The President’s speech

Monday, 23 August 2021 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

“Be prepared to make more sacrifices.” As the daily COVID-19 death toll neared 200 a day, those words by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, as he addressed the nation on the eve of a (at least) 10-day quarantine curfew, were chilling. Not for its ominous tone, rather for the fact that it came amid a speech that seemed to so easily brush over what had been sacrificed thus far.

Sri Lanka’s official death toll at the time stood at nearly 7,000, while its total case numbers were fast nearing 400,000. Yet the President’s speech scarcely acknowledged these figures — indeed, to even label them mere figures feels callous. Instead, the President sought to put forth explanations, excuses, and listed the difficulties the Government had faced in handling the crisis. While none of this reasoning was neither new nor untrue, it nevertheless seemed remarkably insensitive in the face of such astonishing loss and heartbreak.

Particularly galling was that the fact a majority of the COVID deceased being over the age of 60 was seemingly trumpeted as some sort of qualifier, something that somehow made all the loss of life ‘not as bad’.

But this is not surprising, nor is it unique to this Rajapaksa regime, though that did not make it any less jarring. The overwhelming feeling, however, of listening to the President’s speech, was one of helplessness.

It is clear that this is an unprecedented health crisis, one compounded by an equally devastating economic crisis. Yet there was hope — at least at the onset of the pandemic — that the decisive nature of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s brand of autocracy might allow for better handling than what was being seen in other, more democratic western nations. But in sidelining expert opinion in the months that followed and prioritising short-term planning — both in terms of healthcare and the economy — over long-term sustainability, the country is now in a worse state than it has ever been.

The President needs to understand that this is a war that cannot be won through sheer brute force and that the casualties of this war are not some faceless enemy. The President’s reasoning of keeping the country open to protect daily wage earners falls flat when it is those very same daily wage earners that are dying on the floors of hospitals. The time for thinking of the wage earners was prior to the onset of the second — let alone third and fourth — wave of the pandemic. That was the period in which the healthcare system should have been bolstered, and plans put in place to mitigate follow-up waves that were sure to take place — warnings from regional neighbours were clear as day, after all.

But hindsight as they say is 20/20, and so it is that the President’s warning of the need for more sacrifices will undoubtedly become a reality because such is the dire situation in the country that is now the only choice. The only hope is that going forward, the President and his Government will act more decisively, taking expert opinions on board at the earliest available opportunity, instead of waiting for those same talking points to be regurgitated by members of the clergy before a decision can be taken.