Editorial

31st October 1999

Child politics?

The spectacle of school children flanking the President at political rallies is a new tendency that indicates how callow our political culture can become in these troubled times. The President's sublime earth - mother portrayal maybe symbolic and almost cute, but, there is a lot more than meets the eye in this familiar spectacle of the beaming President being accompanied on stage by little kids.

What we know is that the People's Alliance political apparatus has been actively canvassing the Education Ministry, to secure the participation of school kids for President Kuamarnatunge's rallies. Coming from the PA, which howled when school kids were ostensibly used to demonstrate against the Equal Opportunities Bill and by the UNP in what they called the bad old days of not so long ago, such a tactic is hypocritical as well as it is callous.

We do not know whether the PA political machine was given instructions by the Presidential Security Division to be on the hunt for vulnerable school kids to adorn the stage at the President's political rallies. But, the consistency and the manner in which school kids are being used at PA rallies, makes the bona fides of the PA apparatus entirely suspect. A one - off case of symbolism with a child or two thrown - in to complete a bucolic picture is one thing, but this business of children being on stage at almost every political rally of the President is indicative of some sort of perverted adult scheming to use kids as a human shield. Party activists might retort that this is not the case, but that's hardly the point. Using kids at political rallies, one way or the other, is like sending lambs to the slaughter in today's galvanized political atmosphere in which the President herself has acknowledged several times that she is the world's number one assassin's target. Granted that the parents send their kids willingly, but that only indicates the gullible and ingratiating nature of a cross-section of our society's adults.

Parents, myopically, may think that having their kids flank the President at these functions is a rare honour and a great photo opportunity for posterity and family albums. But, that, and the allure of seeing their kids in the idiot box when the evening news is aired, surely cannot blind parents to the prospects that their children are fodder to attacks by LTTE suicide bombers?

The President herself cannot say she does not know, though we may just about grant that it may not have struck her of these dangers to kids. But a caring President as she often says she is, would then stop this post-haste.

Moving onto campaign issues, it is apparent that Chandrika Bandranaike Kumaratunga is a candidate who is asking for the people's vote on the combined merits of her performance for the last five years and her promises for the next six. Her chief political rival, on the other hand, has to prove that he is a viable alternative, and the people's decision will be based on these two contending choices.

But, simultaneously, the fact that the LTTE will be using all its cunning to change this scheme of things should not be forgotten, as it often is. The LTTE has its own diabolical stratagems that do not care for any of the grand visions of our political contenders. Politicians, therefore should be mindful of the fact that the LTTE threat is ever present – and perhaps omnipresent — in this day and age. Polls may go on dangerously in this country, in this now familiar climate, but that does not mean that normal civilian life should be rudely disrupted. The government, for instance, seemed to be oblivious to the fact that the sudden call for elections has disrupted the studies of around 500,000 schoolchildren who were scheduled to sit for the Local Ordinary Level Examinations. That disregard is one thing, but having schoolchildren on political platforms is a sign of total callousness — and perhaps a kind of trenchant political meanness, which does not care for the means, as far as the end result sought is justified.

The Political Column

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