By
C.A.Chandraprema
The government got off to a very bad start in 2017. Probably for the first time in living memory, we began the year with a strike – that of sweep ticket sellers who claimed that their commission has not been increased despite the increase in the price of a sweep ticket. Their cry was that the increase in the price will reduce ticket sales and that if the prices were being increased, their commissions also had to increase proportionately in order to compensate for the diminished income due to the reduction in sales.
The income coming in from sweep ticket sales is important for the government. P.G. Wilson, who was for many years the private secretary to former President D.B.Wijetunga has told this writer how in the late 1980s at the height of the JVP insurrection, the day to day cash requirements of the various government departments was met partly out of the daily collection of the development lottery.
This is an important cash cow for the government and it stands to reason that the government would want to increase their cash flow by increasing the price of sweep tickets. The sweep ticket seller’s strike ended with President Sirisena’s intervention. In any event that was a bad start to the year. Following upon this was the fiasco involving Minister Faizer Mustapha’s refusal to accept the local government delimitation report from the chairman of the committee Asoka Peiris on the grounds that two members of the five member committee had not signed the report. Of the two members who had refused to sign it, the SLFP representative had signed the report but the UNP representative had not yet signed at the time of going to press.
The much touted Volkswagen factory in Kuliyapitiya blew up in the government’s faces.
It would have been better for the government to have simply left things as minister Eran Wickremaratne said – that the Volkswagen factory was not coming to Sri Lanka because the company had run into problems internationally and was not in a position to expand. The government however, had turned this Volkswagen factory into one of their main campaign slogans and probably felt compelled to deliver something. Thus on January 3, a bemused public saw the President and Prime Minister laying the foundation stones for a factory which was supposed to be an automobile assembly plant for a company called ‘Western Automobiles’ and there were banners emblazoned with the letter ‘W’ in what appeared to be an attempt to imitate the Volkswagen symbol.
Yet in no time, the social media was flashing the news around that the whole thing was an elaborate hoax and that there was no Volkswagen factory or even a factory belonging to Senok the local agents for Volkswagen but some hitherto unknown company called Western Automobiles. Sirasa TV had in fact contacted Volkswagen headquarters and ascertained that VW had no involvement in any project in Sri Lanka. When asked at a press conference about this, one UNP minister said that this factory would assemble European cars. When asked who was investing money in this project, he declined to answer. All in all, this was a painfully embarrassing fiasco for the government.
Obviously stung by the expose broadcast by Sirasa TV, the Prime Minister then took a U turn and admitted as Eran Wickremeratne had done earlier, that Volkswagen was not coming to Sri Lanka. The government’s Volkswagen fiasco brings to mind the Roman Emperor Caligula Caesar’s invasion of Britain. Because Britain was a long sought after prize, Caligula sought to win the hearts and minds of the Roman public by staging an ‘invasion’ to subjugate Britain in the following manner as recounted by some ancient historians including Suetonius Tranquillus.
“He (Caligula) drew his soldiers up in battle array upon the shore. Then he himself went into his galley and told his sailors to row him out to sea. After they had rowed him a short way he told them to return. When he had landed again he climbed into a high seat like a pulpit, which he had built on the sands. Then he sounded a trumpet and ordered his soldiers to advance as if to battle. In front of the soldiers there was nothing but the blue sea and the sandy shore covered with shells. The Britons, whom they had come to fight, were far away on the other side of the water and quite out of reach.
“So the soldiers stood and wondered what to do. Then Caligula ordered them to kneel down upon the sand and gather as many shells as they could. So now the soldiers did as their general commanded and gathered the cockle shells which lay around in hundreds. When they had gathered a great quantity, Caligula made a speech. He thanked the soldiers as if they had done him some great service. He told them that now he had conquered the ocean and the islands in it, and that these shells were the spoils of war. He praised the soldiers for their bravery, and said that the shells should be placed in the temples of Rome in remembrance of it. Then he rewarded them richly and they marched home again.”
Courtesy:Sunday Island