Postpone polls: Coronavirus pandemic is a health and economic emergency, not a political emergency

Health professionals should be given the unfettered freedom to manage the pandemic and its aftermath from a health point of view. Sri Lanka has several such eminent professionals with international experience and this is the time to call on them to assist in the management of this pandemic – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

• Some people look at things as they are and ask why, while others look at things as they never were, and ask why not? – George Bernard Shaw

The lifestyle of Sri Lankans cannot be what it was before COVID-19 entered Sri Lanka. Neither can it be in other countries where COVID is creating havoc. Any pretence that it is or can be is both irresponsible and moronic. In a sense this virus is taking over the world and leads one to wonder whether this is an invasion from outer space as we have seen in movies.

The world’s economy is collapsing and the global supply chain is being disrupted where food, medicine and other essential requisites of human beings are being seriously impacted. Sri Lanka cannot be like Nero, fiddling while the world around is burning. Sri Lanka may be able to contain the spread of the virus within the country by various means, but it along with many other Nations will compelled to be in self-isolation economically for the foreseeable future considering the havoc unfolding in the world, where the virus has not spared any country or any person from being infected. 

Sri Lanka needs to shift its attention to its food and medicinal and other essential needs and how the supply of these could be assured now and in the longer term considering the country’s dependence on external sources for these essentials.

The call for convening a meeting of political party leaders or a reconvening of the Parliament is not the need of the hour. What is needed urgently are some measures to identify and manage the health crisis and the ensuing economic, food and medicine crisis. These should be managed by professionals and not politicians. Leaving the management of this crisis in the hands of already discredited and incompetent politicians should be totally barred and Sri Lankan citizens spared from a catastrophe perhaps worse than the pandemic.

The country has a President elected by the people to make political decisions that are in the best interest of the country, and gathering a group of utterly discredited politicians to make credible decisions when they have no credibility left, will be futile and could potentially make matters worse as far the pandemic is concerned.

1.Health professionals should be given the unfettered freedom to manage the pandemic and its aftermath from a health point of view. Sri Lanka has several such eminent professionals with international experience and this is the time to call on them to assist in the management of this pandemic. What is unfolding in the rest of the world, and lessons to be learnt from China as to how it is being managed should be factored in and managing the pandemic should not be just about treating and containing those affected or taking preventive measures to stop the spread of the infection. It must also include the long term aftermath from the point of view of medicine and medical supply availability arising from disruptions to international manufacturing and the supply chain.

2.Economic professionals should be tasked with the responsibility to submit immediate, medium term and long term options on how the aftermath of the crisis could be managed. The collapse of the stock markets around the world, zero percent interest reductions by central banks in many countries, disruptions to manufacturing, collapse of tourism, the oil industry, airlines (Qantas in Australia announced a 90% reduction of its international flights and a 60% reduction in its domestic flights till 31 May), possible shrinking of the shipping industry as manufactured goods and/or raw materials cease moving, are all unfolding before us. Even the blind will see these as they hear these constantly on various media platforms. 

3.Food and medicine security should be examined by a third set of professionals who should be tasked with coming up with similar options. A SAARC centric policy, already envisioned by the Sri Lankan President and other SAARC leaders and developing greater links with India for food, medicine and medical supply needs, and links with Bangladesh for medicine needs considering their substantial manufacturing industry should take centre stage of options, along with other viable options. An accelerated local food production drive too should be part of the proposed strategy 

Even if COVID-19 is contained throughout the world, firstly, it will take a long time for this to happen, and secondly, it would have left a trail of health, economic, food and medicine crisis that might take even a longer period to return to some degree of stability.

The aftermath arising from this could have other far-reaching implications. It could halt the economies in the Arab countries and compel them to curtail or stop their infrastructure projects. The economic hardships arising from the collapse of the oil industry, the airline and tourist industry could leave places like Riyadh, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar lifeless. 

This would have major repercussions for countries who depend on the economic growth of these countries for their own sustenance by the way of foreign exchange remittances. Mass unemployment arising from economic hardship faced by Arab countries would have a devastating impact on countries like Sri Lanka whose primary foreign exchange earner are remittances mainly from workers employed in these countries.

These situations plus unemployment arising in Sri Lanka itself, could pose threats to the country’s law and order situation as desperation may cause unruly behaviour arising from desperation, and opportunism. Sri Lanka’s preparedness to meet such an eventuality is another key aspect that should be considered and planned.

In the context of all this, and in the dire circumstances being experienced throughout the world, this is not the time to engage in politics in Sri Lanka. The President and the Prime Minister should be given far-reaching decision-making powers based on strategies proposed by these professional groups. 

The President should make a decision in the context if what is unfolding in Sri Lanka and throughout the world, and postpone the General Election at least for six months. This is not the time to have an election where having public meetings would like inviting hungry COVID-19 viruses to afternoon tea with hundreds and thousands of people.

Meanwhile, as a response to the national and international emergency, he could consider forming an advisory council consisting of all major political party leaders, including the Governors of all provinces (in the absence of Chief Ministers), to seek their views and to share in the decisions and to assist in carrying out such decisions being taken in the national interest.

While it is the wish of all Sri Lankans that life will come back to normal as soon as possible, the reality is that it will not, for a considerable period of time. Besides this, life as everyone knew it, will not be the same even if things come back to what we took for granted as being “normal”. The sooner we accept this and look towards the future from a different prism, the better it will be for all of us.

Surely there could be a better world than one where its citizens are collectively destroying it by destroying its environment and where more money is spent on finding means to kill fellow human beings rather to save lives and improve their quality of life. 

COVID-19 hopefully may not kill as many as what Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs killed and maimed for life and generations to come, hopefully it will not kill millions of Vietnamese as did the Vietnam war just for ideological reasons, hopefully it will not kill hundreds and thousands, some say more than a million Iraqis, due to a callous adventure to find weapons of mass destruction where none existed and where the adventurers know they did not exist, but purely to secure oil, a fossil fuel that’s made from carbon and hydrogen, which takes a very long time and very specific circumstances to form, and most of the oil that is used today formed millions of years ago, and very importantly, which does not belong to anyone and certainly not to any country simply on account of man-made ground demarcations. Hopefully it will not be like the creations, much like viruses, the Taliban and ISIS, which killed hundreds and thousands people due to the bidding of their creators. 

COVID-19, whenever it ceases its destruction, would have destroyed the economy of the world as no other killing weapon has ever done. It is unlikely that the aftermath of COVID-19 will take the world back to where it was before it surfaced in China in December of 2019. There will be a new world.

Political, civil society, and religious leaders as well as business leaders should take the initiative to look at what this new world is going to look like, and in the words of George Bernard Shaw, “stop looking at things as they are and keep asking why, but look at things as they never were, and ask why not?”