END OF THE WORLD INDEED!
The
chronically negative are saying there is impending calamity --
the end of the world - because there is an irreconcilable rift
between the Judicial branch of governance, and the Legislature.
But, as one astute commentator mentioned in a radio interview
last morning, whatever noises being made about the current
impeachment standoff by various interested parties in staged
dramas on behalf of the embattled Chief Justice, will last only
until the next Chief Justice is appointed.
Doomsayers have been saying 'end of the world' for decades
now. Obviously, they are having a field day these days,
believing their own worse nightmare scenarios would come to
pass. They should have learnt a thing or two from Australian
Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who did her own little television
gig the other day about the end of the world prophesy by the
Mayans.
With a straight face she said 'yes, it's going to be the end
of the world', and rattled off some of the things she hopes to
do before Armageddon comes to pass.
Our average stony faced civil society braggart however would
have no such sense of self-effacing humour, having a tendency to
internalize their own hubris.
We have this tribe in the newspapers too, and one pontiff has
deigned to announce to all from his bully pulpit on-high in his
editorial of yesterday, that Sri Lanka, due to the Executive
Presidency, is going to end up another Rwanda or a Congo.
The not so subtle racism of that statement aside, the
Cassandra-like obtuseness and inanity of it is simply stunning.
Here Sri Lanka has a seven per cent growth rate, which is the
highest in the region and one of the highest in the world, when
most countries are suffering from chronic economic malaise due
to ongoing recessions and in some instances, economic
Depression.
Having wound up the war, which these same Western-liberal
cronies and media pontiffs said could never be ended, Sri Lanka
has embarked on a growth trajectory that would be the envy of
the rest of the world, but yet if you would listen to the blind
that refuse to see, we are headed towards sub-Saharan African
conditions.
The good news is that such fact-disrespecting and thereby
fundamentally dishonest doomsayers have been around for a very
long time now, and nothing of what they said would become a
reality, has come to pass. By the way, Julia Gillard would
really have hit the Jackpot if she spoofed our local Mayans
after a fashion ...
Predictably their latest lament is about the impeachment
motion, and hair tearing and the banshee screaming that follows
has reached a crescendo since the Chief Justice in seeming
desperation walked out of the Select Committee process --
alleging that she is being unfairly treated.
This is not a calamity, since the Select Committee sessions
would go on with the chief protagonist in the drama being tried
in absentia. All it means is that she has chosen not to avail
herself of the opportunity to exonerate herself in person, and
before the Committee, a right that she is constitutionally
entitled to.
The Chief Justice's political 'backers' are obviously
salivating at what they must be seeing as an opportunity to take
the impeachment battle from the rightful venue in Parliament to
the Lipton roundabout, and then onto the streets. If they can
make another Fonseka out of a Bandaranayake, the civil society
doomsayers and the newspaper Cassandras would be happy, as they
in the end do not care a two-cents worth about the ultimate fate
of Ms. Bandaranayake the person.
Of course they all said that the 'S' people would be trouble
for the President, and with each succeeding S, they predicted
the end of the Rajapaksa government. First they said 'S' (Sarath
Fonseka) will do the job, then they said 'S' (Sarath Silva) will
do the job -- and now they are saying 'S' ( Shirani B'nayake)
will do the job, of destroying this regime.
Blind pessimists doomsayers and assorted losers always live
in hope that everybody will eventually lose in the way they are
routinely used to being defeated -- but alas for them, that
never happens. |