Sauce for the goose

Ruling party Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) Member of Parliament Jagath Kumara has called on the people of this country to make sacrifices for the future generations, by reducing a three-meals-a-day quota to two. The appeal comes in the same week that the Government has imposed import restrictions on what it calls ‘luxury items’. 

Mobile telephones – now vital for online learning in a country where schools have been closed for 18 months because of the pandemic – and electronic items like fans and fridges and even underwear have made the “luxury items” list as the Government struggles to conserve its foreign reserves. It was barely a month ago that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa issued a dire warning that the people would have to be ready to make more sacrifices if his Government was compelled to impose a COVID-19 lockdown for an extended period to bring infections numbers down, because the shutdown would hamper economic activity in the country.

Ironically the Government calls for sacrifice on the part of a people who are already struggling economically even as it undertakes frivolous foreign travel at the highest levels. This week Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa flew off to Bologna, Italy purportedly to address a gathering of the G20, a grouping of the world’s biggest economies. At closer glance, the event looked to be no more than a conference organised by a think-tank loosely associated with the G-20, rather than a formal branch of that organisation. While the Premier’s office claimed he would be making a keynote address, in fact he was no more than one of a long list of speakers at an opening ceremony organised by the NGO. Except for the President of Slovenia, no other world leader was due to attend the event. Yet the Sri Lankan Prime Minister saw fit to attend with a high-level delegation in tow including the Foreign Minister.

Next weekend, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will travel to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Many other world leaders have opted to address the UNGA virtually considering the pandemic situation.

The Government’s approach to foreign travel is problematic on two fronts. Firstly, even though vaccine penetration is high in the more developed parts of the world, leaders of these countries are wary of undertaking foreign travelling because deadly variants of COVID-19 are still causing infections to spike and hospitalisations even in the vaccinated. Secondly, these leaders are opting to remain in their countries, that continue to be in a state of heightened health alert for new variants and hitherto unknown turns the COVID-19 pandemic could take, as it has so many times over the past two years.

In Sri Lanka, which has been in the grip of a deadly fourth wave of the virus since May 2021, Government leaders undertaking foreign trips while citizens are gasping for breath in hospitals that are overflowing with COVID-19 patients is particularly obscene. When over a hundred citizens are dying of a deadly disease daily, the Government’s entire focus should be on preventing the further loss of life rather than planning foreign engagements that will require focus to shift to planning and logistics for those endeavours.  Worse still, the travelling could result in the delegations returning to Sri Lanka carrying new variants of the coronavirus, creating further nightmares for the citizenry.

Questions being asked therefore about the Government’s decision to travel with their kith and kin, while demanding sacrifices from the people remain valid and justified. In fact, continuing to criticise and question these unnecessary foreign engagements is a patriotic duty.