Disaster waiting to happen
Editorial-March 16, 2014, 8:53 pm
Protests against a factory in Hanwella have taken a turn for the worse. The police fired tear gas and used water cannon yesterday morning to disperse a group of demonstrators. However essential such ad hoc measures may be in the short run to maintain order they prove to be ineffectual and even counterproductive in the long run unless a lasting solution to the core issue is evolved.
Sinister political elements in need of conflicts for survival peddle hidden agendas which sometimes resonate with people’s fears and suspicions especially as regards their basic needs. Adept at raising bogeys they make capitalise on Sri Lankans’ proneness to mass hysteria as was seen in the case of the Grease Yaka, stories of which went viral even internationally. Now, there seems to be a pH Yaka doing the rounds with even grannies engaged in protests against industrial facilities bandying about pH level of soil.
Regrettably, the government uses force to quell riots without doing enough to address the root causes of such situations. It tries to railroad protesters into submission instead of listening to irate people up in arms against water pollution, allaying their fears and redressing their grievances which find expression in bloody clashes with the police, and fuel anarchistic projects of certain ultra radical groups.
A thorough study on the Hanwella factory should be conducted by a group of independent scientists and their findings made public without further delay. If there is water contamination in the area and that factory is responsible for excessive acidity in soil, it has to be relocated to an industrial zone with facilities to treat waste so that people will have access to clean water. If the factory is not responsible for pollution, the residents of the area should be informed of that fact and provided with potable water. There is no other way out.
The government blundered by dragging its feet on the Rathupaswala water issue and being seen to be partial to the factory blamed—rightly or wrongly—for pollution much to the consternation of the affected people. It is apparently making the same mistake in Hanwella.
Unfortunately, the government does not seem to learn from its mistakes.
Elephantine blunder
UNP National Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe has vowed to topple the Rajapaksa ‘regime’ the way he dislodged President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s government in 2001; he succeeded in engineering mass crossovers in Parliament 13 years ago. With such rhetoric, he may have sought to boost the morale of his party’s rank and file ahead of the Southern and Western Provincial Council elections. However, this time around the challenge before him is more daunting; he has to make about 45 MPs defect to oust the government.
With less than two weeks to go for PC polls, people have been reminded of what the UNP has failed to live down. People’s memory of the greatest betrayal of the military under the UNP-led UNF government have been refreshed; a politically motivated police raid on a safe house of army long rangers revealed the identities of key intelligence operatives and helped the LTTE wipe out all those involved in the army’s successful operations behind the enemy lines. A blatantly lopsided CFA was signed, granting LTTE unbridled freedom to infiltrate most parts of the country on the pretext of doing political work and position cannon with the Trincomalee harbor and Palali airbase within their range. When the war resumed both places came under LTTE artillery fire. The conflict was internationalised as never before and the LTTE gained a great deal of international legitimacy through ‘peace’ talks overseas and the involvement of world powers in what passed for a peace process. A running battle between Parliament and the Executive President rendered the country virtually ungovernable and caused the UNF government to be sacked in 2004.
Besides, the UNP leader’s rhetoric has reminded the public of illegal deals declared null and void by the Supreme Court such as the divestiture of state-owned milch cows such as Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation.
The UNP has reopened for discussion a chapter in Sri Lanka’s political history which it should have left closed.
