Rajpal's Column

24th January 1999

The new wave in polls tactics

By Rajpal Abeynayake

Of all the hypocrisy and ugliness that has been bared in the Wayamaba elections, some of the worst has come from outside the electoral arena. Democrats among the political species in particular have shown their humbuggery in style.

One self styled democrat, issuing a statement to the state controlled press (its lovely to rub that in, so repeat "state controlled press'') says that he resents the "media hype'' that surrounds the Wayamba polls. I suppose it fits in with his type to call two murders and more attempted murders, and even a gang rape thrown in "media hype.'' Here is the news: This man gets his juices churning only when there is torture, mayhem carnage and genocide. Two murders, for this democrat is like two small beers at the press club.

The Sri Lankan progressive cabal has always had this tendency of being flagrantly office seeking. Progressive political appointees in the state controlled press for example are legion. (These then are progressive office seekers who have already been given the offices they were seeking.) Just incidentally, one was heard to say recently at an NGO funded cocktail party that he is not a political appointee. (So what do you call a person who was appointed few months after the election, after the incumbent office holder was eased out for no reason? If not a political appointee, is he then Madam's favourite intellectual?"")

But never mind all of that, political appointees are office seekers who have got their office, and from a humane point of view, you could say that they are entitled then to sing a little for their dinner. But office seekers who are still on the outside and who sing so transparently that they call a few murders "media hype'' must be on the other hand, absolutely desperate.

The entire progressive phalanx has been feeling so progressive during this Wayamba election that they have been shouting from rooftops to anybody who would care to listen that "there is no violence in Wayamba.''

But, as one irrepressible cartoonist observed, when the PA heard that Premadasa was reborn, the PA polls leadership went into a frenzy of fear thinking that all their goons will desert them to join Premadasa. ("Habai rajo apiva dala eya gavatunag yanna eppa", a prostrate PA leader tells a grenade carrying thug.)

Progressives (with a simple p) murder nonchalantly. They make it look like its all in a day's work.

But the thing with the progressives is that they are the people with the civic conscious image . They feel in fact that they have a monopoly on civic consciousness, which is why they form all types "democratic'' organisations and crow about things like media freedom and violence free political culture. Look at any amount of "progressive'' articles in the state controlled newspapers within the last few months, and you would see the allegiance of the progressives to concepts such as "violence free political culture etc etc.,' . Progressives make a vocation out of looking more politically cultured than UNP heathen, and they preach about things like political culture like Billy Graham in heat.

But then comes the crunch. There is a prestige electoral battle on hand. If the progressives lose this election, they may just begin that slide down the slippery slope and may be out of office when the next national election comes around. This has all kinds of progressive office seekers and political appointees in a fidget.

They get real attacks of amnesia and forget what they said at the last seminar and wrote in the last article about a progressive political culture; about non violence and all that kind of mushy political chocolate mousse . Delivered with the right kind of inflection, or written with the right turn of phrase, these little speeches about political culture can sound almost musical.

The UNPers were of course the masters of political thuggery, but which eight year old doesn't know that? But when progressives make use of that history to justify political violence by the progressive flank they impugn their credentials, if they had any in the first place .

Quoting bible (oh baby) some of these progressives say that the UNP is now screaming foul when it is only getting a dose of the whirlwind of violence it sowed in 1977 and blah blah blah….. So that's how the progressives say it. Anybody can come out dagger and knife provided that they didn't use the implements first.

The trick is that these democratic missives appear in state controlled newspapers.

They desperately seek to make out that the Wayamba election is a non violent little tea party with may be a few storms raging in the little teacups. Wayamba doesn't have to be a raging fire to be enveloped in election anxiety.

Violence has contributed to a feeling of general unease and disenchantment in Wayamba, but that's not enough for progressives. They want real violence. Genocide we suppose.

Though it lacks political finesse to rely continuously on the slogan ''you did so before us'', justifying violence with this theory is so unbecoming of the progressives, to put it as mildly as it can be put in order that the tender sensitivities of the progressives are not violated. There must be some severe dearth of imagination to say something to the effect that "violence is justified because the other party did it first." I mean its one thing to say that violence is used in self defence.

But to say that violence is justified because the other party started it first is so mawkishly sick that it doesn't behove a UNPer to say that, let alone a progressive in the first place!. But these days who can tell the difference?

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