Today also got caught in one of Mahinda's painstakingly time-eating but totally useless security checks. I first wondered whether World Cup finals have been shifted overnight to Premadasa Stadium from Barbados. The whole Galle Road was literally blocked for all types of traffic. The check? simply your ID. They look at your national ID card only!! What a check. Any guy with a decent printer could print one. And for heaven's sake how can you tell whether a guy's a terrorist or not just by looking at their ID? The bag check was there again for the sake of it, but purely useless. I bet I could've smuggled an ICBM in my backpack without them noticing. I don't think the sleepy policeman who pretended to look at my ID even saw my name. I also don't think they bagged any suspects either. What I saw was they are just stopping people and looking at their ID's just because they were ordered to, and those who ordered just did it so they can say "we've got security in this country!" at evening news.
The thing is, the government wants to prevent the people from panicking by making them feel a false sense of safety. I don't know whether the public are still dumb enough to feel safe just because some slumberjacks in uniforms are stopping morning traffic and pretending to check people's IDs. I walk into one of the high security zones in the country on a fairly routine basis and mostly they look at whatever ID I present, 80% of the time don't check my bag however heaving it is, and ask where I'm going. You don't need extremely big IQ to figure out that anything could be smuggled in if anyone really needs to. And on the other hand, LTTE has already struck at almost all the targets they wanted so we might as well go on with the futile checks.
The thing is, the government wants to prevent the people from panicking by making them feel a false sense of safety. I don't know whether the public are still dumb enough to feel safe just because some slumberjacks in uniforms are stopping morning traffic and pretending to check people's IDs. I walk into one of the high security zones in the country on a fairly routine basis and mostly they look at whatever ID I present, 80% of the time don't check my bag however heaving it is, and ask where I'm going. You don't need extremely big IQ to figure out that anything could be smuggled in if anyone really needs to. And on the other hand, LTTE has already struck at almost all the targets they wanted so we might as well go on with the futile checks.
The government has failed to safeguard the country and it's people from LTTE air attacks. GoSL has a full fledged air force but got bombed twice and almost thrice by light propeller-driven aircraft carrying homemade bombs. And now Mahinda and the whole mob are in Barbados to watch cricket, with their propaganda posters here hailing the Rajapakse Brothers. Just excellent.
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