{"id":249422,"date":"2026-10-17T20:25:05","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T14:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=249422"},"modified":"2026-10-18T00:57:05","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T19:27:05","slug":"the-frailty-of-man-the-folly-of-nations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-frailty-of-man-the-folly-of-nations\/","title":{"rendered":"The Frailty Of Man, The Folly Of Nations"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Vishwamithra<\/a> –<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.\u201d\u00a0 <\/i>~ Seneca<\/p>\n

The slow trudge along the gravel road had become an ordeal.<\/p>\n

Every step demanded an effort that would once have seemed inconceivable. The familiar path, travelled countless times without a second thought, now stretched before Sirisena like an interminable journey. His legs trembled beneath the weight of a body that seemed to have surrendered much of its former strength. Even the gentle afternoon breeze offered little relief.\"\"<\/p>\n

At seventy-five, Sirisena has discovered that the human body could become a stranger to the mind that had inhabited it for a lifetime.<\/p>\n

The preceding fortnight had been particularly unforgiving.<\/p>\n

Chemotherapy had exacted a cruel price. The treatment intended to arrest the advancing cancer had simultaneously weakened the body struggling to survive it. His appetite had diminished, his limbs had become increasingly unsteady, and the simplest physical exertion demanded an almost humiliating negotiation between determination and exhaustion.<\/p>\n

The cancer itself had advanced with a ferocity that surprised even the experienced physicians attending him.<\/p>\n

Yet something remained untouched.<\/p>\n

His refusal to surrender.<\/p>\n

Not because he entertained illusions about immortality. At seventy-five, having witnessed enough of life’s triumphs and tragedies, Sirisena understood mortality with a clarity unavailable to youth.<\/p>\n

But he refused to confuse the inevitability of death with the abandonment of life. There was still work to be done. And much of it concerned a country that had occupied his thoughts for more than half a century.<\/p>\n

A Life Behind the Curtain<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Sirisena had never been one of those men whose faces appeared regularly on election posters. He had spent much of his professional life behind the curtain of political power, working alongside some of the country’s most influential politicians, witnessing decisions before they became public policy and observing the peculiar transformation that frequently overtook ordinary men once they acquired extraordinary authority.<\/p>\n

He had seen ambition masquerade as patriotism.<\/p>\n

He had watched loyalty degenerate into servility.<\/p>\n

He had witnessed intelligence being subordinated to vanity, competence sacrificed to political convenience and public institutions gradually transformed into instruments of personal advancement.<\/p>\n

But he had also encountered remarkable individuals whose dedication, administrative ability and genuine concern for the country deserved a more generous place in history.<\/p>\n

His experience had taught him something that political speeches rarely acknowledged.<\/p>\n

The tragedy of Sri Lanka was not that it had never possessed capable leaders. It was that its political system had repeatedly demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to squander capable leadership.<\/p>\n

And now, as his physical world contracted, the political world beyond his window seemed as turbulent as ever.<\/p>\n

The Country That Refused to Learn<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Sri Lanka had travelled an extraordinary distance since independence.<\/p>\n

It had experienced parliamentary democracy, constitutional transformation, executive presidential government, insurrection, ethnic violence, civil war, economic liberalization, authoritarian tendencies and, eventually, national bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

Every political generation had promised renewal.<\/p>\n

Every election had produced its own vocabulary of salvation.<\/p>\n

Yet the country repeatedly discovered that replacing the occupants of political office did not necessarily transform the habits of political power.<\/p>\n

Sirisena had watched this cycle unfold for decades.<\/p>\n

The problem was not confined to one political party, one family or one ideological tradition.<\/p>\n

It was embedded in a political culture that rewarded obedience more readily than competence and cultivated personal allegiance at the expense of institutional independence.<\/p>\n

The consequences became unmistakable in 2022.<\/p>\n

A country once celebrated for its social achievements found itself struggling to obtain fuel, medicine and essential commodities.<\/p>\n

The humiliation was not merely economic.<\/p>\n

It was moral and political.<\/p>\n

A governing establishment that had claimed to know what was best for the people had presided over a collapse whose consequences were borne disproportionately by those least responsible for creating it.<\/p>\n

The young marched into the streets.<\/p>\n

The old watched in disbelief. And the country was compelled to confront a question it had postponed for generations: How had a nation with so much promise arrived at such a destination?<\/p>\n

The Arrival of AKD<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

The election of Anura Kumara Dissanayake in September 2024 represented a significant rupture with Sri Lanka’s established political order. The subsequent parliamentary election delivered the National People’s Power an overwhelming majority. For the first time, a political movement rooted in the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna’s revolutionary history had acquired national power through democratic elections.<\/p>\n

That transformation was historically remarkable.<\/p>\n

But history does not grant governments immunity from scrutiny merely because their arrival is remarkable. Two years into the administration, the country’s economic recovery has continued, with the IMF announcing a staff-level agreement in October 2026 that could release approximately $345 million in further financing, subject to the required approvals.<\/p>\n

Yet the distance between macroeconomic stabilization and household prosperity remains considerable. A recovering economy does not automatically produce a recovering family.<\/p>\n

The mother calculating the cost of schoolbooks, the pensioner struggling with medicine bills and the young graduate unable to find satisfactory employment inhabit an economic reality that cannot be adequately described through fiscal indicators alone.<\/p>\n

The government’s task is therefore larger than stabilizing public finances. It must make recovery meaningful to ordinary citizens. That is a demanding undertaking. And it is not helped by an opposition whose criticism too often exceeds the practical alternatives it offers.<\/p>\n

The Poverty of Political Opposition<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

A functioning democracy requires more than a government capable of exercising power. It requires an opposition capable of challenging that power intelligently. Sri Lanka’s opposition parties have every right\u2014and an obligation\u2014to question the AKD administration. They should scrutinize expenditure, expose administrative failures, challenge questionable legislation and demand explanations for decisions affecting the public.<\/p>\n

But criticism without a coherent alternative is not a political program. Nor does the mere recollection of former political prominence confer present credibility. The opposition must confront the uncomfortable reality that much of the political establishment from which it emerged was rejected by voters demanding fundamental change. That rejection cannot be answered indefinitely through parliamentary theatrics, personal attacks or the recycling of familiar political personalities.<\/p>\n

Recent political debate has nevertheless revealed substantial questions that deserve serious examination, including constitutional reform, the cost of living, the independence of public institutions and the government’s approach to dissent. These are not trivial matters. They concern the character of the State itself. The opposition’s responsibility is to convert such questions into a credible program of government. Until then, dissatisfaction with the administration cannot automatically be interpreted as renewed confidence in those who governed before it.<\/p>\n

The Danger of Unquestioned Power<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

There is another lesson Sirisena’s long experience had taught him: Power changes the behavior of those who possess it. Sometimes imperceptibly. Sometimes with alarming speed.<\/p>\n

The politician who once demanded transparency may discover the attractions of secrecy. The reformer who denounced executive authority may become reluctant to surrender it. The revolutionary who condemned institutional privilege may begin to regard his own political movement as uniquely entitled to exercise power.<\/p>\n

These possibilities are not accusations against any particular administration.<\/p>\n

They are recurring tendencies in political history.<\/p>\n

The AKD government faces questions about the pace and substance of constitutional reform, the use of inherited security legislation and the extent to which institutional changes will outlast its own tenure.<\/p>\n

The central issue is not whether the present President possesses good intentions. It is whether Sri Lanka can finally construct institutions that do not depend upon presidential goodwill. A republic becomes secure not when it discovers an exceptionally virtuous leader, but when it establishes safeguards capable of restraining leaders who are not virtuous. That is the unfinished business of Sri Lankan democracy.<\/p>\n

The Cruel Arithmetic of Time<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

For Sirisena, these questions had acquired a new urgency. The country possessed decades in which to correct its mistakes. He did not. His remaining time could no longer be measured confidently in years. The medical reports, the consultations, the exhausting treatments and the increasingly anxious expressions of those closest to him had altered his understanding of the future.<\/p>\n

But illness had also stripped away certain illusions.<\/p>\n

The political rivalries that once seemed enormously consequential now appeared strangely insignificant. The pursuit of office, the accumulation of titles and the endless competition for proximity to powerful men seemed almost absurd when measured against the fragility of human existence.<\/p>\n

What endured was something less glamorous.<\/p>\n

The work accomplished. The people helped. The principles defended. And the knowledge that one’s life had contributed, however modestly, to something beyond personal advancement.<\/p>\n

There was no bitterness in that discovery.<\/p>\n

Only clarity.<\/p>\n

The Unfinished Work<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Sirisena could no longer participate in public life as he once had.<\/p>\n

The body-imposed restrictions that the mind resented. But intellectual engagement required neither ministerial office nor physical vigor. He could still read. He could still write. He could still examine the claims of politicians against the evidence of history. And he could still challenge the comforting falsehoods through which nations excuse their repeated failures. Perhaps that was now his most useful contribution.<\/p>\n

Not to instruct younger generations that the past had been glorious. Much of it had not. Not to insist that experience automatically conferred wisdom. It did not.<\/p>\n

But to remind those entering public life that political power was temporary, institutional damage could endure for generations, and a nation’s future should never be entrusted entirely to the ambitions of its rulers.<\/p>\n

He had spent a lifetime observing men who imagined themselves indispensable.<\/p>\n

Time had proved otherwise.<\/p>\n

The Last Battle<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

The gravel road remained before him.<\/p>\n

Sirisena stopped for a moment, resting one trembling hand against a nearby tree. The afternoon light had begun to fade. There was still some distance to travel. Very soon dusk will embrace the ending day. He knew that tomorrow the walk might become more difficult. There might come a day when even this modest journey would be beyond him. But the possibility did not diminish the significance of the present moment.<\/p>\n

The struggle against cancer was no longer simply a contest between medical science and malignant cells. It had become a struggle to preserve meaning in the face of diminishing strength. The disease might eventually defeat his body. That possibility could neither be denied nor negotiated away.<\/p>\n

But it need not determine how he used the time remaining.<\/p>\n

And perhaps there was a lesson here for the country he loved.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka, too, had endured a succession of political illnesses\u2014some inherited, some self-inflicted, others aggravated by the very treatments prescribed to cure them.<\/p>\n

It had survived insurrection, war, bankruptcy and the collapse of public confidence. Survival, however, was not recovery. Recovery required the courage to examine the causes of failure, the discipline to abandon destructive habits and the wisdom to recognize that tomorrow could not be built indefinitely upon yesterday’s excuses.<\/p>\n

Sirisena resumed his walk. Slowly. Painfully.<\/p>\n

But deliberately.<\/p>\n

He had no certainty about how much road remained.<\/p>\n

Neither did his country.<\/p>\n

The important question was not how much time either had left, but what they intended to do with the time that remained.<\/p>\n

*The writer can be reached at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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