Rajpal's Column

Government ready for final solution

They have either decided that good governance is not compatible with the People's Alliance, or they have decided that before good governance comes good politics.

But, most of the government's bad-governance advocates are still with the government. These include all types of propaganda czars, who have become infinitely more valuable for the government than various Professors and fashion designers.

The government's propaganda czars, together with the government's bad-governance advocacy group, forms one of the most tenacious Mafia's seen in the last hundred years in this country.

The line blurs. It becomes increasingly difficult to say who does the government's propaganda, and who does the government's political strategic operation.

What is clear is that these men have given themselves a justification. Which is that the PA still occupies the moral high-ground, on account of the fact that the UNP government of seventeen years that preceded it, was guilty of human rights abuses.

But, the PA's anxieties in reality have nothing to do with human rights. They were best articulated by Jeyaraj Fenandopulle, an old faithful, who said recently "paradunoth api okkoma sung.' ( If we lose we are all finished.)

So it is that the PA's bad-governance advocates are working to a full-time schedule these days.

The sense of foreboding, has been so thick that one almost feels it in the air these past few days. In the highways and bi-ways of power, even the Pajeros go slowly these days. But, the bad-governance Mafioso have not been able to conceal the plot.

As far as secrecy is concerned, the Mafioso receives a zero score. Basically, the bad-governance Mafioso thinks that elections can be bought much easier than Members of Parliament can be purchased. From a practical standpoint, this is not bad strategic thinking.

Buying MP's leaves leeway for margin of error. Dealing with small numbers is difficult, as it leaves room for plenty double-dealers and other parliamentary no-goods to short-circuit the process at the last moment. Besides, many good- governance boys, and some bad-governance boys are so worried about their own futures, that they are now following the Buddha's middle-way with a vengeance. 

Depending on which party forms the government, their political ideology will be left-of-centre or right-of-centre very soon.

Dealing with a whole electorate is a different matter. On the one hand, the transaction is with people who have less of a stake. A few Bandas and Balasinghams losing their blood and limbs at an election, and a few others ending up at the mortuary, will not alter the state of the nation to a great extent.

So, the bad-governance boys advocate going for the big picture. Besides going for an election may be cheaper than buying MP's, noting today's going rate for legislators.

Some of the tangential benefits of such a calculation should have been obvious. Once an election has been won, notwithstanding the numbers of lives lost, the numbers remain to a great extent un-alterable.

This time around, the bad-governance boys do not plan for a one or two seat toss-up that has landed them in this kind of mess.

The strategy is to hoist the UNP and the JVP on its own petard. Not only will the UNP and the JVP be branded as being in cahoots with the LTTE, the two parties will also have to answer for "having put the country's future at stake by insisting on Independent Election Commissions and Police Commissions.''

To do even better, what was done in December last year, would probably look like an audacious calculation. But, to the bad-governance advocates, these matters are peanuts.

There is the advantage of not having a charismatic counter-propaganda machine. The oppositions' counter propaganda is headed by newspapermen who have the charisma of computer operators.

But, after parliament is dissolved, the elections that will follow will have no place for propaganda of any sorts, whether charismatic born-again or plain Hitlerite.

If T56 were converted to ploughshares, pens will be converted into assault rifles and whips, and the whole electorate will be frog-marched into voting for the People's Alliance. 

Even propaganda czars will leave their desks and take their positions at the polling stations.

Bad-governance begets its own momentum. This writer almost choked listening to the US ambassador say that "violence begets violence.'' The ambassador was referring to the Air Raids in Jaffna. 

Isn't this Ghandhianism touching?

But, the political cauldron has been on the boil, and things such as peace have been forgotten, not only by the government, but even by the NGO's that advocated peace. It is like a rugger match. There are always the stoics, who will stand back and make comments, and will not be carried away by a few exciting scrum-downs.

But, if the score is 20 all, and there is five minuets to go for the referee's whistle, all the stoics their macho men and molls will be at the edge of their seats, dribbling. The political tectonic plates are in such tension these days, that everybody is dribbling and at the edge of their seats. This include those of the NGO's, perhaps even the Norwegians.

But, if the bad governance boys have their way, the referee will have to be taken to the accident ward in an ambulance. Ask any schoolboy rugger fan. It is a metaphor for our times.

Inside the glass house

Editorial/ Opinion Contents