If the JVP was planning to teach the Government a lesson by calling a token general strike, the move appeared to have failed. The fire that the JVP breathed in the Legislature on Wednesday, the day prior to the July 10 strike had fizzled out by next afternoon. It was then the turn of the Government to gloat that the working masses had put country before self and ignored the call by the trade unions led by JVP Anuradhapura District parliamentarian K.D Lal Kantha.
So confident was the JVP MP when he spoke in Parliament on Wednesday, he even offered to resign his seat in the Legislature as well as from the leadership of the trade unions that called the strike if the trade union action failed to cripple the transport sector. Sadly for him bus and railway services operated even better than on normal days and Government members were calling on him to keep to his pledge and step down.
Such a call sounds naive in a country like Sri Lanka where most politicians make noble pronouncements about resigning if this or that does not happen but soon forget such pledges.
However, there was an actual resignation in Parliament last Tuesday. Geetanjana Gunawardena announced he was stepping down as the Deputy Speaker citing a conflict of interests after his brother Dinesh Gunawardena was appointed Chief Government Whip. The next day he was appointed to a non-controversial position, as a Minister (Non Cabinet) of Housing.
If politicians begin to cite conflict of interests and resign on such ethical issues, most politicians from the Executive downwards would have to step down and go home given how nepotism rules every sphere of public life these days.
Politicians of course are luckier than other working people of this country because even if they resign, there is always room for them to make their way back to the Legislature and take off from where they left. One such politician is SLMC Leader Rauff Hakeem who resigned his Parliament seat in April to contest the eastern provincial council poll and re-entered the Legislature on Thursday as a National List MP.
Resignations and appointments aside, the JVP continued to direct its wrath at the government. This has probably been set off more by the frustration caused by the Weerawansa split than by a sudden realization that human rights are being violated in the country, journalists being attacked and the cost of living going through the roof and that the excuse of fighting a war being used to cover up all these issues.
JVP Kurunegala district MP Bimal Ratnayaka speaking during the emergency debate on Tuesday said the “Rajapaksa Police” is cracking the skulls of Buddhist monks, assaulting and abducting media personnel and by its misdeeds undoing all the good work that is being done by the security forces.“It’s a group of rogues who are running the government. They are like the monkey who got a razor into his hands and eventually destroyed himself,” he said.
Since the strike, the hostility between the two sides has grown even more.
The UNP on the other hand which extended some half hearted support to the strike is sitting back enjoying the verbal battles between one-time friends now-turned foes.
The present Parliament was elected in 2004 with the UPFA comprising the SLFP and the JVP forming the Government and the UNP/SLMC/CWC, TNA and the JHU sitting in opposition. Today the House has become a hotch potch of many breakaway groups and independent MPs. The UNP breakaway faction led by Karu Jayasuirya sits on the government side, Wimal Weerawansa’s own group more or less aligned to the Government, sits in the opposition, the SLFP (M) of Mangala Samaraweera sits in the Opposition, the SLMC which has split many times has majority of MPs in the Government and three in the Opposition while the JHU and the CWC too have had some of their members changing sides. It is only the 22 TNA MPs who have remained with the Party so far.
All these crossovers and changing loyalties have assured the Government the much needed majority it needs in the Legislature so that it can ignore all criticism by the Opposition. Although the government now has a new tool of power in the form of a failed opposition-instigated strike to rant on about its popularity, it won’t be able to ignore for long the very real problems that the people are facing on many fronts. |
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