Editorial-July 16, 2013, 12:00 pm
The police have reportedly been ordered to arrest anyone who causes disruptions to the GCE A/L examination centres in the run-up to the PC polls scheduled for September. Children prepare painstakingly for years for this highly competitive examination held during the month of August and it is a crime to disturb them in any manner.
Elections in this country are chaotic affairs which lead to clashes, bloodshed and curfews. Besides, they are notorious for noise pollution. Politicians with king-sized egos don’t consider even a pocket meeting attended by a handful of people complete without loudspeakers mounted on lampposts or trees. So, the Elections Commissioner and the police will have their work cut out in trying to ensure that students will be able to face the examination free from any disturbances in the provinces that are going to the polls.
That the GCE A/L examination is held in August is known to one and all including school dropouts who have taken to politics. So, the government ought to explain why on earth it decided to have PC polls in September, knowing well that the run-up thereto was bound to be tumultuous or even violent. It may not have given two hoots about the exam because it usually does as astrologers say in going for polls, superstition being the religion of most politicians. It is, in fact, astrologers who run this country; people do as politicians say and politicians do as astrologers say!
Now that the government has, true to form, blundered, it is up to the Polls Chief to keep the candidates on a tight leash. Self-righteous party leaders should be considerate towards the children striving to clear an extremely difficult hurdle in a bid to secure university admission. Let them be urged to order their supporters to refrain from resorting to anything that might disturb children at examination centres or on the way.
Those at the levers of power have proved once again that they badly need some schooling.
Committee reports, stupid!
A presidential committee probe into the allegation that several dozens of fishermen perished at sea last month because they had not been warned of a storm has exonerated Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera from responsibility for the tragedy.
Nobody expected the minister to be held accountable. He was so confident of being exonerated that he offered to resign if found guilty. If the committee had pinned the blame on him, its report would never have seen the light of day!
The UNP says the government, having cleared Minister Amaraweera, will now try to pass the blame on to the dead fishers themselves, claiming that they had set sail out of their own volition in spite of bad weather. But, we think the ruling politicians are far too smart to do anything of that nature and incur the wrath of the bereaved families. Instead, being the descendants of King Kekille, the bovine monarch, they might hold the weather gods responsible for the unfortunate incidents and even declare war on them the way Caligula Caesar, who, claiming to have metamorphosed into the god of gods, had the sea attacked with swords and catapults to spite Neptune, the deity of water. Some of them are known for their quixotic battles with deities, aren’t they? One of them has a history of storming a shrine dedicated to Kali Amman to rescue animals.
Not many people take committees, presidential or otherwise, seriously, so much so that even the Parliamentary Select Committees have lost their credibility. A wag suggests that the reports issued by such committees be printed on toilet paper, for they are full of you know what.
Cabinet ministers are infallible and, therefore, never at fault. They are super humans capable of unthinkable feats. So, conducting inquiries into their alleged lapses is an exercise in futility. Instead, the government ought to develop the Meteorological Department which is crying out for resources, both human and physical, besides equipping the fisherfolk with modern technology to keep track of weather conditions on their own. Else, many more lives are bound to be lost when the next storm blows this way.
