THE POLITICS BEHIND THE SAITM FARCE

(WINSTON DE VALLIERE Political analyst)

For starters let's look this week at the persisting controversy of the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine in the context of globally accepted definitions in the realm of higher education. I will come to the politics of it shortly in an effort to look at this whole thing without a jaundiced eye but through the prism of established and acknowledged fact.
University – Has a connotation of being well respected and well known. Secondary and postgraduate education. DOES SAITM FALL WITHIN THAT CATEGORY?
College – Can mean roughly the same as University as well as a general area of study. For example a University can have a College of Math and Science as well as a College of Engineering. But attending such University Colleges is considered the same as attending that University itself... IS SAITM A UNIVERSITY COLLEGE?
Academy – In the United States often denotes pre-college education (High School) but not necessarily. The word 'academy' is the common generic term for school or educational institution. The example of an Air Force Academy could be suggested as being a university of sorts the problem being that academies the world over are more or less considered as being on the level of primary schools of specialist trade/occupation related learning.
Institute – Even more general, there are many institutes that do not fall under the category of University or even Academy. LDS Institute is an example.
Community College Or a secondary school, sort of a poorer second cousin to a university.
Back now to SAITM: The University Grants Commission back in 2006 would not touch the SAITM application for recognition with a barge pole because it wanted to have nothing to do with attempts to set up an institute that lacked standards on par with globally accepted standards in medical education and training, or simply because the UGC felt uncomfortable about creating a precedent in a proliferation of private higher educational institutes. But then, such institutes do exist and offer higher qualifications in banking, accountancy etc.
One has to admit, however, that those subjects are a far cry from the dangerously delicate prospect of effectively treating a sick child, man or woman. There's a big difference between an inanimate accounts ledger or cash machine or computer ...or even crooked auditors.
We are talking of medicine here and human life and plainly on that score one must applaud the UGC's decision, even though not whole-heartedly!
Silence is eloquent
President Rajapaksa and SAITM boss Dr. Neville Fernando were Joint Secretaries of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, and had been close friends for decades. President Maithripala Sirisena was Health Minister at the time that the UGC rejected SAITM's application. Nothing was known about what the State Medical Council felt about the issue and it's up to it to go public with an opinion on this vital affair. Today's Health Minister was on Rajapaksa's Cabinet when the UGC rejected SAITM's application. The President's brother Basil was Minister in charge of the BOI at the time. Neither the current President nor Minister Rajitha had a say in the matter, or perhaps did not want to have a say in it at a time when Rajapaksa wielded absolute power. So much for collective responsibility!
And so the President's and today's Health Minister's silence on the issue strikes home like thunder bolts! Silence is eloquent and all that sort of thing eh?
Dr. Neville Fernando went to the BOI with his application and I'm betting that to this day Basil knew nothing about it. While my tongue is still in my cheek let me hasten to add that maybe all this is news to the ebullient ex-minister!
The BOI however had stipulated that the SAITM application could only be approved if SAITM was affiliated to a reputed foreign university.
This passes the ball into the UGC's court because if the Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy, (NNSMA) to which SAITM is affiliated, does not meet qualifying global medical education standards implied in our law, then we have an issue relating to SAITM's validity. But if NNSMA has global UNIVERSITY recognition, which is obviously what the Lankan law refers to, then the issue is closed and the GMOA, IUSF et al must shut up.
The Ministry of Health at that time apparently granted approval and SAITM went ahead with incorporation. The Health Minister then is today's President. In other words, the former President and today's President have both given SAITM the 'Thumbs Up' signal. The joke is this: Does the GMOA, JO and IUSF collectively torch effigies of both Presidents? Or just that of the incumbent one? Do they also torch the BOI?
So we're having the amusingly complex scenario, of two Presidents and two Health Ministers under the GMOA guillotine?
But that is not what it is made out to be. The MR camp has made a huge gaffe shoring up resistance to SAITM because anything will do to sustain pressure on the government now that the CB affair has also been adroitly dealt with by the President and PM and thus preempting a rocking of the Unity Government's boat which was the end objective of the GMOA's 'concern' with allegedly low standards of medical education.
Be that as it may, one is obliged to ask why the GMOA did not raise this issue with the Rajapaksa Government that approved the application and for some 8 years more until the Rajapaksa regime was voted out of power. That stinks. Whether it stinks more than the GMOA's antics which are a manifestation of blatantly cheap politicking needs a toss of the coin.
All that needs to be verified is whether the Nizhny Novgorod Academy meets the legally defined status of a University as implied in Sri Lankan law as a prerequisite for approval of SAITM. If it does, that settles the issue!
Dr. Neville Fernando is on record as having argued that his academic staff is the best in the country. He claims to have Professors from the State sector as examiners for final year examinations in medicine, who are said to have expressed satisfaction with the standards of medical education imparted to SAITM students. The same Professors sit as examiners for final year examinations in State Universities.
Looked at objectively in the context if the facts I have laid out, it seems obvious that the GMOA's handlers, as usual, are simply hell bent on exploiting mass ignorance of the backdrop to these issues to merely stoke socio-political unrest and derail the process of governance. This is not a legitimate or conscionable use of the freedom of expression, assembly or dissent. This abrasively crude politicization of a lame duck issue by the GMOA makes it abundantly clear that in such instances it's nothing short of mass-scale cruelty to patients by those who claim to be qualified medical practitioners.
Obviously there's more to medicine than qualifications, whether it be from a University, Academy or Institute. All that is as garbage, when those sworn under the Hippocratic Oath, consider it moral to abandon their posts and suffering patients by the multiple thousands to decline to the level of political bum-kissers.
Physician, heal thyself, you stink!