Parade-ground governance and a second wave

Is the Government behaving with criminal irresponsibility, motivated solely by recreating an all’s well facade in time for the election? – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

“Some people predicted that there would be a second wave. As a person involved in this process from the beginning till now, I don’t think there would be a second wave” – Defence Secretary Kamal Gunaratne (Daily Mirror, 17 June)

By Tisaranee Gunasekara

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa wants to purchase four helicopters – to train Lankan pilots engaged in peacekeeping missions in Africa. On 8 July, the Cabinet gave its consent to a helicopter deal that is likely to cost the country millions of dollars.  

In the meantime, frontline health workers, who risked their lives in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic, are being rewarded with pay cuts. Nurses in several hospitals across the country are protesting against the non-payment of customary allowances for overtime work, work on public holidays and for leave due after 24 hours of continuous work.

Training helicopters for the Air Force; pay cuts for frontline health workers: confident that they had dealt a killer blow to the virus, the Gotabaya-Mahinda regime has reverted to business as usual. With the virus gone, health workers were expendable. Other matters occupied the Government’s attention and dominated the news – saving archaeological sites in the east, the woes of Avant-Garde and its Chairman Nissanka Senadhipathi, Tiger renewals, Islamic threats, foreign conspiracies, MCC... 

Once the election date was set, getting a two-third majority trumped all other considerations. The gazette with election health guidelines was suppressed, since it would have cast a damper on the election campaign. Basic health guidelines such as social distancing were openly flouted, even at meetings attended by the President and the Prime Minister (https://twitter.com/GotabayaR/status/1280168799212355586/photo/2 and https://theleader.lk/images/News/2020/July/corona-election-lanka-MR.jpg). 

The people watched and listened to the leaders, got the message, and put their collective guard down. After all, when the defence secretary himself says, “I don’t think there would be a second wave,” why should ordinary Lankans believe differently?

Even as the Defence Secretary dismissed expert warnings about the possibility of a second wave, and the Health Minister crowed that no patients had been identified from society for three weeks, a new cluster was germinating in the Kandakadu rehabilitation centre.

A moving Facebook post by a counsellor at the Kandakadu rehabilitation centre is revealing in this regard. According to the writer, her friend (the counsellor from Marawila who is now a COVID-19 patient) developed a throat problem between 25 and 28 June. “We didn’t pay attention because by that time we had all forgotten this corona thing. And by this time, students in our classes had developed fever and colds and they had been treated.” 

The counsellor with a throat problem too was treated, for viral flu. When her condition worsened, she returned home (not on 28 June as had been reported but on 3 July) and consulted another doctor. Once again, she was treated for viral flu. Finally when the story about a Kandakadu inmate being infected with COVID-19 broke, she went with her father and got a PCR test done and was tested positive (https://www.citizen.lk/news/72733). 

This Facebook post makes one truth crystal clear. A second wave could have been avoided had the Government not pushed the COVID-19 threat to the backburner in a fit of triumphalism. It was the false narrative of a final victory peddled by the Government and the consequent relaxation of vigilance by the general populace (including doctors) that turned Kandakadu into a fertile breeding ground for the virus.  

Now that patients are propping up across the island, authorities are trying to pin the blame on the people. The Director General of Health Services says that curfew was not lifted for people to go on trips. Why did the Government reopen the national parks, for instance, if not for people to go on trips? The Head of the Epidemiology warns that the situation regarding election meetings is dire. Why did he wait until the Kandakadu cluster exploded to sound his warning? The GMOA reveals that that the technical committee chaired by the Health Services Director General and tasked with developing COVID-19 responses had not met for over a month. Why didn’t the GMOA say this earlier? 

The truth is that the politicians, generals and health officials were in dereliction of their responsibility to the nation, through ignorance and complicity, inanity and apathy. The price of their failure will be paid by the ordinary people – including frontline health workers.

Inept or complicit?

The WHO warned repeatedly about a second – and a worse – wave, as did the GMOA. Experiences of other countries starting with China demonstrated that a successful battle didn’t mean a victorious war. Why did the Gotabaya-Mahinda regime fail to take these warning seriously?

In his ‘No second wave’ interview, the Defence Secretary compares the battle with the virus to a race – outrun the virus, defeat it and the matter is over (http://www.dailymirror.lk/opinion/No-fear-of-second-outbreak-of-COVID-19-Kamal-Gunaratne/172-190136). If one were to use a sporting analogy, a more accurate one would be not a straight forward sprint but a complex game of chess. 

It is a proven historical fact that a virus cannot be pronounced dead until an effective preventive drug or vaccine is developed. This is a basic truth most doctors would know and most general would not. And in Sri Lanka, it was the generals, led by a former lieutenant-colonel who called the shots, and not medical professionals. 

The primary fault might rest with politicians and generals, but top health officials too cannot escape culpability. The doctors, through their silence, enabled the ‘No second wave’ lie. Unlike the ignorant politicians and the gung-ho generals, they would have been aware of the risks. Yet, either through self-interest or fear, they failed to sound a warning. 

Carl Schmitt, who lent his intellect to the Nazis, claimed that what is fundamental to politics is the distinction between friend and enemy (The concept of the political – 1932). This attitude characterised the Gotabaya response to COVID-19. The regime assumed a mantle of infallibility; anyone even mildly critical of the official response to the pandemic were decried as ingrates and condemned as enablers of the virus. As in China, and in Trump or Bolsonaro World, critics became enemies. 

Unfortunately, the regime seemed to have demanded uncritical adherence and unquestioning obedience not just from the general public but also from the medical professionals. Even more unfortunately, all too many health officials seemed to have played along, willingly or unwillingly. 

So the pretence of a flawless campaign and a total and final triumph was created and maintained. There were even efforts to tout Sri Lanka as a model. When Australia deployed troops to assist medical professionals, it was hailed as a triumph of the Lankan/Gotabaya path. Ignored or forgotten was a critical difference – it is one thing to deploy the military to assist doctors and nurses; it is quite another thing to place the military in charge of doctors and nurses. 

So instead of informed criticisms and timely warnings, a parade-ground attitude of ‘yes sir, no sir, whatever you say sir’ prevailed. During the curfew period, several people who revealed experiences that ran counter to the official line were arrested as rumour mongers. 

With the emergence of a second wave, the Government is asking the public not to heed anything but official statements. The Police are to take stern action against those who counter the official truths. The CID is reportedly busy looking for such contrarians in the social media.  

In the meantime, questions proliferate. The laboratory of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura has pulled out of PCR testing saying that the Government has developed a habit of rejecting test results when they are positive. Does this indicate a deliberate policy of concealment, a la China?

A young patient who died of a fever in Chilaw hospital has been tested and pronounced negative for COVID-19. Yet his funeral was done according to COVID-19 regulations. If he was not infected, why not allow his grieving family to have a normal funeral? What is the logic of following COVID-19 funeral regulations for someone who supposedly didn’t die of COVID-19?

In a Facebook post, an official of ADIC who acted as a service provider at a seminar in the Kandakadu rehabilitation centre, claims that he, his colleagues, and several senior military officials are being forcibly held at a quarantine centre in the Monkey Bridge military camp in Trincomalee. They had not been tested, and are being held in close proximity to a similarly untested group of Kuwaiti returnees. The ADIC official is said to have revealed these facts in a letter to the President (https://theleader.lk/news/3556-adic-officer-forcibly-quarantined-without-a-corona-test).

If true, this pinpoints another stupid practice – holding untested people en masse; this is not quarantining but creating a fertile ground for the virus, since one infected person amongst an untested crowd can spread the virus to all. 

Is the Government acting in honest ignorance and sincere stupidity? Or is it behaving with criminal irresponsibility, motivated solely by recreating an all’s well facade in time for the election? Either way, the Gotabaya model of pandemic fighting seems to be pushing Sri Lanka – and all of us – into an avoidable disaster. 

The coming economic pandemic

“However it needs to be noted that during the first quarter of 2020, although the lockdown occurred only around two weeks to the end of the quarter, improved private sector credit growth and Government revenue collections at around 476.7 billion which is almost Rs. 598.1 billion of 2019, on the back of the stimulus package introduced by the Government in December 2019 indicate that the economy was poised for a take-off.” 

This gem of a sentence is from the Mid-year Fiscal Position Report 2020, put out by the Finance Ministry (http://www.treasury.gov.lk/documents/10181/858130/Mid-Year-FPR2020-eng/1223516e-2092-4df3-bf03-d95701f259ba).

This runaway sentence seems to claim that prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the economy was set for a take-off. The proof offered is twofold – improved private sector credit growth and revenue collection. But according to the figures in the report, private sector credit growth in the first quarter of 2020 has actually decreased, compared to 2019 and 2020, from 9.8 to 7.6.  Revenue collection too has declined during this period, by 20% (Rs. 121 billion).

Has the Orwellian mindset of the regime infected mathematics and economics as well? Are we in a world where regression is improvement, decrease is increase and setback is take-off?

The figures paint a bleak picture. Tax revenue in the first quarter of 2020 decreased by 26% (143 billion rupees). Fiscal deficit increased by 24% (88 billion rupees). Public investment decreased by 44% (95 billion rupees). Recurrent expenditure, inflation and money supply all increased. 

We are in a crunch time, and not the time to splurge money on training helicopters.

The Government’s incomprehension is writ clear in a major promotional campaign laughed by Sri Lanka Tourism. Plans were afoot to open the airport before 1 August and to invite tourists and investors from every country, including those where the pandemic was at its worst. In a 3 July video, the Chairman herself is shown asking tourists from everywhere to come and experience Sri Lanka’s beauty and her superb health service (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_v2gqnj3SM).

A piece in Readers’ Digest (UK) reinforced this message. “Sri Lanka has announced that it will open up their borders for all international travel on 1 August,” begins the article. “This is the perfect opportunity to get rid of all that pent up coronavirus stress!” 

The Government obviously has no understanding of the singular nature of the ongoing economic crisis – that its root cause lies not in economics but in a health issue. Caused by a global pandemic, it can only begin to wane once the pandemic’s grip over the globe loosens. For example, we can open our borders as much as we like, but tourism will not take off nationally until international travel returns to normal. Producing for export makes little sense when what we produce are inessentials and the global demand for inessentials is decreasing. 

Given this context, the decision by the newly-constituted Monetary Board to reduce lending and deposit rates is unlikely to have a positive effect. On the contrary by reducing the interest incomes of retirees and the middle class, it will cause a further demand contraction nationally while increasing actual and relative poverty. 

Gotabaya Rajapaksa seems to think that given a totally free hand, untrammelled by law and constitution, administrative regulations and customs, he can do anything, starting with fighting the pandemic and developing the economy; he and the military. For him, parade-ground governance seems to be the panacea for all ills. 

The first COVID-19 wave could have been minimised (via the Navy cluster) had men who knew nothing about viruses not been placed in charge of fighting one of the deadliest viruses going. The second wave might have been preventable had the medical professionals not knuckled down to generals.

The possibility of the same fate befalling the economy is a real one, if the Gotabaya-Mahinda dream of a near two-thirds majority comes true in August.