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Pontius Pilate would have been proud of the way the SLPP’s Sagala Kariyawasam has mastered the art of washing his hands of sin after his party had flayed the hopes of millions for a local government election on March 9.

After the President vowed his priorities will be ‘first the economy, second the economy, thirdly the economy’, at a Kandy Rotarian meeting on the eve of his National Emblem Perehera, and stated thereafter that ‘next year, after the economic recovery, the people will be able to enjoy their democratic rights and have an election’, SLPP’s private sighs of relief, instantly turned to public expressions of ire at being denied an election, which they claimed, they would have handsomely won hands down.

Stepping out from their tub-thumping revelry in the wings, they led the mourning at the wake for the restless soul of Democracy. Mahinda Rajapaksa told journalists in Parliament: ‘Elections are not meant to be postponed. We opine that the election should go ahead as scheduled,’ while a dismayed SLPP MP S.B. Dissanayake said, ‘I had even got an auspicious time to vote. We wanted the election. We knew that we would have won it.’

But had the election been held, would they have laughed to find themselves sent coffined home who now weep to see it denied and their fate in the masses’ hands, spared an ignoble end?

After hopes had faded for a March election, SLPP Secretary drew a strange distinction between the Government and the SLPP. He said that the SLPP is not the Government and declared, ‘the Government is the President’s, not the SLPP’s’.  That’s news.

One would have been forgiven for thinking that,

•           since all the ministers are SLPP MPs or opportunistic crossovers;

•           since the SLPP with a record 6.9 million votes formed a two-thirds majority in parliament in 2020 and remains the ruling majority;

•           since 134 SLPP MPs voted to elect a lone national list UNP MP, who had lost his own seat at the last general election, as President of Sri Lanka; and ever since had held him to ransom to do their bidding;

it was the Rajapaksa-controlled SLPP government which was the puppeteer of power, albeit, from the shadows.

Convenient, isn’t it, now to bewail the loss of play when bad light was adjudged to justify preventing the SLPP suffering an innings defeat? The losers were the opposition heavyweights who fumed, denied the chance to show off their colours.

The SJB Leader Sajith said his party will be taking their objections to the streets in protests at the government’s move while the JVP leader Anura had already warned earlier that if elections are not held on March 9, ‘the party will take to the streets with hundreds of thousands of people.’

But it was the people, no doubt, who were the true losers denied the chance to elect public representatives ‘by the people, of the people, for the people.’

These were the proud people whose ancestors had been the first amongst the Asians to whom the British Crown had granted the precious gift of universal suffrage 91 years ago. It is a right the present generation has enjoyed for 75 years since independence, the priceless heirloom they inherited and which they, in turn, wish to bequeath to their descendents.

To tamper with this hallmark of democracy is to play dice, nay, to play Russian roulette with the people’s faith in democracy itself and to risk plunging this nation into chaos. The faith is endangered when they witness its professed believers turn iconoclasts to shatter the enshrined idol for transient political profit. And then use a motley lot of humbug, deceit, and pseudo legal pulp fiction to lend credence to a feigned ignorance that a March election was ever on the cards. The spectre of a phantom poll had fooled all and sundry.   Doesn’t this comedy of errors, staged in public, serve only to insult the native intelligence of the people of Lanka and, by such unwanted ridiculous excesses, help to throw more oil on the burning volcano of a people’s seething anger?

As lovelorn Zara, in Congreve’s play The Mourning Bride, says, ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned,’ it should be borne in mind that neither heaven’s rage nor hell’s fury can equal in temper, the wrath of a mild people, held hostage by poverty, fooled, vilified as constituting a nation of suckers.

Are we now to fold up the electoral map of Sri Lanka, put the constitutional book in the store-room and place democracy in cold storage till the prayed for economic miracle suddenly manifests itself in our midst? Can theoretical formulas for economic recovery successfully work in a highly volatile ground situation where public discontent is rife and opposition to the government rampant?

Even if and when we receive the IMF bailout of a paltry 2.9 billion dollars, will the gateway to world lenders still remain closed due to the deteriorating ground situation in a country where the legal infrastructure needed to forge investor confidence, lies on the anvil, beaten out of shape, regularly fashioned according to political idiosyncrasies? Will the world’s lending agencies and foreign investors dam the sluice gates to prevent the stream of dollars flowing to the island, the dollar-rich tributaries from which Lanka expects to irrigate her dollar-parched economy?

The question that now trembles on the nation’s lips is whether anyone, even one elected by 90 percent of the populace as President, has the singular right to suspend elections on the grounds of poverty or anything else, and put on hold its resumption until better times have dawned at a future date?

However good his intentions or however valid his line of reasoning might be, what constitutional right can a president invoke to rule the electoral turf out of bounds to the people until after the grass has fully recovered with next season’s expected monsoon rains?

Wouldn’t it have been more desirous for even a 90-percent elected President to have first sought and obtained a constitutional amendment to base his decision on solid legal ground rather than risk walking on perilous marshes to stake his presumed right on swampy bog?

Will the consequences of such a trek on dangerous terrain far outweigh the benefits to be gained from this off-the-beaten-track adventure? Will it solidify the molten lava of a people’s hate? Or make heaven’s manna fall on the island’s shores?

For students of history, the warning signs should be clear enough. When democracy has been exploited to the utmost, when its tenets have been warped, twisted and mutilated to the extreme, when the State’s constitutional powers have been remorselessly abused by those that have governed for their own corrupt ends, and when institutions, set up as the citadel’s guardian deities to check for excesses, miserably fail to perform its duty to the people and join the hounds it is expected to kennel, then the little that is left of democracy ceases to hold any value and becomes the usurped creed of the infidels. Any wonder then if this degenerate behaviour of the Brahmins of Democracy should drive the people to turn to the blood-soaked arms of dubious prophets, peddling a recycled dogma, salvaged from history’s trash bin, newly billed and parroted as the utopian canon to embrace for instant salvation.

When democracy is condemned to the gutter, even red stars that flash a feint twinkle, though its light source has long been dead, still seem to temptingly flicker as irresistible beacons of hope.

In the wake of the farce that has been enacted to justify this cruel blow to democracy that had laid it comatose, with the last nail in its coffin crookedly driven home this week and the last rites for the condemned, left to be solemnly administered in May, the Lankan people will have much to grieve, much to regret and much to lose when the full force of its bloody consequences arrive shortly on their doorsteps.

Alas, the icons of power, willfully blind to folly, fail to realise they are digging their own graves, some even demanding bigger shovels.

Agricultural Ministry’s ‘doublespeak’ culture It is now open season to kill a variety of animals since they have been taken off the protected species list, it was disclosed last week. Farmers have been given the green light by Agricultural Minister Mahinda Amaraweera to kill a number of species, the Daily Mirror reported last Thursday. LANKA’S BIRD OF PARADISE: Peacock in the line of fire On the condemned list of species which can be shot on sight are monkeys, peacocks, grizzled giant squirrels, porcupines, wild boars and toque macaques. Their crime: damaging farmers’ crops. As a video clip showed, Minister Amaraweera told farmers: “We have received the final report regarding the wild animals that damage the crops. They have been taken off the protected list. Anyone can kill them now. Nowhere in the world is there a solution to this than to kill them.’ The minister said, ‘I searched many ways to find a solution. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate any. However, we must control such animal populations. All that remains is to provide the necessary facilities for the farmers.’ Culling in most countries is done by authorised wildlife officers. Not left in the hands of enraged farmers to take up arms to decimate animal species by firing at will. As a farmer in the crowd told the Minister, ‘give us the okay and we will leave no one ‘rilawa’ left.’ But is it wise to give guns to farmers to solve the pest problem? Elsewhere in the island, farmers face the daily nightmare of marauding elephants invading their fields and homes. For years they have demanded consecutive governments to solve the perennial elephant-human conflict without success. Elephant herds, driven out by commercial invasion to their natural habitats, have no option but to foray into cultivated fields to survive. The farmers’ demand has risen for guns to provide the final solution but successive governments have wisely resisted the demand. Now that Minister Amaraweera has decided to provide the wherewithal to the farmers to slaughter monkeys at will, he will also have to extend the same weaponry to farmers elsewhere to kill the pests taken off the protected list. But the same gun that mows down the unprotected peacock can also be used to kill the protected elephant or even a trespassing human, with the right of self defence raised to excuse the kill. Are we to have an army of farmers with weapons to ostensibly kill squirrels and wild boars but which can be turned against all? But elephant activists or the anti-gun lobby need not be unduly alarmed. Not yet.  The Morning newspaper this week reported that the Agricultural Minister’s Media Secretary had denied that permission had been granted to kill animals. Media Secretary Dharma Wanninayake told the newspaper: ‘There were some media reports to the effect that permission had been granted to kill several animals that destroy crops, but there is no truth to them. A committee is in place to find solutions to this issue and it is currently having discussions with all the relevant parties, but it has not yet received any proposal which can be implemented. That is why Amaraweera said that there is no other solution other than killing animals. That does not mean that permission has been granted to kill them.’ He further said: ‘During a recent meeting with some farmers, Amaraweera said that there was no other option to minimise crop damages caused by animals other than killing them. He said so when he met some potato farmers in Boralanda. That was not an official statement either. That is what some media institutions had misinterpreted.’ So that’s the new modus operandi, then. The Minister tells the farmers what they like to hear. His Media Secretary then assures wildlife activists with what they wish to hear. And if things get out of hand, blame the media for misrepresentation. PS: Minister Amaraweera’s assurances to affected villagers are no longer official, according to his Media Secretary. And that is official.