Laksiri Warnakula

When the disaster struck on that fateful Easter Sunday, he was away. When the sporadic incidents of communal unrest broke out on the 13^th, he was already away or on his way to China. The exact details are irrelevant though. The crux of the matter however is that the skipper by accident or by design doesn’t more often than not happen to be where he should be, which is at the helm to steer his ship towards safety, when it gets into really rough seas.

And I, for one, am amazed at his ability in finding out excuses and/or plucking out an array of examples from or drawing parallels with the past to justify his absence or inaction. Whether those excuses are taken seriously by the public is another matter, though.

Then I am sure that those foreign invitees wouldn’t be highly offended if he tells them about his inability to attend whatever it is since he has more important and urgent matters to deal with, at home. For all I know, most of those invitations are often sent based on diplomatic protocol and courtesy and one Mr Sirisena’s absence is not going to matter to them much, if not at all. Even though every time he and/or some of his troops accept those invitations with gleeful smiles no doubt, our near empty coffers get another direct hit too. By the way, this applies to our equally enthusiastic prime minister as well.

And then it looks like the elections looming on the horizon are on the minds belonging to all parties and even the present crisis is seemingly considered by many of them as something that can be best used to further their political ambitions.

The present government’s inexplicable inertia and lethargy to act promptly and launch operations to nip all those poisonous weeds of extremism in the bud (even though by now they all are quite possibly past that budding stage, thanks to both former and present governments that were busy looking the other way, as they were growing up, whilst being nurtured and watered by politicians belonging to both) is inconceivable, but not incomprehensible if one were to go by their track records replete with deceit.

So we have a president, who seems to be incapable of handling complex political issues of national importance and instead is quite happy and willing to be away from action and go on his globetrotting, whenever there is an opportunity. And the country in turn has already paid too high a price for his adventures.