Goblins and real challenges of 2021

The public health system that has always fared above the relative social-economic standards of the country

6 January 2021

Multiple challenges in multiple fronts await the nation in the year 2021. The economic fallout of weakened public finances would be more intimidating than the previous year.  After the downgrade of sovereign credit ratings to junk, the creditworthiness of domestic financial institutions is currently being lowered by the international rating agencies.  The Government has to pay  $  four billion in foreign loans and interest payments this year against foreign reserves of $ 5.6 billion.The economy is in tatters and recovery after the worst ever contraction in the second quarter of the last year will be compromised by fears over a sovereign default. 
The COVID-19 second wave is raging unabated.   It does not invoke confidence that  500-600  new cases are discovered daily from around  12,000 PCR tests. Authorities are already cautioning that the virus would be around this year or several years to come. 

Elsewhere, the country’s foreign relations are about to get complicated as the United States and other Western nations are planning to bring in a new resolution on  Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council. While a UNHRC resolution itself could do little damage, the danger is that it would be the beginning of an end of Sri Lanka’s relations with the West in its current less contentious form. 

If the last year was grim due to factors beyond the domestic control, a global pandemic, the choices that are to be made this year are all within the reach of the government. These decisions would define the future of the nation and its place in the international community to many years to come.  In many ways, this is a year of transition to better or worse. 

Therefore, it would have helped if the Government had concentrated its energies to address real challenges. Instead, it is busy fighting imaginary goblins and chasing rainbows. Those antics, ranging from the compulsory cremation of Muslim COVID-19 fatalities, Dammika Peniya to the snubbing of $ 480 million Millenium Challenge Grant are self-harming. 

"After the downgrade of sovereign credit ratings to junk, the creditworthiness of domestic financial institutions is currently being lowered by the international rating agencies"

Now, there is an opening to end at least one of the needless controversies that Sri Lanka has courted: the compulsory cremation of Muslims, which has caused a public relations disaster abroad and a large reservoir of grievances of Muslims at home. An eleven-member expert panel led by  the former Dean of the Colombo Medical Faculty Professor Jennifer Perera has recommended the disposal of bodies of the Covid-19 related deceased  to include both cremation and burial, ‘while adhering to the specified safety precautions.’ This is how the rest of the world has been disposing of their COVID dead since the beginning of the pandemic. Instead, Sri Lanka has relied on the heresy of the half-baked intelligentsia and racist dog whistles. The government should now listen to the real experts and make a course correction. Instead, it seems to be digging deeper into the hole it put itself in. 

The compulsory cremations were not a medical decision, but a political ploy implemented during the run-up to the General election. The Government that whipped up ultra-nationalismat the expense of national unity is now trapped in its own making, though, its vacillation itself is an act of political convenience.  The danger is that its short-sighted political calculations have already caused a rapture between Sinhalese and Muslim communities. What the UNP did to drive the Tamils towards the LTTE through its connivance in the Black  July is being replicated by this government in its handling of the Muslim fatalities due to COVID-19.

A similar folly is re-enacted elsewhere where an untested local concoction by Dhammika Bandara, a Kapuwa of a local Devalaya, is promoted by the authorities, including the Government Ministers and private media station affiliated to the government, as medication for COVID-19.  That is dangerous antic that risks the lives of the people, but it is also degrading the public health system that has always fared above the relative social-economic standards of the country. 

The Government seems to be less inclined to act on real matters. A proactive Government should have reached out to the international suppliers to get hold of the COVID-19 vaccine that is currently being rolled out across the world. Some countries, Israel for instance, has already vaccinated 12 per cent of its population.  
Money is not exactly the issue. For instance, Oxford -AstraZeneca vaccine produced by India’s Serum institution costs just $ 3 per a single dose.  Even if the entire population of 22 million Sri Lankans of all ages are to be vaccinated, it would cost only $ 132 million, a fraction of the annual loss incurred by the State-Owned Enterprises or less than one-third of the Millennium Challenge Grant that Sri Lanka turned down.

(Worse still it would be a shame if the Government is planning to obtain the vaccine from China or Russia and turn Sri Lankans into lab rats.)  The WHO has promised to provide the vaccine to 20% of the population in phases under its Covax initiative that aims to guarantee the fair distribution of vaccine around the world. However, a global programme of that magnitude is slow-moving and it would be a long time before any country gets its full quota.  That is exactly why countries around the world are making orders with the manufacturers and are reaching out to their state backers.  A vaccine is the best shot at normalcy. 
That is where Sri Lanka should focus its energies on. However, that does not appear to be the priority of the Government.  Only when the Government gets its COVID acts together, it would be able to focus on other matters of national importance. 

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