Columns

Well, that was not a bad idea after all. Anura Priyadarshana Yapa, whichever part of the political hotch-potch he occupies right now one cannot be sure, told a state-run newspaper the other day, that this country’s political landscape surely needs some weeding and pesticiding, to coin a word.

At the tail-end of an interview published last week veteran politician Yapa was asked what can be expected in politics this election year, given the evident conflicts and challenges.

But hold on a moment. To begin at the beginning, as Lewis Carroll wrote when he had Alice wondering all over the Wonderland (not to be mistaken for our Resplendent Isle), it is election year says the interviewer.

Yet election year only means elections are due. What is due is not necessarily what the people will get. After all this is a country like no other and all one has to do is take a peek into history, past and present. One could have asked Junius Richard—JR for short—who wrote (if not, had it written according to his diktats) the 1978 Constitution and not much later did to the general elections what his political descendants from the same political party did to the local government elections not many moons ago.

Why do you think it was labelled the Uncle Nephew Party decades ago by some wit with prescience?.

Okay, so some countrymen with faith in the Constitution and our legal system would turn to the Attorney General for advice. After all he is expected to represent justice, fair play and impartiality and all that. At least that is what the book says. But then knowing people know, no, as they used to say in those golden days, sadly long gone.

But then there might well be others who think that taking a crack at the three proverbial monkeys instead of the AG’s department would be more fulfilling. As the Buddha said in the Kalama Sutta, do not accept what others say, be it your parents or your teachers, think for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

So, it might be best to turn to the wise words of Priyadarshana Yapa and leave it to the prophets of gloom, doom and boom as it were, to tell the populace what awaits them as they brush their teeth and sharpen their tongues each morning for better things to do, as many skip their breakfast these days, from what I read and hear.

Since it was the last question asked and the last over Priyadarshana Yapa faced, as it were, he seemed to have had no qualms about going for the bowling scoring all-round the wicket, as it were, without the help of Sri Lanka Cricket which is busy otherwise.

The major political parties seem to be in a weakened state, he admitted quite candidly, and the overall political current has also lost some of its vigour.

These are his words not mine. But if you ask me, it is not just the political current that has lost its vigour. If you don’t believe me, you should ask Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera. He might not have lost his energy but he sure seems to have lost a lot of power—I mean electric power.

Certainly, thousands of our countrymen and women have lost theirs, thanks to Kanchana’s enthusiastic employees who have been going around disconnecting the power supplies of some who couldn’t or didn’t pay their electricity bills.

Minister Wijesekera upped the country’s electricity rates in an obsequious bow to the IMF which seemed determined to round up more revenue for the government. But the government conveniently avoided collecting unpaid taxes from fat cats who run casinos, alcohol distilleries and assorted businesses that ferret out way and means of dodging paying up dues including huge bank loans they managed to extract from State Banks.

But then there are the crooked cronies of presiding politicians who appear to come—not strangely some might say condescendingly—from the same alma mater and have done enough damage to this country and are quite ready to do even more before they say farewell to a profitable past time of glory and gory.

Anura Priyadashana Yapa who I have known from days long passed by and with whom one could have sensible discussions on a range of subjects unlike many of those who now decorate that House by the Diyawanna Oya–sure spoke the truth when he referred to the “weakened state” of major parties.

Despite all the brazenness that the ‘Pohottuwa’ party (SLPP) displays in public about its readiness to face any election–with some even adding it will win one and all–it is nothing but a veneer of confidence just to keep itself afloat in a turbulent political sea.

The fact that its public assurances in the last months of 2023 that its presidential candidate would be announced at the November party convention the fact that the once popular Pohottuwa is still scraping the barrel is proof enough its inability to field a credible candidate just now.

Moreover, last week’s news report that the pohottuwites–to coin a word and its collective of tattered political remnants had talks with President Ranil Wickremesinghe over the upcoming presidential election–hopefully that is–on the very subject of a candidate is proof direct of the uncertainty and chaos so visible across the country’s political landscape.

But it is not just these two parties in their original forms and before they split like amoeba that is facing internal dissensions and divisions. Sajith Premadasa-led SJB has its own problems, not the least of which is some breakaways from the UNP to join Premadasa but cling tenaciously to the pro-Western neoliberal economic views of their former UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe from which they find it difficult to tear themselves.

Whether this is to place themselves in line for cabinet positions as some of their critics claim in the event of a Wickremesinghe presidency, one could only speculate.

All this “kachal” as they say in the bajja, which is getting more vociferous in the face of IMF taxes and freedom of speech axes, one would notice, is not happening only south of the border as Abraham Sumanthiran of the Ilankai Tamil Arasa Kachchi will tell anybody who cares to ask.

While a broad sweep of the country’s political scenario is what MP Yapa is calling for, with new faces  testing the nation with fresh outlooks and less antiquated policies, would surely be welcome by a public tired of the same old visages and disgusted of the old, Anura Priyadashana Yapa faces his own nemesis.

It is all well and good to call for new faces in our politics. The problem, however, is that the old are not surrendering their positions of power and influence. Many of them will not fade gracefully into the sunset, as Mr Yapa, who if I remember correctly, first entered parliament in 1994.

Oh no. It is not fresh faces the public will see. Rather it will be old faces with new facelifts.

Was it not Matthew Arnold who wrote of being caught between two worlds, one dying and the other struggling to be born?

(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.)