Dinamina - the leading Lake House news paper, reported in its issue of January 26, an event where a well-known professor shared a cake in the shape of Sri Lanka, with his colleagues after a public lecture. The Professor was reportedly trying hard to drive the point that, Sri Lanka is about to be cut into pieces under the proposed Constitutional Reforms, as well as through a ‘not so transparent’ process of creating ethnic administrative divisions such as the Kalmunai District and the new Grama Sevaka Divisions in the up-country plantation areas. His main argument apparently was that, the Map of Sri Lanka needs to be re-drawn both in a literal as well as a metaphorical sense.

Apart from the politics of ‘the cake’, its economics are even more important at present. It was Marie Antoinette who said before the gathering French masses ‘if there is no bread, let them eat cake’ . When this Government came into power six years ago, the bread price was fixed at Rs. 3.50. Now it is nearly three times more, and may even reach Rs. 15 in the near future. Surprisingly, the cake price however, did not rise so rapidly!. Like Marie Antoinette, is the government asking the people to eat cake if they cannot find bread?

It is also pertinent to recall that, it was the same Professor who forecast over three years ago (Island Middle Page October 1998), the coming of the present economic crisis. But who heard those wake up calls? Instead of listening to his cries, others were commissioned to attack him personally.

Now we have reached a terrible economic impasse that threaten to plunge the whole country into total disorder. This time, it is the impending break-up of the country that the good professor is trying to forecast. Let those in authority with ears hear, and those with eyes see.
A Concerned Citizen
Nugegoda