Laksiri Warnakula

The Island editorial of 29-07-21 with the title ‘It’s MPs’ Code of Conduct, stupid!’ prompted me to write this short letter on the matter discussed in it.

For starters, let me pose the same question that the editor and quite a few others too, including the Chief Opposition Whip have asked: What were (perhaps some of them are still there) they doing in Tokyo? Well, simple answer; Olympics. And one, obviously belonging to their clan might even try to defend them. Why can’t they? They need a rest too, having put in an ‘Olympian effort’ to do well for the country.   

And where did the money come from, for the vacation, I, for one wonder, whether they are all-expense- paid trips, courtesy of some saying thank you for the favours granted or do the monies come from their own pockets, knowing very well how baggy and bottomless those pockets can be and how they get filled and replenished, the wearers never becoming ‘empty pockets’! 

Our political enterprise for many decades now has been more of deals and less of deeds. I do not want to dig even to the recent past or not to the present, either. People and media have spoken loudly and written volumes on our political campaigns followed by respective governments. It’s a bitter tale and the governments that subsequently took over, followed almost the same tradition, of partaking in the self-serving banquet, which will no doubt continue into the future and how far, can anybody predict except those astrologers, perhaps? And while at it, they forget all their difference, colours and symbols alike and throw them out of the window (by the way, speaking of windows, don’t they have many, I mean, of opportunity?).  

All in all, it’s two rides that are poles apart; theirs and ours. 

And I am sure that many of our citizenry will agree with ‘Sophocles’ (below) and live accordingly, but those, who sit at the top? 

‘Rather fail with honour than succeed with fraud’ – Sophocles 

Laksiri Warnakula