Editorial - The Island
Ancient kings of Lanka, according to legend, travelled in disguise to see for themselves how their subjects lived and to gauge public opinion about their reign. They traversed the backwaters of their kingdoms, mingled with commoners freely, learnt of their problems and returned to their castles after days or weeks, cursing their cunning ministers and advisors who had kept them in the dark and painted a rosy picture of the conditions obtaining in their lands.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa seems to be emulating the ancient kings. He has the habit of travelling incognito as we pointed out in these columns a few weeks ago. On Wednesday, he drove about in Colombo to see how the ordinary road users were harassed by politicians' security contingents. A ministerial security vehicle nearly slammed into his presidential car, we are told! It is our considered opinion that a president deserves the ministers he appoints and their security rowdies!
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We believe that the President need not have resorted to a risky gimmick like driving through the city without a security escort to see the suffering people undergo at the hands of ministers and their security personnel wreaking havoc on public roads. Surely, he must have read a great deal about how they make a nuisance of themselves. Newspapers are full of public complaints against those hoity-toity politicos and their guards who have become a law unto themselves. A voracious reader of newspapers, the President could not have missed them.
The police seem to derive some kind of perverse pleasure by causing traffic snarls and inconveniencing the public. They close roads for a VIP to pass, even while he is still in bed! Thousands of other road users have to wait in the scorching sun in long lines of vehicles, gnashing their teeth and cursing the government until that worthy gets up, performs his ablutions, dresses up, partakes of his breakfast, gets into his heavily guarded vehicle and thunders past them! This happens day in day out, though the war is long past.
The government boasts of having finished terrorism. It deserves the credit for that feat and people have shown their gratitude once again by voting for it overwhelmingly at the recently concluded LG polls. It is pulling down the perimeter walls of police stations claiming that there are no security threats. But, strangely, the UPFA politicians continue to have massive security convoys much to the consternation of the hapless public. If it is safe for all others to move about without fear of terror strikes, how come only the government politicians cannot do so?
The government insists that it does not deploy the army to protect the ruling party politicians save a handful. But, the fact remains that all of them have private armies that travel in back-up vehicles, menacingly shouting, frantically waving their hands and callously shoving others off the road.
Most of the politicos who boost their egos by parading their security contingents would have been safe even while Prabhakaran was alive and 'killing'. For, he hated this country so much that he would not have done it a favour by eliminating a bunch of useless politicians! He would also not have wanted to waste his explosives and ammunition, which he procured with difficulty, on such imbeciles.
Now that the President has seen how the public suffers owing to VIP security, it is incumbent upon him to keep the whole caboodle of government politicians on a tight leash. He has to take the blame for having failed to do so! Only a few government politicians run security risks, we reckon, and the President should order that all others stop using security convoys forthwith. And fast!
