Columns

So it is nearing election time—or so the constitution says. But then, as events in the past couple of years have shown, not everybody respects the Constitution, do they?

The Supreme Court makes a ruling, but those in power take it through one ear and send it out from the other. There are some who virtually swear this is because the space between the two ears is empty.

Those who follow the happenings in our august assembly, otherwise known as parliament, or read reports of the vacuous speeches and often irrelevant, puerile contributions that emanate from this Diyawanna Oya assemblage would surely concur that ridding it of the 225 (save some, I would add) accommodated therein for no useful purpose might be a productive start to system cleansing, as the Aragalaya maintained during its time.

While that is worthy of study, right now there are more important tasks to perform than discussing how to fill those empty spaces above the necks of some politicians—tasks such as eliminating by deflating the bloated egos of some so-called masterminds who think they have descended from Olympus to save our once resplendent isle from their very own political class that has degraded the country to what it is today.

Ultimately, it was left to petitions filed before the Supreme Court to identify and find guilty some of those politicians and their close administrators who brought this country to penury, while the public at large had known for years who those desecrators were who cashed in on their positions of power and influence to reduce this country to its economic nadir through their miserable ventures and personal aggrandisement.

But the truth is that the net cast only covered a limited number of years—from 2019 to 2022, if I remember correctly. Had the petitioners looked at many more years, it would have netted more of the same, who now conduct themselves as the cleanest of the clean while their closest cronies and those to the right and left of them continue to benefit as they are ready to sell the country’s remaining assets.

That is why they are doing their damndest to continue in power even as the citizenry questions their current legitimacy in clinging to power, which might be legally permissible but morally reprehensible.

There are those who believe there is more wealth to be made and perhaps hidden away, employing some offshore company or two before the populace chases them out of office by democratic, if not other means.

In the past and in the recent future, we have seen how the political class and its elite minders laagered the wagons to save their members, irrespective of the political parties they belonged to or supported, when international investigative journalist organisations exposed their off-shore business deals and property owned abroad in such detailed reports as the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers.

Whether such offenders stashed away their assets earned by dubious means and whisked away from this country, whether the offenders were long gone to foreign shores, or whether they are still at home holding public office when they should be under investigation, matters not.

What matters is how carefully and safely they scratch each other’s backs, and hell with the country and its people who are driven to slave for a living or seek a future abroad, however dire.

Those acquainted with the political histrionics in our legislature know that when the Central Bank “bond scam,” as it was called, in the early days of the “Yahapalana” government, in which the SLFP and the UNP worked hand in glove, burst into public prominence, the then opposition led by the defeated Rajapaksa government was shouting “hora, hora, banku hora” at the Ranil Wickremesinghe-led UNP.

Besides Wickremesinghe holding the finance portfolio, it was he who installed Arjuna Mahendran, an alumnus of that Race Course Avenue school called Royal College, as Governor of the Central Bank.

So what happened to the bond scam, and what happened to Mahendran? Scams continue even now with little action taken despite IMF proposals, and Mahendran is back home in Singapore untouched.

Then, a few years later, the same people who were derided as banku horas were shouting back at their accusers in parliament, with Ranil Wickremesinghe himself hollering “kawuda hora” and his faithful UNP choir picking up the words and shouting back at their one-time accusers. It was all caught on the parliament video.

While that provided the public with more than just titillation, it was hardly the denouement to this hilarious political drama. Two years or so ago, those who had called each other “hora” across the party divide were in political harness, supporting each other in parliament and in the country in a new arrangement in governance.

The problem right now is that a new political grouping called the NPP is bearing down on the long-established political parties, some of which are in splinters. Those in office and those supporting them, including some big business associates, fear what would happen if they are ousted from power by the people’s vote.

All the widespread corruption that allowed ministers and others to fatten themselves at the expense of the people would surface or would be unearthed. That would include government procurement deals, violations of tender procedures and underhand commissions to approve projects, etc.

So several plans are afoot to save the bacon of those in office and their cronies who have benefitted from their closeness to the ruling cabal once from Race Course Avenue. That is, to gang up against the leftist NPP and turn the voting public against the NPP’s rising popularity.

Secondly, to use power and influence to open the state larder and dole out food, other essentials, and land ownership certificates.

Another way is to let loose the dogs of war and denigrate the NPP on YouTube channels and other social or mainstream media by trying to rake up the past like some presidential adviser called Ashu Marasinghe attempted to do the other day on TV by recalling the violence unleashed by the JVP—the main constituent of today’s NPP—during the late 1980s.

The problem with the Marasinghe kind of political onslaught as shown is that one should not let loose those who suffer from political dementia. He forgot or ignored the outrageous conduct of the then-governing UNP under President JR Jayewardene, in which Ranil Wickremesinghe was a minister.

Unfortunately–for him that is–Marasinghe forgets that before the late 1980s when the JVP rose against the government’s Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement of July 1987, it was Jayewardene’s UNP that was responsible for burning down that hugely valuable Jaffna Public Library, disrupted the District Council Elections in the north and even stole ballot boxes as a UNP minister who had two boxes still under his bed he told me, cancelled the parliamentary elections by holding a referendum in 1982 which itself was said to have been rigged, had a UNP MP of the time fire shots into the air at a polling booth in the heart of a Colombo residential area frightening away voters during the referendum and a host of other evil doings which space does not permit me to repeat.

Nor should the Marasinghe-type of storyteller forget the armed mercenaries/ thugs organised by an important UNP minister called Black Cats, or some such name, let loose on opponents of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, which drove UNP minister Gamani Jayasuriya to resign.

Surprisingly, he made no mention of Batalanda or the number of protesting university students who were killed or disappeared during those days.

The killings and destruction were not one-way, JVP, as he tried to make out by trotting out figures. Perhaps Ashu Marasinghe might serve some useful purpose if, before turning up on TV again, he reads, at least now, an article by then Daily News journalist Dharman Wickremaratne, who covered these events at the time, reporting that 396 undergraduates were killed and 227 students disappeared.

Or perhaps, as a second-rate storyteller Marasinghe might well say the next time that this was the work of the JVP.

Perhaps Marasinghe might profit immensely if he took the advice of Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, probably anticipating people like him, said, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereon one should be silent”. Got it Ashu?

(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.)