Where
nothing's sacred anymore
Readers
of the fifties vintage might remember Sri Lankan vocalist Bill Forbes
who migrated to Britain. A song of his that somewhat inebriated
revellers sang with great gusto was one in which he employed an
exaggerated sub-continental accent (if there is such a thing) and
began "Yohhh to be in Ying ger land, now that summer's here"
and went on to praise the virtues of "Yorrrkshire pudding".
How
much more truthful it would be to sing, if people still have a voice
for it, "Oh to be still in Lanka where nothing's sacred any
more." On Thursday The Guardian newspaper carried on the first
page of its international section a headshot of President Chandrika
Kumaratunga with the caption "Unmoved Sri Lanka's leader ignores
protests and extends her term in office for an extra year",
with a longer story inside.
What
The Guardian missed or ignored, as President Kumaratunga protests,
was a significant paragraph from her TV interview, "I can remain
as president till the year 2006. But I have no intention to remain
in this dirty politics so long," she reportedly told the interviewer.
Unfortunately
the reports do not mention the name of the interviewer. But if that
individual was not a party hack or a handy prop like the kind of
chap who appears in the Milinda Moragoda TV show to pop a silly
question or two and fade away, the obvious thing to have asked President
Chandrika Kumaratunga when she discovered this- I mean "this
dirty politics."
After
all she was virtually born into politics. She is the only political
leader in the world to have had both her parents as prime ministers
of a sovereign country. That dates back to 1956. But her father
was in politics long before that. Her mother first became prime
minister in 1960 and she herself came to the helm in 1994, first
as prime minister and later as president, not once but twice.
So
when did she discover that politics was a dirty game? If she had
known it all along or much earlier in her life, did she enter politics
to cleanse it and has been found wanting?
If
she discovered it only after becoming prime minister why on earth
did she stay in office without washing her hands of this dirty game
and retiring to the tranquillity of Attanagalla, the residential
hub of Rosmead Place, or better still to a nice flat in central
London, a villa in the suburbs of Paris or even a spacious country
house in Portugal?
Surely,
now that she controls the state media and can appear in print or
any audio-visual media at the drop of a diphthong, it behoves to
explain to the Sri Lankan people, not to mention the world at large,
why she took her oaths of presidential office twice and decided
to contaminate her personal purity by wallowing further in dirty
politics.
Anyone
else who could go on state television and say politics is a dirty
game would have said a plague on all your politics and quit, or
said when she was quitting, winning the admiration of the people
and the plaudits of the democratic world. But President Kumaratunga,
in her wisdom or on the advice of heaven only knows whom, actually
says she can remain until 2006, one year more than the country thought
she could stay.
In
fact, she herself kept it a dark secret until The Sunday Times exposed
the unpublicised second swearing-in. Why so, if it was all above
board, another question that appears to have slipped the interviewer's
mind. It does make one agree readily with the president that politics
is a dirty business.
But
then some of us discovered that years ago. It does not speak very
much for the president's capacity for simple reasoning if it has
taken her all this time to realise what everybody and his ayah amma
knew.
So
then what is she still doing in president's house? Of course there
is the stereotyped answer of all politicians repeated like some
incantation. They are in this dirty business to save the country
from the other lot of scoundrels who wish to make it dirtier.
If
the daughter of two prime ministers has, at long last, discovered
that politics is dirty, not so the progeny of some politicians who
seem to thrive in the business of politics and in the politics of
business. Most of all they behave as though they are above the law
and their minister- fathers are influential enough to save them
from the rigours that ordinary Sri Lankans would be subject to should
they behave like common thugs.
How
many times have the sons of ministers been involved in intimidation,
assault and other offences that would have seen the average person
in police custody and probably beaten for it too. How often have
brawls and assaults happened in 5-Star hotels and still the same
young persons roam around as though these public places are their
family fiefdoms or bequeathed to them by the people of this country.
On
one occasion Fisheries Minister Mahinda Wijesekera was quoted as
saying that "boys will be boys" after his son was involved
in an incident. Now it appears that the police want to speak to
the same "boy". How long is it to be before these "boys"
will stop being boys and grow up into the realisation that being
the son of a minister does not provide them with a special dispensation.
That
goes for the sons of other politicians too. Minister S. B. Dissanayake's
sons are mentioned in news reports in connection with the recent
fracas-and this is not the first time either. It was not long ago
that some sons of then deputy defence minister Anuruddha Ratwatte
were behaving as though they were exempt from the law that applied
to the rest of us.
Whether
true or not, those holding public office and their families should,
like Caesar's wife, be above suspicion. As a result of the ill-mannered
and offensive behaviour of a few, all ministers and their families
are being tainted and earning the wrath of the people.
Much
of this rot started after 1977 when politicians were provided with
official bodyguards and firearms. Some of these bodyguards, with
the patronage of their political masters, later transformed themselves
into the personal enforcers and thugs of the politicians and their
families.
Corruption,
intimidation, coercion and politicisation have become so endemic
and entrenched in the body politic of Sri Lanka that institutions,
once valued and revered, are treated today with contempt by an increasingly
cynical public.
It
came as no surprise when I discovered during my recent visit to
Colombo how little respect people had for most politicians and their
families, the judiciary, police and even lawyers. Law and order
are deteriorating rapidly. The institutions of state are collapsing
under the weight of corruption, inefficiency or political manoeuvring.
Political hooliganism goes on unabated and is even tolerated. Could
such a nation survive? Something is indeed rotten but not in the
state of Denmark. |