New Year celebrations of different cultures on all continents have a common feature: they all express wishes for happiness in the coming year. Today the people of Sri Lanka who celebrate another New Year have a wish for happiness in the coming year even though for Sri Lankans the thought is somewhat optimistic.

Today when Sri Lankans wish one another a Happy New Year these are mere words because we know quite well that hard times are ahead. It’s good to be hopeful but hope alone will not materialise into rice and curry or bread and pol sambol. With inflation galloping at 28 per cent and the shortage of the essential commodity, rice, happiness indeed will be elusive.

Our rulers who have taken upon themselves to make the country bountiful — cover it with milk and honey — are blubbering inanities about their impotence in the context of ‘rising prices in international markets.’

It is of little help to blame it all on international markets in an age of globalisation. We have to face realities. On the other hand economists such as those of the IMF and World Bank have pointedly said the rise in prices of oil in international markets is not the sole reason for the current rate of inflation. The rise in price of oil can account only for a six per cent increase they have said and blamed internal factors such as bad governance for the remaining 22 per cent.

With the fig leaf of the climb of international oil prices blown away, will President Rajapakse face the problem squarely and attempt to tackle it? Today there will be many offering him sheaves of betel leaves and wishing him well for the coming year and he in turn will confer his blessings on them. But such blessings alone will not bring the people happiness. He has to tackle the internal problems that he has contributed to for the rise in the cost of living.

The first thing that the President must do is to have a rethink about the advisors around him. The President appears to follow the principle that nothing succeeds like failures. Good examples are the Treasury Secretary P.B. Jayasundera and Central Bank Governor Nivard Cabraal. They have to take responsibility for the current state of the economy. Jayasundera who has gone along with government decisions such as the creation of the loss making ‘budget’ airline Mihin Lanka and the loss making Lankaputra Bank has now been appointed chairman of SriLankan Airlines. Proven failures have been appointed to replace those who have made astounding successes of business such as Harry Jayewardena, who controls many of the big businesses in the country.

Recently a Sri Lankan economist who had worked with the World Bank said on TV that the main reason for inflation was the printing of currency notes. This view has been sounded by many other economists. But the government economists have got themselves into a bind and to meet the shortfall in revenue resort to printing of money.

President Rajapakse and his ministers confess to their impotence quite nonchalantly. Bandula Gunawardena, the Consumer Affairs Minister, recently confessed that with the continuing rise in prices of wheat flour, bread would go up to Rs. 100 a loaf. Honesty may be a good policy but it is a poor substitute for bread. Similarly the President too refers to rice shortages in the international market when speaking of the increase in the price of rice, but that is poor consolation to those holding out empty plates.

Sirima Bandaranaike when in the opposition was once lambasting then Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake for the high price of rice and shortfall of supplies in the market. She was asked what her strategy would be if she won the election. ‘I will bring rice even from the moon’ she declared. President Rajapakse has no such vivid imagination but instead of attempting a moon landing he should put his own house in order. Other countries in the region too are experiencing minor inflation but not the galloping rate we are enduring.

Good governance is a primary requirement for the happiness of the people. When people call for an improvement in public transport and that more buses are needed what is required is not a new airline be it a ‘budget’ one or not. This budget airline is gobbling up millions of rupees a day and this is money of the tax payer in one form or the other. The only benefit seems to be to those top executives of this new creation who are drawing salaries in the order of lakhs of rupees a month whereas a poor worker’s salary ranges from Rs 6000 to Rs 7000. This is a scandalous wastage of public funds, if not corruption, and certainly not the way to bring happiness to the people.

It is imperative that a leader of a country must be exemplary in the conduct of his duties. Can it be said that President Rajapakse’s appointments and decisions taken by him and his advisors could be held up as models for the lesser panjandrums to follow?

Good governance implicitly calls for the practise of the Rule of Law. But is that happening in this country today? The President is violating the basic law of the land by not making the Constitutional Council operational. The council which should be appointing key officials of the police, public service, judiciary and the Elections Department is non functional and the President has taken upon himself the task of appointing these officials. Lawyers have declared that what the President is doing is an impeachable offence but he is dilly-dallying, awaiting a report of a select committee. The implications of the President appointing key officials to vital posts are obvious. He is creating unhappiness, not happiness.

Establishment of the Rule of Law is essential for the happiness of the people. There can be no happiness for the people of the Eastern Province in the coming year, if a band of thugs who were former LTTE cadres of the east now control the province. All talk of ‘liberation’ and ‘re-establishment of democracy’ becomes meaningless if juvenile gun toting thugs can break into houses and take away people who are not seen again.

Most good wishes for the New Year by political leaders are meaningless, like the profound sounding messages that will be published today. We should take an example from the tiny Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan where King Jigme Singye Wangchuk has proved himself as a true democrat and Buddhist by voluntarily relinquishing his authoritarian power and adopting a new constitution where his son King Jigme Khesar Namgyel will function as a constitutional monarch. It is a rare instance in history where a king voluntarily becomes a democrat even though his people want him to remain their king!