Columns

As the election draws near day by crucial day the more messages and comments I receive.

It makes one wonder whether to erupt in uncontrollable laughter or burst into tears. Many of these missives come from former college mates, university contemporaries, journalists and friends scattered around the globe.

They recall the old days when life in Mother Lanka was so effervescently enduring, educative, cultured and one full of life though it may not have had all the luxuries of some other friendly nations.

One particular message hit the nail on the head (wish it was the head of one of the rulers or his plethora of advisers) when it asked whether I knew of any other place in this solar system where 39 individuals would enter a presidential election that chose only one person.

Naturally, I could not think of any but I was reminded of the film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and the mental institution in which the movie was largely located. News reports say that 19 of the 39 aspirants had made little or no effort to press their cases—if any that is—for the presidency which makes the movie mentioned above even more relevant.

Politics in those days referred to was a huge learning curve. Those who engaged in it were educated (not “O” level, thank you) and many professionals and it was indeed fascinating to listen to and learn from, unlike much of the garbage that passes off for representatives of the people today.

As one colleague reminded in an email the choice is very simple. Either we change the foolhardy who voted the current lot of rascals in or change the semi or uneducated lot that ended up in that abode in Diyawanna Oya and made such a vast contribution to human knowledge. They should have been awarded Presidential Honours for Advanced Stupidity and Unrepentant Inanity.

Since one cannot do the former, he said, one must do the latter. Fair enough and one can think of a rather permanent way of doing it. Some readers might remember that chap who is labelled the Minister of Agriculture and Plantations, Mahinda Amaraweera, was once (or more that) trying to do a deal to export our Indigenous toque monkeys to some Chinese businessman who wanted to spread them out in other Chinese zoos.

A big uproar by wildlife associations and animal lovers put paid to that nasty business. But if Minister Amaraweera is still persisting with supplying zoos in China he could well find another indigenous breed if he only looks around. The way his political colleagues have been jumping from party to party to party like our toque monkeys swinging from tree to tree, why they could make a good substitute.

They may not be as appealing to China’s culinary art or common appetites but they will surely make good entertainment behind bars if they cannot find a place behind ours, particularly after the coming elections, the way they have been up to monkey tricks in the last decade or two.

While our swinging politicians might provide real entertainment to visiting tourists which the likes of the minister suddenly turned presidential adviser is trying to promote with more promises, there are many unsavoury sides to the presidential election.

One would have thought that some of them happen only in general elections. But for elections for the country’s top job to be turned into a three-man circus with lots of clowns just as they are dressed up to be clowns.

Have you ever read of a 25-(or is it 30) man cabinet suddenly galvanised into a hands-up chorus, hurriedly voting yes for every single cabinet paper that is placed under their noses turning serious governance into comic operas?

It has long been known that over the years there have been cabinet ministers who never knew or even understood what they were voting for. That is inevitable when you have in your cabinet those who did not know laissez-faire from a Sunday fair.

This ugly scenario enacted with such insouciance becomes even more vile and desperate when the media carries such happenings with headlines that unknowingly ridicule the lot as signal posts. This habit has been hastened in recent days because time appears to be running out for many of them and so voting to pump state assets for the purpose of winning voters even if such actions violate election laws is of little or no consequence.

Cabinet proposals are passed without the papers ever being read. And it is this kind of political gimmickry that is paraded as the only route to development that Sri Lanka should continue to follow.

As the final days to the election inexorably draw near there is now a campaign to encircle Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the NPP. To do that they fall back on the political doings of yesteryear carefully covering their own evil doings which those of us who lived through those disgraceful times know only too well.

Just to take one example. The other day President Ranil Wickremesinghe, tried to claim that the NPP leader had threatened the Tamil people at a rally.

President Wickremesinghe said from rally to rally he would keep asking AKD to apologise not only to the Tamil people but also to the Sinhala people.

In fairness to the Tamil and Sinhala public, one could ask Ranil Wickremesinghe some questions too.

Let me pose a few questions for the current UNP leader who drove the party to its political suicide, whether he was a member of the JR Jayewardene cabinet when the much respected and valued Jaffna library was burnt down.

Was Ranil Wickremesinghe in the Jayewardene government when the Jaffna District Council Elections were disrupted and ballot boxes stolen? A colleague of Wickremesinghe in the cabinet, Mawathagama MP GM Premachandra, told me on a flight to Anuradhapura that two of those stolen boxes were still under his bed at home in Mawathagama.

Who was responsible for starting the July 1983 pogrom against the Tamil people with UNP goons going from house-to-house with electoral lists in their hands in search of Tamil people? Did the UNP apologise then? Has it apologised now?

(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.)