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A
‘new look’ Parliament Look south of India, and you will see the transformation from the sublime to the ridiculous. A Renunciation of a different kind. Persons elected by the will of the people being asked by the party hierarchy to renounce their seats in Parliament for others to make their way. Within such a short time since the General Election of April 2, as many as ten (10) MPs elected or selected to that Parliament have already stepped down or crossed sides, and in place of nine of them, 9 others have made their way to the same Parliament. The SLFP, the JVP, the SLMC, the JHU and the TNA are guilty of this virtual all-party charade of what is called, representative democracy. It was a sad spectacle to see the former Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake creeping through the back door as it were and taking his oath at the second sitting of Parliament. By accident or by design, the new bucks of his own party hierarchy had forgotten the veteran and close ally of the President, and omitted him from the National List. At the time he took his oath as an MP, his entry in the House was being challenged in court by public interest groups. It was also said that he would be made only a Deputy Minister this time, thoroughly unbecoming for a former Prime Minister. In a way, at least some honour has been restored to his former office, when the President broke the rules reached with the JVP before elections to limit the cabinet to 35 in the process. The former Prime Minister has been shoved into the Cabinet, now expanded to 36 with the introduction of D.E.W Gunasekera, the latter in apparent compensation for his defeat for the Speaker's post. If we are to compare ourselves with neighbouring India, the coalition government there has 15 constituent parties, but only 28 cabinet-rank ministers to serve over 1 billion people, while Sri Lanka with a coalition government having 6 parties has 36 cabinet-ministers serving 19 millon people. The supporters of India's victorious Congress Party had legitimate grounds for being unhappy that Sonia Gandhi did not become the Prime Minister. They worked for her tirelessly, and she for them, for victory. During the campaign, however, there was nary a word from her that she would be the Prime Ministerial candidate. In the Sri Lankan scheme of things, an election to Parliament is slowly becoming an exercise where you put forward one set of candidates and have another set of persons sitting there. If that be the case, then the April 2 election has become a sham election. In a sense, one can appreciate this monkeying with the electoral process if the objective is to get into Parliament the creme de la creme. Considering some of the 'new faces' it would somehow look like the dregs de la dregs that have been hand-picked to cash IOUs of varying sorts in the murky world of Sri Lankan politics. Then, take the case of the plantation workers based CWC who like to have it both ways, to have the cake and eat it, to sit in the cabinet and sit in the opposition, get the votes associating itself with one party and vote with a rival party. And as we see before us this week, the scramble for seats for the forthcoming Provincial Council elections, is the voter being asked to get up early and cast his or her vote for a party and candidate, only to see another set of 'monkeys' jumping from one party to another, and non-candidates creeping in through the back door to these very Councils no sooner the results are announced. If the National Legislature has given the lead, not only will political power, but political example will surely devolve to the Provinces. |
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