“The world will not get better on its own.”
Eric Hobsbawm (Interesting Times – A Twentieth Century Life)
The 93 year old woman had died of Covid-19. Her body was brought to the Mathugama cemetery in a hospital ambulance, placed inside the crematorium, then hastily removed and returned to the ambulance. For a VIP hearse has arrived bearing another Covid-19 body and armed with an ‘order from above’. Against that dictat the PHIs were powerless. The ambulance, a life-saving vehicle, especially in pandemic times, was forced to waste two precious hours while the last rites of the connected dead were completed.
It was not of that land President Gotabaya Rajapaksa spoke on Friday. He made his #Me Best one hour nine minute address to the nation from a sunny place, adorned with green trees and ancient history. But the night had fallen on the nation as it listened to his words.