana Akka for a more auspicious day? 

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan 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.)