Columns

Watching Sri Lanka politics unfold, it would surely go down in our 2500 year or more history as an unending comedy, had it not been so serious.

Well certainly for the people of this country like no other who have been severely battered and bruised, if not in their stomachs in their heads with weapons of mass damage (WMD). What they heard in parliament last Thursday might have sounded hilarious after all these months of hardship when even a joke seemed too expensive.

Now they are told, after all the shenanigans of the past months, that there were no local elections scheduled so there was nothing to postpone. News reports said that government MPs broke into laughter when that was said.

The reports did not say who they were laughing at but it must surely have confused the opposition which had earlier filed writ applications in the Supreme Court to order the Election Commissioner and the other members of the Commission to “conduct the election as planned.”

And what did the Supreme Court think of that? Well according to news reports Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court has granted permission for the 2023 Local Government Election to go ahead as planned by the National Election Commission.

The Supreme Court had noted that the National Election Commission is bound to protect the people’s franchise.

Further, the Supreme Court noted that orders were not necessary on the matter as the National Election Commission had already undertaken to hold the Local Government Election in terms of the Law. The matter was taken up in the presence of Supreme Court Justice S. Thurairaja, A. H. M. D. Nawaz and Shiran Gunaratne.

I cannot remember this report of the Supreme Court proceedings being contradicted or corrected.

So what it does say is that orders are not needed as the National Election Commission had already “undertaken to hold the Local Government Election in terms of the Law”.

If the Election Commissioner subsequent to that court decision of February 10 had his lawyers inform the Supreme Court on Feb 21 that he cannot hold the election on March 9 as planned, something surely happened after that earlier court decision.

This is what an AFP report said: “The March 9 vote was meant to be a key test of support for President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took office in July after months of protests over a dire economic crisis.

According to a court submission by the Election Commission, the treasury has refused to fund the printing of ballot papers, fuel or police protection for polling booths.

“I had given an undertaking to the Supreme Court recently that the poll will be held on time,” Election Commission chief Nimal Punchihewa told AFP.

“But, I am now informing court that we won’t be able to do it because the government is not releasing the necessary funds.”

It is no secret that for weeks the political opposition and some civil rights bodies have been accusing the government of trying to stymie the elections using various means which they called ruses.

The reason, they said, was clear enough. The public popularity of the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration backed by the Rajapaksa-led SLPP had sunk so low that it is no surprise that the ragged coalition that now governs the country is ashamed to test it at an election.

A recent Sri Lanka Opinion Tracker Survey found that the Ranil Wickremesinghe- led UNP’s public support was rated at 9% while the SLPP received only 8%. With ratings like that which only back what media commentators have been saying for months, Wickremesinghe, who, according to his party could be a candidate at next year’s presidential election (that is if the Treasury has enough money and the Government Printer is paid upfront to print the ballot papers), would hardly want a repetition of the 2020 general elections when the UNP lost every single seat it contested.

It is no joke to pay treble or more rates if one switches on the light and very soon when one turns on the water. But when they are told that there was no election to postpone because there was no local government election, they must have thought the country was truly going nuts.

Those who could afford to after paying Minister Kanchana Wijesekera’s new rates, might be heading for a psychiatrist’s couch- that is if one finds a head shrinker who has not taken flight like Gotabaya, thinking he is mad for staying back so long.

Reading what goes on in parliament one can quite understand if our so-called peoples’ representatives ( or several of them) speak without shedding any light or will soon be unable to wash their sins away unless they dip their anatomies in the Diyawanna Oya.

One must of course thank that “Washington Twin” called the International Money Fund (IMF) which is supposed to give us some “bail out” (which I thought is what our judiciary dispenses to some and not others) of some US$ 2.9 b.

It might seem like it is handing over to us the contents of Fort Knox only to find that sometime next year the Secretary to the Treasury (whoever that star in our ongoing political comedy would be) will rush to the Supreme Court and plead that he has no money for a presidential election unless his boss Ranil Wickremesinghe is the only candidate.

Similar things have happened in our history, so nothing should come as a surprise. After all we have had our Andares and still do, as you will find if ever you have time to waste listening to the proceedings of our parliament presided over by a Speaker who appears to be awaiting an elevation to a higher stratosphere for his contribution to parliamentary democracy and procedure as per AV Dicey, the guru on the subject.

What is more, if some public servant does the dirty-as could happen closer to national elections-one can always blame Washington’s terrible twin who has had this government accepting the 15 tasks (read conditionalities) as President Wickremesinghe said the other day.

After all, our politicians are not strangers to obsequiousness. We will pay pooja to China, India and the US by kowtowing that will shock even the Chinese emperors of old.

With all this fuss over local council elections- rushing to court to seek justice or whatever- another presidential remark in parliament last week caused even more amusement, particularly among the black-coated fraternity.

The president criticised the Election Commissioner for retaining the president of the Bar Association Saliya Peiris PC in recent legal proceedings.

“Calling him an attorney who engages in party politics, Wickremesinghe said members of the Commission told him the ECSL cannot consult an attorney who engages in politics but must consult someone who is impartial”, one news report said.

And pray who would this impartial attorney be? The Attorney-General?

By this peculiar logic eminent lawyers such as Dr Colvin.R. de Silva, a long-time member of the LSSP and so many other eminent lawyers should not have been retained for cases by Independent Commissions or state institutions because they engaged in party politics.

By the same token Wickremesinghe when he was a practising lawyer should not have been considered because he was a member of the UNP. So I believe was Tilak Marapana PC though I am not certain of his brother Gamini Marapana(PC) who was my junior at college and many others.

If I remember correctly there was an SLFP association of lawyers which at one time nominated candidates for Bar Council elections.

We may one day hear of politicians being rushed to surgery would insist on knowing the surgeon’s political affiliations before they are cut up.

If politics is going to sink as low as the public popularity of some parties, a plague on all your parties could well be the next peoples’ cry.

(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.)