PLEASE DON'T CRY

The day the opposition of this country finds better things to do, would certainly be a day of celebration. The wrenching sound of the latest breast beating fit of the UNP comes as a response to the launch of Sri Lanka's first satellite into outer space.

The General Secretary of the UNP Tissa Attanayake was quoted as saying that the new satellite venture would cause 'serious problems', or words to that effect. A private Sri Lankan company launches a satellite into orbit, and it's a Sri Lankan venture that rightly bears the Sri Lankan flag - - and the opposition goes into a fit of apoplexy?

When companies such as Airtel sponsor say the Asia cricket cup, or emblazon their logos on the Indian cricket team jerseys, does the India opposition go green with jealously?

On the contrary private sponsorships in this day and age are considered the motive force for launching national endeavours, be it in sport, or in areas such as aeronautics or space exploration. Launching into space, be it through a satellite launch or any other effort, is still frontier business. The satellite launch by a Sri Lankan company is therefore in the pioneering spirit of the early seafarers and explorers who discovered brave new worlds in hitherto unknown terrain.

It's the East India Company and not the British government which did the early colonizing of Asia, and nobody heard the British government of the time complain.

No doubt the East India Company and the Spanish conquistadors were predatory elements that plundered the colonies and exploited their people. But minus that predatory spirit, adventure and entrepreneurship in frontier territory by private concerns has always been of greater good to humankind as a whole. Those of the likes of Vespucci, Columbus, Cooke etc. were not paid government servants of the day who were retained on the hourly wage!

They were adventurers with the frontier itch, who sailed and stumbled upon new territories, some as big as what we know now as the Americas. No doubt some of the Spanish seafarers had the Royal assent in the form of more than an agreeable nod by the Queen, but these Spanish sailors were also no more than private buccaneers lusting after gold and the riches of hitherto undiscovered territories on the planet.

In these days, private companies that are suffused with the frontier spirit are not motivated by the urge to exploit new territories that are already populated. Space as we know it does not harbour intelligent life; there is nobody out there to exploit, and space age exploration is the most benign form therefore of frontier adventurism that exists.

The sobbing sounds emanating for the area of Siri Kotha and the UNP leadership hunkered down there in this context, are rather amusing. Are the people to decry, in future, any private venture be it in outer space or on terra firma, as 'non-Sri Lankan'?

Are we to collectively eschew Dilma or the Mlesna flavoured tea bags, and all the awards these brands have attracted worldwide, because, well, these companies are not 'State'? Are we to disown former productive UNP governments say of the D. S. Senanayake era as non-Sri Lankan, because, after all, the UNP (as is the SLFP) is a 'private' party made up of 'private individuals' who are therefore not 'State' in any sense?

As the Minister Dullas Alahapperuma pithily observed in a brief interview to a private television channel, nationally important endeavours should not be assessed on the basis of the persons involved; the fact that Sri Lanka's first astronaut hopeful, space engineer Rohitha Rajapaksa is in some way connected to this venture is no basis on which the opposition should decide that it is not a Sri Lankan venture -- or that the new satellite should not bear the Sri Lankan flag.

Sri Lankan cricket fans do not make a separate application to the Sri Lankan embassies in London or Melbourne to carry the Sri Lankan flags and cheer the team from the old home country, when Sri Lankan cricket teams are on tours abroad. There is no such primacy attached to the flag; any venture that is Sri Lankan and that we are proud of, is Sri Lankan, and to cavil about the Supreme Sat pioneering venture into space is a sad commentary on the opposition on the one hand -- even as it is funny to hear choked voices, and see silver tears on this issue from the direction of Siri Kotha.