By Rohana R. Wasala

This is without prejudice to the honour and dignity of the thousands of our dedicated teachers and doctors, nurses, and other members of the professions mentioned here.

Teaching is arguably the noblest of all professions. Religions were founded by ancient sages who claimed to have discovered the ultimate truth about existence and taught it to those who listened to them. Founders of religions and their disciples who were also teachers are eternally remembered and revered by every civilized human society (including the most primitive jungle-dwelling tribal communities). I chose this example for teaching because religious teachers are treated as the noblest of teachers, irrespective of whether or not their teachings have a relevance to the ever growing modern scientific knowledge in spite of secular science being the only mode of acquiring knowledge about everything in the universe based on verifiable evidence. A teacher’s most basic job is guiding their pupils in channeling their intellectual and physical energies for the good of the society as well as themselves in a moral way (i.e., in a socially, rather than individually, acceptable manner). 

The second most exalted profession is the medical profession. In our traditional culture, there  used to be, or maybe there still is, a saying which goes: ‘rajakama naettham vedakama’; this means that a physician’s work, as an ideally desirable occupation, is only second to a king’s or a ruler’s. This is  the ruler was considered to be beyond comparison with others as the single absolute power wielder. All politicians are either power seekers or power holders, so they may be thought of as potential or actual rulers. Since they are required to give general leadership to the whole community, the role of the politician represents a unique task that involves intellectual and managerial activity relating to the use of political power with the greatest responsibility.

Professionals belonging to all three categories (teachers, medical and paramedical personnel, and politicians of both the governing and opposition parties) are being currently tested by the most critical situation  that Sri Lanka has so far faced after the conclusion of the fratricidal civil war in 2009. It is a contest between valueless power politics and defenceless humanity. How few of our politicians understand that the Buddhist monks’ daily invocation ‘Raja bhavatu dhammiko’ ‘May the ruler be righteous’ (the unanimous wish of the general public) is about them? 

Will those teachers and medical people who seem to be mindless enough to have allowed themselves to be their stooges ever realise that they are willingly or unwillingly holding to ransom the two most helpless and most vulnerable sections of the society (children and the sick) for the sake of promoting the ant-inational and anti-government political agendas of a handful of former yahapalana politicians who were so overwhelmingly rejected by the masses a little over a year ago? Their cogently desired eviction from parliament was delayed by the intervention of the Covid-19 pandemic, which enabled them to commit the anti-social crime of staying on in parliament indefinitely after being found to be unacceptable to the people as shown by the local government election result of February 1918 and the November 2019 election of a new executive president. 

For eight months after the inauguration of the new presidency and the formation of a minority government pending the election of a new parliament, these rejected politicoes did everything possible, amidst the Covid-19 created public health emergency, to frustrate the progressive return to normalcy from the previous dysfunctional yahapalana misadventure. They are now using the economic hardships attendant upon the Corona crisis, intensified foreign power interference in the country’s internal problems under the false pretext of reconciliation and protection of human rights, and attempted expropriation of its resources by the powers that be, to further blight the realization of the ‘Saubhagyaye Daekma’  or the ‘Vision of Prosperity’ of the Gotabaya administration.  Some political monks are adding to the mayhem. They have revealed who or what they are, without a shred of decency. They are standing in the nude before a public seething with anger.