Rajpal's Column

Victory! The Peoples’ Alliance captures the moral low ground

By Rajpal Abeynayake

But why has the PA insisted on capturing the moral low ground and then insisted on getting the media on their wrong side all at the same time?. The only logical conclusion could be that the PA is determined to be kicked out of power at the next general elections.

Though the next poll will not be a general election, the PA even snatched a moral defeat at the hands of three Supreme Court judges who determined last week that it is constitutional subversion of sorts to postpone the provincial elections. Beaten by moral defeats and a Phyrric polls victory, the PA put forward the decidedly unpretty faces of Dee Moo Jayaratne and Kingsley Wickremratne to control the damage.

One thing this dream - team succeeded in doing was to make a fraudulent election look even more blatant. The PA made use of the slogan “media freedom” like some emerald jewel to adorn the election muck. 

Over the week the voter was reminded endlessly that “at least there is the media freedom to talk about these (fake) elections.” There may have been a conspiracy of silence that surrounded violence and poll rigging that accompanied elections during the UNP. The violence was there, and so was the ballot stuffing at that time, but it is correct that people didn’t talk this much about it.

The difference between then and now therefore is that election malpractice at that time was hidden whereas now it’s flagrant and in the open. Either way it amounts to getting away with murder, and certainly things are more blatant when the facts are known and are yet ignored. 

The “media freedom” argument can be explored this way. The Opposition (PA or SLFP) during the UNP time faced elections knowing that there is every possibility of election malpractice.

The voter for his part also knew that there will be election malpractice most probably, because he had heard through the grapevine that it happened in the past. In contrast now the opposition (UNP or JVP or as the case may be) will have to face elections knowing that there will be election violence because they know definitely and indubitably that it happened under the PA regime in the past.

Can the Opposition face any elections in the future under these circumstances with even a semblance of confidence? 

Is the government’s front-line defence team saying with pride that media freedom under the PA has “succeeded in giving the message very loud and clear that there was election violence,” and that things are hence somehow better than during the UNP? 

The fact that election violence is known more this time around would be the media’s achievement and not the PA’s achievement by any standard of reckoning. The media fought for the freedom that was won and now it is using that to combat election malpractice. And also there is sweet little the PA can do about it. 

If malpractice is known and talked about more freely, the threat to democracy is all the greater because the incumbent government gets away with known malpractice. 

The PA therefore is showing a galling disrespect for the facts.

Since this is not a sparring match in the Green Corner Blue Corner tradition it bears repetition that there are no relative merits in rigging. The PA did it and so did the UNP, but, on the count that the PA did it more blatantly it has to look worse than the UNP. (It is worth repeating also the obvious that the UNP’s past rigging of elections does not absolve the PA from doing it.)

But having therefore captured the moral low ground from the UNP, the PA is now not exactly in a position to give it back. So the PA will now have to plod on with its image as a “progressive government” with an utterly reactionary blot on its image. But being enfeebled, the PA can only hope now to salvage things at least very marginally by not repeating what happened in this election at the next five provincial elections that are being promised. There is about as much chance of that happening as there is of the PA regaining the moral highground it lost last week.

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