Sunday Times 2
The things vote seekers do!
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This week marks three months since the islandwide curfew was imposed in our country to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus. Not only did we have the country locked down and a 24-hour curfew imposed beginning Friday March 20, Sri Lanka also suspended all international flights to the country.
And it was during that same week that the Election Commission prudently and pragmatically postponed the parliamentary elections that were scheduled for April 25. While most of us law-abiding citizens confined ourselves to our homes as instructed and modified our lives to help curb the spread of this deadly disease, there were, of course, some people who remained above the law, continuing to engage in social activities and defying the need to maintain social distancing.
The action that the government took in March has served us citizens very well — and today, three months later, although we are not back to where we were before the coronavirus surfaced, we are gradually resuming normal — or perhaps I should say ‘New Normal” life.
And the election that was postponed looks like it will go ahead as planned on August 5 — just six weeks from now.
In the old days, candidates who were seeking votes from our gullible citizens would stage election rallies and go house-to-house to campaign. As we got more modern, campaigning took the form of gaudy posters untidily pasted on walls and lamp-posts, large newspaper advertisements, television spots and even posts on social media channels like Facebook. As elections in our country moved from the first-past-the-post electorate-based hustings to district-based proportional representation, the aim of prospective MPs was to get as much publicity as possible — to increase their recognition factor and get their names known by as many prospective voters as possible.
And to get known these days, they have been resorting to every trick in the book.
Take Mahindananda Aluthgamage for example — a man reputed to be an eloquent speaker in three languages who is now married to former Prime Minister DM Jayaratne’s daughter (the second marriage for both of them). Contesting through the SLPP in the Kandy district, he (quite out of the blue) made the allegation last week in an interview with News First that the 2011 Cricket World Cup Final between India & Sri Lanka was fixed.
Interestingly, Aluthgamage was the Minister of Sports at the time this “match-fixing” is alleged to have taken place. What baffled me is why he stayed quiet for so long — nine long years in fact — before making this accusation in such a casual manner when interviewed by a journalist.
If he was seriously concerned that the 2011 match was fixed (as he should have been if he was the Minister responsible for Sports at the time), should he not have brought it to the attention of the International Cricket Committee — or the CID — at that time? Why wait for so long (for a time when his election campaign is running out of steam) to make the allegation? Could it be that, having been overlooked by the current president for ministerial office even though he had been a minister in previous governments, he felt that getting recognition in this era of corona is so difficult, that he should try to get any type of publicity because it is better than no publicity at all?
Then take another aspiring member of parliament, Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna Amman. Once upon a time he was a top operative of the LTTE, being known as Colonel Karuna and heading LTTE operations in the Eastern Province. This was the time when the LTTE massacred hundreds of Sri Lankan police officers and civilians.
Times changed and Karuna turned against his former boss Prabhakaran, claimed to have renounced terrorism, helped the Sri Lanka army in its war with the LTTE in his Eastern Province stronghold – and (to cut a long story short) entered parliament and was made a deputy minister. So what does Karuna Amman do when campaigning for a parliamentary seat in Digamadulla? He proudly makes a statement that he is more dangerous than the coronavirus because he was responsible for many more deaths — including the deaths of between 2000 to 3000 Sri Lankan soldiers in one night at Elephant Pass!
Was this mind-boggling claim intended to impress the gullible masses gathered round to hear him at the election gathering? Was this to thumb his nose at the Rajapaksas? President Rajapaksa after all lost his own army colleagues — as did many Sri Lankan families — in the debacle at Elephant Pass.
Was it just that Karuna’s tongue ran away with him when he was campaigning — or was it that by glorifying the deaths of Sri Lankan soldiers he was inadvertently revealing where his true loyalties lay?
The CID has quite correctly begun an investigation into Karuna’s statement. Predictably that erstwhile ex-terrorist has taken refuge in the common escape clause of many politicians when wanted for questioning or taken into custody — he claimed that he was indisposed and was not well enough to make a statement. How strange! He is fit and well enough to boast about killing Sri Lankan army soldiers — but a couple of days later he got so unwell that he was too feeble to be interviewed by the Police!
In the face of such antics by people like Aluthgamage and Karuna, I ask myself: Are these the untrustworthy jokers we are being asked to send as lawmakers and responsible legislators to parliament?