How Close Are We To Reality?

By Rusiripala Tennakoon –JUNE 11, 2021

Rusiripala Tennakoon

A very serious situation is unfolding before us due to the new Surge of Covid spread across the country. We have been very complacent about the pandemic because of the mild manner how it afflicted us during its first phase, leaving behind a relatively relaxed social life. We ended up with large crowds of maskless people travelling to their homes in their villages in many outskirts of the country and practically sitting elbow to elbow celebrating the Sinhala and Hindu New Year.

Minister of Education was virtually threatening to open schools on specified dates. Many new dates were announced one after the other by him making the people feel that the threat of postponement was only temporary and not going to give rise to any serious situation in the foreseeable future. They remained closed nevertheless.

The social relaxations became more adverse due to the Tourism Bubbles that were blown now and then by the Tourism Sector including the Minister in charge coupled with the initiative role play by some highly influential, to open the doors to their foreign clients to freely travel and enjoy life here in a quite carefree manner with the blessings, patronage and mitigatory facilitations provided to their guests of honor.

Today we are collectively expiating for their sins as a country with things getting out of control. The officials are finding the demand for testing becoming more and more unmanageable and making it impossible for them to determine where the new pockets of disease are appearing. This worrisome situation was something we witnessed happening elsewhere, while we managed our affairs quite satisfactorily for some time.

Political interferences, unwarranted intermediations and poor planning with a total lack of foresight and assessment have contributed to the sordid state of affairs. Undue haste to display quick results in fields which could have continued with least activity safely for some more time have been unwisely mobilized with highly disadvantageous consequences. The increase in mortalities raises the need for hospitalization, in turn causing severe strains in the health care services, which already are handicapped with increasing needs for resources. The much-opposed lockdowns have started reappearing with alarming limitations in the social web due to inadequate life support to several in dire need for assistance.

The dilemma in the minds of policy makers apparently caused due to muddled health  and economic objectives  have worsened the situation. The belated actions now taken are more reflective of desperate reactions for emergency course corrections, rather than properly planned preventive pro-actions.

As a country which is not so adversely affected by severe whether conditions we could have easily managed to contain and maintain the status of the achievements gained during the first phase of the outbreak of the pandemic. Besides the lack of vigilance in the process during the ensuing period the failure to assess what made and where things have gone wrong, has worsened the seriousness.

We have miserably failed to give fair and reasonable attention and regard to observe how some other countries have done better. We note with regret how our diplomatic relations have failed to make any meaningful contribution in the soliciting of much needed assistance to meet the crisis. To make a long story short it would suffice to state that our President had to personally intervene in the field on his own in many instances to invoke international as well as the responses of individual countries ready to offer assistance. The lesson to learn is that at least after the crisis situation we have to revamp our Diplomatic relations frontier. Senior civilians with wide exposures who could pragmatically engage themselves on behalf of the motherland should replace most of the outdated diplomats chosen only because of other less important considerations.

All these point towards a highly dis-organized approach in the general affairs of the country marred with a ‘yes sir’ mentality. In the context I would like to recommend to eat the humble pie and take dressing from the right- hand marker (right dress) and correct the step. I thought in the context it would be prudent to listen to one of our own in a foreign country claiming a success story behind them in dealing with Covid 19 pandemic. Although it is not indicative of any panacea, the statement volunteered is worth examining even if it is not worthy of any emulation. I prefer to keep the identity confidential in the interest of the informant.

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