The heavy price of failure

The world has seen extraordinary leadership in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has also witnessed colossal failures that cost millions of lives. If there were moments for the leader of a nation to show his mettle and allow a country to experience the power of statesmanship, it was in these last two years fraught with disease and economic uncertainty.

Ahead of the 2019 Presidential Election, former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa was projected as the man for exactly this type of moment. A brave warrior, efficient administrator, the leader that Sri Lanka had long yearned for, someone who could deliver on the illusive promise of prosperity. His brand managers insisted that the former Defence Secretary had the “right stuff” – no-nonsense discipline and the innate ability to pick the right man for every job. After all, legend has it he handpicked the right generals to win the war.

Nearly seven million people put their faith in this ethos, giving the former Defence Secretary a landslide victory over his opponent in the presidential race. Nine months later they gave him a super majority in Parliament, the largest in the history of the second Republic. The whopping majority gave President Rajapaksa the legitimacy he needed to enact the 20th Amendment, a constitutional change that turned an already extraordinarily powerful president into a god-king. Between the 20th Amendment and his two-thirds majority in Parliament, there is literally nothing President Gotabaya Rajapaksa cannot do. The Sri Lankan State was putty in his hands. The road was wide open to achieve the ‘Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour’.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic – a public health crisis of a magnitude the world had never seen, requiring systemic, visionary leadership and clinical management that was tailor-made to showcase the power of the 20A presidency. After all, the nation had looked to Gotabaya Rajapaksa to guide it out of crisis following the 2019 Easter Sunday terror attacks. Managing the pandemic would be child’s-play. Instead, it took the virus less than nine months to demolish the myth of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency. Nearly a year later, the nation is literally gasping for breath.

Sri Lanka is losing more than 150 citizens per day to the coronavirus. The Government failed to manage the third wave, and it has morphed into a nightmarish fourth. Doubling down on its refusal to lockdown the country, the Government is asking people over 60 to get tested instead. The Cabinet Spokesman has admitted that the Government was abandoning the effort, insisting that the State would vaccinate as many people as possible and leave the rest up to God. Only a few days ago, the ruling family with wives and children and a few thousand security personnel went to watch a rugby match. The same day, 160 Sri Lankans died from the coronavirus. Tone-deaf younger members of the Rajapaksa clan proudly posted images of this game on social media, even as their countrymen struggle to breathe.

The old saying goes “cometh the hour, cometh the man.” A true leader arises in times of great peril and hopelessness. Leaders like Angela Merkel of Germany or Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand illustrate how true leaders act in a crisis. They lead with the truth. They have a plan, apologise for mistakes made and change course. Most of all they show empathy and win the people’s confidence.

Sri Lanka’s COVID-19 experience has been the opposite. The bungling happened at the very beginning, with the Minister of Health drinking a witch-doctor’s brew to cure the virus. Vaccination procurement has been an unmitigated disaster. Against all medical advice, politicians allow people to keep risking their lives to go to work. Most importantly, the Government is yet to show a modicum of remorse over the citizens who have fallen to this disease – 6,000 citizens have perished, and not once has the Government expressed even sadness at their passing.

The situation is bleak. Hospitals are inundated with patients, often three to a bed, watching ward-mates die and frontline workers collapse. Wooden coffins are hauled for cremation by the container-load. Public health officials are urging citizens to self-impose lockdowns – because with a Government having abandoned the effort to control the virus, it is every man for himself.

The hour has come, and it has gone. A moment of silence is due for the promise of efficient leadership that never was, and the 6,000 Sri Lankans who have paid with their lives for this failure.