The SAARC Summit through which the Mahinda Rajapaksa government sought to showcase itself to the South Asian region will end today and the visiting leaders of eight countries of a region whose population tops 1.5 billion will leave tomorrow after being spared the sight of the beggars of Colombo, the stray dogs near the BMICH, the shanties around Slave Island, the rutted roads of our city and sundry other unpleasant things that are a fact of everyday life for people living here. The big show, beamed live on national television from the BMICH which China gifted us many years ago, enabling then Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike to host a Non-Aligned Summit, did not come cheap. Even in this country plagued with galloping inflation, Rs. 2.8 billion is not peanuts and the chances are that the final bill will run higher.

Sri Lanka’s leadership, past and present, have always liked a show. So the present administration, notwithstanding the risk that the Sun God in the Wanni may try to attract attention to himself with yet another act of brutal terror, offered to stand in for the Maldivian Republic which found itself unable at this time to take its turn to host the summit. In the event, the LTTE made a weak attempt to project itself as good boys with a unilateral ceasefire, similar to others it had declared when the Tigers were feeling the military heat. Nevertheless the government could not take a chance and those of us, often sitting in air conditioned cars at road blocks, cursing the president, his government and SAARC, spared little thought for the soldiers and policemen (and women) whose task of standing up to any eventuality was obviously thousand-fold more uncomfortable than that of the so-called ``general public.’’

In the run-up to SAARC, we had ministers of the government saying that the public should suffer small inconveniences for the greater good. Coming from the mouths of those who suffer no inconveniences either at road blocks or the numerous other irritants that are the lot of ordinary folk on a daily basis, such words would have meant nothing to those to whom they were intended. But the president knows very well that the kind of gripes that have been expressed here largely belong to middle class city dwellers. His constituents are out there in the rural hinterland, perhaps enjoying the sights of the dancing girls with their pom-poms doing their thing against the backdrop of the BMICH fountains. They would not know what the sleek Mercedes limousines, armoured against possible LTTE terror, cost the taxpayers of this country. Nor will they care or think that our ruling elite will appropriate these vehicles for their use once the show is over. That, after all, is the way the papadam crumbles in this democratic socialist republic of ours. We’ve lived with it in the past and will, no doubt, live with it in the future.

SAARC has given little to the teeming millions of South Asia who today number over 1.5 billion, the majority living in poverty. Those of us who know well what a hundred rupee note will buy in this country today should reflect on the fact that three quarters of the people of the eight member countries of SAARC live on less than two dollars a day - a little over 200 rupees in our money and considerably less elsewhere in the region where the currency is much stronger than ours. The sumptuous banquets laid out for their leaders by a host country where ``clean suit, empty pocket’’ is part of the culture, will cost more per plate than the vast majority of those whose taxes fund such boru shoke can hope to earn in a month. Each summit has seen the assertion or the hope that this time it will be different although the track record says something else.

But there are things to be learned from the SAARC experience, things that many of us knew perhaps subconsciously. Take the repairs to the roads as an example. From the time R.A. de Mel Mawatha, better known as Duplication Road, was made one way from Kollupitiya junction to Vajira Road in Bambalapitiya, with bollards torn down and various other consequential actions, the road surface remained in a pathetic state until a SAARC impetus awakened sleeping giants. The fact that this was one of the capital city’s main thoroughfares meant nothing to anybody who mattered. But suddenly we saw some frantic roadwork. Meeting tight deadlines usually mean bigger bills and the chances are that the work that was done in various places in preparation for the summit would probably have cost more than it would otherwise have if completed at a more leisurely pace.

Perhaps the worst governmental act done in the guise of SAARC was the demolition of homes in the Slave Island area. While alternative houses, it was loudly claimed, had been offered to the displaced, it soon became crystal clear that these virtual sheds, hurriedly cobbled together with rough planks, were not ready when the bulldozers and back hoes did their deadly work. Sadly, too many things in this country are done in a mighty hurry. Nothing or very little is begun until a deadline stares the responsible authority in the face. Shoddy patchwork follows and anga bera gannawa or saving your own skin is the name of the game. The care and planning that was once the hallmark of the public service before independence and in the early post-independence period has been allowed to erode and is today a distant, albeit pleasant, memory. The politicization of the public service has unleashed monumental inefficiency with the level of patronage rather than merit too often being the criterion of selection for plum jobs. How else do you explain the presence of the man behind the Mihin Air disaster sitting right behind the president during SAARC meetings?