THE BIG PICTURE
THE SLIPPERY SLOPE
Sri Lanka’s slide down the precipice
Sri Lankans celebrated their newfound freedom (from the clutches of pandemic ridden restrictions on their mobility) at the end of November when they were treated to a spate of Black Friday sales, which caught the imagination of shopping starved consumers – although there must have been hundreds of thousands of others who continued to ‘stay at home’ as their pockets were empty.
But as the so-called ‘Wonder of Asia’ would have it, the powers that be had other ideas; and we were treated to a second successive Black Friday of an entirely different kind when the island literally ran out of gas and power on 3 December.
So we had no gas, no power and no money… only an announcement that the first case of the Omicron variant had been detected here, despite assurances the day before that it would not enter the country through our main international airport!
And while Sri Lankans were up in arms over the latest bungling act by those who are supposed to run the show, the men and women that 13-plus million citizens voted for were busy pointing fingers at each other in an attempt to belittle their opponents.
So the Black Friday syndrome only served as a curtain call for year one of the circus we’re accustomed to watching – usually for five long years, which is followed by a game of musical chairs, courtesy the voting public.
It’s a shame isn’t it that a nation which was among the top 10 in the world for its COVID-19 mitigation efforts 18 months ago has turned full circle – not necessarily because recent waves of the virus have led to the chaos we have seen in many developed nations around the globe but for reasons that should be well within our control… such as economic, monetary and resource management.
The irony is that when Sri Lanka was riding high – in relative terms, let’s say – in mid-2020, there were fresh hopes of a reverse brain drain whereas today, we are witnessing the reemergence of Sri Lankans queuing up to takeoff to greener and safer pastures in the wake of the nation’s slide down the slippery slope.
Indeed, the red flag is fluttering.
