Wild promises and pledges are part and parcel of election campaigns. Sajith Premadasa has certainly been quite liberal in dishing out goodies or rather promising to do so. And yet, the promise of sanitary pads for women does strike a chord. Makes sense.
Of course it would be an insult to all women to believe that any woman would vote for someone just because he or she promised free sanitary pads and thereby allow them to save a few bucks. Sri Lanka, moreover, is now officially an Upper Middle Income Country and such trinkets hardly make saving-waves.
Still. Good move.
Baby Premadasa’s pad-pledge reminded me of something Daddy Premadasa did way back when he was President (the most brutal and bloody presidency ever, let us not forget). Two days before Independence Day, Ranasinghe Premadasa made an appeal to the entire country: fly a national flag! Out of fear or agreement, many did. That’s not what’s interesting. What is remarkable is that the shops were flooded with national flags the very next morning. Someone had already produced the flags. Someone clearly made a killing on Papa Premadasa’s ‘nationalism’. Aloysius Mudalali was that someone.
So now, more than 25 years later, we have Baby for Daddy, feminism (the terms used by his cheering squad of leftists and liberals) instead of nationalism (‘pseudo’ should be the prefix), and Capital Maharaja instead of Aloysius. Reminds me of the first paragraph of Karl Marx’s ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’: ‘Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.’ Daddy Boy’s time was tragic (for the people) and Sonna Boy is an unqualified farce!
Aloysius helped Daddy and the media stations of the Maharaja helped/helps Sonna Boy. ‘You help me, I help you’. Same old, same old.
Nevertheless, the sanitary pad promise is a good one, let me repeat. To paint it as some kind of championing of women, women’s issues and the promise of a feminist president is on the other hand, laughable.
Two issues. First, who pays? Daddy didn’t use Treasury funds, but he pulled one over the people. Baby Premadasa is no different. It could have been worse, of course. For example Baby Premadasa’s yahapalana government made and still makes a big song and dance about insuring all school children. A good thing on the surface, just like the sanitary pads. Who pays? Why, the people! And who benefits? Why, the private insurance companies and private hospitals!
And there’s even more to the sanitary pad story than meets the eye. Baby Premadasa’s government imposed a tax on sanitary pads. Naturally, this makes for increased demand for ‘free pads’. In moves Premadasa Junior, beating his chest and promising the same. Neat, ain’t it?
A petty retailer’s trick, this pad business, nothing more. Like father, like son. Not surprising. After all, Baby Premadasa can’t stop talking about Papa’s genes. He’s clearly inherited his father’s penchant for such tricks.
Neat. And cheap. Not very presidential, though.
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