{"id":91603,"date":"2019-07-20T16:39:24","date_gmt":"2019-07-20T23:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=91603"},"modified":"2019-07-20T16:39:24","modified_gmt":"2019-07-20T23:39:24","slug":"election-carrots-at-nations-expense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/07\/20\/election-carrots-at-nations-expense\/","title":{"rendered":"Election carrots, at nation\u2019s expense"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laksiri Warnakula<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

\u2026\u2026.Everybody knew\nthat it was a carrot, for it was orange with a green top\u201d \u2013 Rowan Atkinson aka\nMr Bean in one of his stage presentations<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another season of\ncarrots has dawned. And the above regarding carrots came to my mind, of Rev.\nBean reading a passage from his gospel to his congregation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nNow they are just beginning to pop up once again from various plots belonging\nto various owners. However, does everybody know as Rev. Bean says that they are\njust carrots? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On offer are\nor will be few varieties and you may also see some dangling in front of you,\njust beyond your reach though. Some carrots are quite nice with a healthy\norange tan and equally healthy tops of several colours and you can actually eat\nand taste them with relish. Some perhaps are not fresh, yet still edible. And\nsome are but well and truly rotten and you can smell them from miles away with\ntheir givers in company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since we have had a\nfew of these carrot seasons come and go through the political \u2018farmland\u2019 (I\nopted for this word instead of the clich\u00e9d \u2018landscape\u2019) of our country over a\nperiod of not so short seven decades, one would expect that our people now are\nquite capable of recognising a carrot for a carrot, whether it is with a green\ntop, blue top or a red top etc., fresh or old and rotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nAlas. No. They or the majority still seem to fall for it and run for it until\nthey realise as has happened before that it was indeed a carrot and nothing\nelse. And once the carrot season is over and the carrots disappear, it will be\nonce again back to the same old and barren farmland with people yearning for at\nleast the sight of a carrot dangling in front of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the sake of\nbrevity, I will give you just two examples of carrots that you may have seen\nand heard about already, these days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One carrot in the\nform of \u2018tabs to school children\u2019 has already been given, with perhaps more to\ncome. This is while we have school children, who are still short of even the\nvery basic needs at their impoverished rural schools. So before the tabs, there\nis a lot more to be done such as improving their health, hygiene and other\namenities at their schools. If the learned Minister thinks that the tab is a\nmust, let it be so, by all means. However, please do not forget the rest. The\nother day I saw a photo on Facebook with some rural school children wearing\nhelmets for the fear that the roof above them in their classroom may come\ncrashing down on them. Perhaps it was made up. However, the message that it\ngives to us is clear and I am sure that such scenarios are not far from\nreality, nowadays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nAnd the other is a classic. This particular \u2018carrot-giver\u2019 is\npreparing\/proposing to give free electricity to religious places of worship.\nThis is a very big carrot indeed and the \u2018donor\u2019 is acting as if the\nelectricity for this seemingly benevolent project, a carrot of benevolence, is\ngoing to be generated in the backyard of his home and distributed at his own\nexpense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aren\u2019t they\nspending money on election gimmicks as if they own the treasury and also aiming\nto boost their ego too at the same time? And another comes to my mind; ‘make a\nname while you can, by hook or by crook’, which is a supplement to the familiar\n‘make hay, while the sun shines’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us not fall for\nthe carrots any more, like we have done many times before!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laksiri Warnakula<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laksiri Warnakula \u2026\u2026.Everybody knew that it was a carrot, for it was orange with a green top\u201d \u2013 Rowan Atkinson aka Mr Bean in one of his stage presentations Another season of carrots has dawned. And the above regarding carrots came to my mind, of Rev. Bean reading a passage from his gospel to his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-laksiri-warnakula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}