Columns

• People face marathon obstacle course to exercise the right to vote

If there is one thing left in this ghost-isle, worthy of a 200 million buck bash to celebrate 75 years of independence, it, undoubtedly, is democracy, however battered and scarred it may be.

From the sad catalogue of corruption, mismanagement, wastage, nepotism, failures, false promises, deceit, humbug, hypocrisy, phony nationalism, racism, bigotry, terrorism and bloodshed, it is a miracle that democracy’s flame has survived the long night of gusty governmental winds to snuff it out.

Through the smog of Lanka’s inglorious 75 years of freedom of being masters of its own fate, democracy’s guiding light still flickers, its divine spark still burns, still gives hope to 22 million people that the power to elect a government or send it home, the power to make a government accountable to the people’s will, is in their sovereign hands.

Even the most persistent efforts by authoritarian regimes to dim the lamp or extinguish the torch have been gallantly resisted and defeated, though not without losing some of its shine.  But now, the only thing left worth celebrating is itself in a perilous state.

Democracy’s most fundamental right, upon which the entire edifice rests, without which all other rights will be rendered redundant, now faces its severest test.  The right to the franchise, the hallowed right of the people to elect public representatives ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ is under siege.

The lengths to which the government has gone to delay an election, albeit a local one, and the means to which it has stooped, however legal, to deny the people’s right to exercise their franchise, a right it is constitutionally bound to uphold, do not bode well for its leaders. It does no good for them to be seen to circumvent the constitutional timetable

Earlier in the month, the odious campaign had begun in earnest to put off the local government elections in March.  It began innocuously enough with some SLPP MPs thinking out loud why the Rs. 10 billion the election would cost could not be better spent on feeding the needy or combatting malnutrition.

No sooner had the Election Commissioner announced nominations on January 4, these bleeding heart ministers from SLPP’s school of infantile thought began tub-thumping the message to the grassroots belly that, though the SLPP had shoved the people into the cesspit it had dug, only another charge of the same SLPP Light Brigade — and no other — could pull the people out.

Else they threaten, things will get worse. How far worse must things get, how far deep must the people fall in this bottomless pit of perdition to which SLPP’s collective crimes condemned the people?

If this pathetic attempt to soften the underbelly did not raise a chorus of approval, Home Affairs Secretary Hapuhinna’s blatant bid on the 10th to upset the election cart shocked the nation. Despite the cabinet denying his charge that it had a hand in the spoiler, Hapuhinna’s ‘sorry’ sufficed to sweep the scandal beneath the carpet.

On January 18, the Government introduced a bill to regulate election campaign financing. Although both sides in the House were in agreement with its contents, the Opposition asked for an amendment that the Act will not apply to the March polls.  It was enacted, nevertheless, without the amendment.

Ominously waiting in the wings of the House to make its show-stopping entry on stage if demanded, is an out-and-out Trojan Horse, silently clicking its still shoeless hooves. Brought to the cheers of a Full House, is an SLPP MP’s private bill demanding a mandatory 25 percent of youth in nomination lists at future polls. The Opposition fears a trap.

If the bill becomes law before the March poll date, nominations filed will have to be scrapped and new nominations, in line with the new Act’s 25 percent youth requirement, will have to be filed again, thus postponing the elections.

After pursuing these legal and unorthodox practices, the focus has shifted to the Election Commission itself, with a member of the Commission Sarojini Charles being the first to crumble. Her resignation on the 26th follows the newly appointed constitutional council’s sudden decision to call for potential members to the commission. But her exit alone will not impact the polls unless two more follow suit.

If SLPP’s Government was so afraid of being bared raw bereft of mass support, if it was so determined to avoid March elections, it would have been far more honourable — and a lot less bother — to have announced, months in advance, that LG polls would not be held in March and enacted a bill to that effect to avoid the constitutional requirement.  It could have been pointed out that to test the nation’s pulse at this juncture, may destabilise the government and jeopardise IMF bailout talks, delaying the nation’s recovery.

Had it done so, the Government could have weathered the expected storm easier than being suddenly caught in the whirlwind it had cockily sown. But it did not.

Instead, today, the nation is afire, the people galvanised at the prospect of being able to vote at last. By January 21, over 20,000 contestants had paid their deposits and are already aboard the polls bandwagon. The caravan is on the move toward the March hustings, with millions marching behind. But a determined government attempts through unbecoming ways to ambush and halt its progress; and, from the waylaid election flotilla parade, drag the ‘right to the franchise’ for a public chopping.

With the Star of Democracy, the only worthy left to celebrate Lanka’s 75 years of freedom, facing the axe, what else remains to fete on February 4th Independence Day?

The Government has sought to justify spending Rs. 200 million to celebrate 75 years of independence as ‘an investment for the future’.

True. With nothing to showcase in the past 75 years except the accumulated sins of mismanagement, wastage, failures, negligence, nepotism and corruption, what is left to showcase in the present except the cost of its final tally which has left millions in poverty, the fields ruined, the rice bowls bare, the children malnourished, the fuel rationed, the power disrupted, the industries at a standstill, banks downgraded, hospitals without medicines, schools without books, and an economy that is bankrupt?

Successive governments, as the new masters of our destiny, have made a pig’s breakfast out of seventy five years of freedom, and left a people without hope, left many to wonder   whether they would’ve been better off under the British yolk than under the local jackboot.

With the past and present affording naught to celebrate but mourn the abject shame of our ghastly failures, no wonder the government was perforce to look to the future to celebrate the miracles they will create for us within the next 25 years.  No doubt the diplomats, invited to the freedom fete, will be impressed to know that, though in the gutter, Lanka’s leaders have still not lost the mystic touch to see not a lone star but a whole galaxy shine on Lanka in the unknown future.

But what will truly leave western world diplomats impressed is how democracy still survives the persecution, how the flame of freedom still burns in every Lankan breast, and how, when other countries in the South Asian region fell, at some time or other after independence, under a military jackboot, only India and Lanka kept faith in democracy’s light to ward off even its shadow from falling upon them. How democracy has been the bulwark that has kept the red wolf in white clothing from creeping through the gates.

It’s the ennobling stuff that redeems the culpable sins of a people who have often chosen the wrong leaders and, as a result, are now down and out, begging for help. It is the stuff that makes western taxpayers urge their accountable governments to grant their foreign aid to help democratic governments sustain a free people through an economic nightmare. Not use public money to prop tin pot dictatorships with scant regard for human rights.

But it will not do, now will it — to showcase the last jewel left in our once gem-studded crown — to wheel in battle-scarred Democracy, strapped in a straitjacket and stretched on the rack with the Damocles Sword tenuously dangling over its head?

The only justifiable reason to celebrate Independence when the nation can ill afford is not to show the world we can but to convince the world that there is something still left worth saving.

This February 4th on Independence Day, when Ranil Wickremesinghe takes the guard of honour for the first time as President, it shall be wise for him to contemplate on the aspirations that must have dwelled in the breasts of modern Ceylon’s founding fathers on that auspicious day. No doubt, their collective hopes and wishes at the nation’s rebirth, echoed, paraphrased, Lincoln’s unforgettable lines:

‘That this nation, reforged in Liberty and dedicated to the principle that all are equal, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from Ceylon’.