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The political shenanigans in Colombo over the last few months which suggested an intent to abandon the local government elections on excuses so amusing, remind me of the saying of the well-known politician and minister of yesteryear, I.M.R.A. Iriyagolla.

Mr Iriyagolla was also a writer (translated Victor Hugo’s French novel Les Miserables into Sinhala) and a songwriter who composed two popular songs one of which was “Loken uthum rata Lankawai (the World’s most honoured country is Lanka).

If my memory serves me right, this happened sometime in the mid-1960s when the UNP government of Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake was in power. Mr Iriyagolla was the Education Minister in his cabinet.

A Lake House colleague who was covering the education round for the Observer and I happened to be in Minister Iriyagolla’s office in search of news stories and the usual chat. It so happened that the government had just lost three by-elections in a row.

If I remember correctly the names of all three constituencies started with the letter “B”. My colleague while commiserating over the defeat, reminded the minister of his popular song which called our country the most honoured in the world. So what happened, my colleague asked.

Immediately Minister Iriyagolla shot back in Sinhala “Lokenme uthum rata wunata inney kupadiyo”. To put it in more respectable language, he said though it is the world’s most honoured country, its inhabitants are unsavoury. That might not be the most appropriate word but I hesitate to use the one I had in mind.

If I recall that encounter from more than 50 years ago, it is because it reminds me how much Sri Lankan politics has degenerated over the years, how the thirst for power and the desire to cling on to it, having reached the pinnacle or somewhere there, have turned the country’s political culture and conduct into a dangerous cocktail of toxicity.

When I look back at my journalistic beginnings and the honourable, decent, cultured, educated, honest, incorruptible politicians who were genuinely committed to the welfare of Ceylon, as it was then, I had met and had the honour to come to know even as a novice in the profession, one wonders what brought about this precipitous descent into a political hell hole of corruption and power hunger in the name of serving the people.

How has the country ended up with such a set of politicians — avaricious, poorly educated (if educated at all but parading dubious qualifications), uncultured, living on perks and rarely paying utility bills and languishing on the fat of the country and yet have the temerity to call themselves representatives of the people.

How many of them who now inhabit the Diyawanna Oya abode whenever it is not prorogued by a record-setting president of six months, could even consider being distantly akin to those political stalwarts of character from left, right and centre that adorned the old parliament by the sea.

One has only to read the Hansards of yesteryear to understand what breadth and depth of vision and knowledge they brought to debate and discussion.

Such politicians of calibre contributed much to our upbringing and overall knowledge for many of us used to attend parliament as schoolboys. It was a learning house then, not a place of chair-throwing or chilli-powder-spraying chamber that makes a street brawl seem like an orderly place.

Those politicians of the early years of our independence, which was celebrated the other day by a military show of strength by a country in hock to the world, was backed by a competent, educated and upright civil service and a public administration that provided the essential backbone to the country.

One day in Hong Kong, then Singapore’s leader Lee Kuan Yew told me how those in emerging Singapore admired Ceylon’s administrative service and wished to fashion a similar one when Singapore achieved independence.

Instead of what we inherited, what have we turned our administration into today? By and large a gathering of mediocrity, often lackeys of politicians, not averse to dipping their hands into the corruption box and scared to stand upright and perform their duties without playing “yes sir, no sir” to every third-rate politico.

Over the past few months, the people have seen how public servants have been coerced, cajoled, cowed or corrupted into manipulating every ruse in the book to put off the local government elections by a government and its hangers-on running scared of being defeated at the polls.

Those in power know well enough that the stakes are stacked against them.

The Ranil Wickremesinghe-led UNP that two years ago failed to win a single parliamentary seat and had been hiding its face from the public most of the time since then, is trying to creep out of the woodwork. The Rajapaksa-led SLPP is putting on a brave face of confidence but its mastermind of the 2018 local elections is largely silent while it is replaced by the vociferous party general secretary.

One of the last despicable acts to halt the election in mid-stream, as it were, was to throw Government Printer Gangangi Liyanage into the deep end and let her swim or sink. Her explanations why she stopped printing the postal vote ballot papers not only raise eyebrows but are hilarious.

Putting on a brave face she claimed she was not influenced by the President or the Prime Minister who has proved a nonentity. Her department has stopped printing because she had not received the full funds for the job.

Critics have claimed that it has never been the practice for the department to wait till full payment is paid to begin printing ballots or other printing jobs.

Now I read her saying that she had asked for police protection for the department and the police sent only three policemen. With the IGP and other senior officers apparently twiddling their thumbs waiting for orders, the government applied what seems like its coup de grace.

At a meeting between the Election Commission and Treasury officials, the Treasury Secretary cited “the current adverse financial situation and the administrative decision taken by the government to allocate funds only for essential services” as the reasons for the inability to release the funds required for the election.

So it now appears that only President Wickremesinghe (perhaps as Finance Minister) is the only person who can give the necessary permission “to release funds to public institutions that are not listed under the ‘essential services’ category”.

So now is the time to say goodbye to local government elections which Wickremesinghe never wanted anyway saying that elections — of whatever size or shape — must wait more propitious times.

Who will decide when that time is nigh for people to exercise their constitutional and democratic rights in a country called the Democratic Socialist Republic. Perhaps they must wait for the IMF or the India-US nexus to give the signal.

But what if the IMF mantra fails as it has happened in some other countries to which it held out its hand of assistance and the much vaunted and awaited great leap forward does not materialise? Does it mean the people wait for the elections like waiting for Godot? What price democracy!

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)