We should get ready

By Praying Mantis

This piece is all about getting ready for elections. God forbid… no, no, no and no… not the insignificant as well as totally worthless Local Government and Provincial Government Elections. It is all about the elections that really matter; the Presidential Election and the General Election, which are due in a few years’ time. Many who read this article may think that I need to have my head examined as there are over two years for those elections. But the truth is that although the said elections are way off, we need to contemplate the way to go from now itself. We simply have to reflect on what has happened over the last few decades and what the contenders are offering for the future. It is not a secret that all of them, without any exceptions, would be offering the moon and the earth to the inhabitants of this island which is said to be a land like no other. Of course, the million-dollar question is whether we believe them.

Sri Lankans are notorious for their extremely short memories. In such a scenario, all of what we are being put through now are likely to be forgotten in a few months, leave alone a couple of years. Yes…, I said ‘put through’ because, all except perhaps the henchmen and the people who control the statute, are being put through a wringer so as to extract the last drops of peaceful, happy existence in this country. When election time comes, the political dregs of all hues that we have around, will start to shout again even from the rooftops promising us milk, honey, prosperity, wealth, splendid governance, superb health and even everything else that is really nice. The gullible public will most conveniently not remember the partisanships, the hardships, the corruption, the lawlessness and everything else that is contemptible, that has gone under the bridge during these terrible times. The farmers, agriculturists, importers, villagers and workers of all sorts will listen to the rhetoric, the false promises and the lies of these miserable legislators and will cheerfully go and vote for the villains of the piece of the last couple of decades.

The populace of this country should take note of the perpetual and unbelievably cunning ways in which politicians continue to dupe them. When they are in power, “you scratch my back and I will scratch yours” mentality and camaraderie amongst all politicians of many different colours and loyalties is there for all to see; perhaps a classic example of unity in diversity. Even the suspected and even proven miscreants are not put behind bars. One lot in power will never take steps to jail people from other camps. That is because of the lingering fear that if and when roles are reversed, then they would be paid back with interest. The only politician who was put behind bars in recent years was just the person who wagged his uncontrollable tongue at the judiciary. The judicial machinery got into gear ever so rapidly and the guy was made to pay the price. Yet for all that, some of the others who were accused of various crimes, even far more serious ones, and well known to be the perpetrators of all of them, have not even been brought before the judiciary by the law enforcement agencies.

It is not at all common for politicians to admit their faults and mistakes. We have hardly ever, if not never, seen the spectacle of a politician saying mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Even in the face of an indefensible faux pas, they will try their best to wriggle out and abrogate responsibility for the entire fiasco to others. On reflection, it is impossible to find a political party or a politician graceful enough to admit their past mistakes. If we can find even one, then pigs will fly. All political parties in the country today, without any exceptions whatsoever, are guilty of various types of wrongdoings and misdemeanours, in the not-too-distant past, some even to the extent of endangering democracy and our beloved motherland itself.

A case in point is the present Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) set. If we are to take their current policies and pontifications at face-value, they are quite reasonable; in fact, just what we need. They promise a whole lot of progressive manoeuvres, together with promises of firmly dealing with political miscreants and scoundrels of the past. They are the only people who seem to have been able to provide verbal fireworks of a kind of devastating type in our Parliament. However, can we trust them? Perhaps not, as there is no guarantee that they will be any different once they get power into their hands. It is said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The current band of sahodarayas or comrades of the JVP have not had the guts to come out and say that they made mistakes from the early seventies of the last century. They caused mayhem and threatened even the very existence of law and order on more than one occasion. They have not even bothered to come before the people, admit their past mistakes and apologise to the countrymen and countrywomen of our Motherland for all types of transgressions that they have inflicted on this country. They do not seem to realise that if they come clean in all honesty, the populace might; just might start to think, ‘OK, they made mistakes and they have the courage to admit them, let us give them a chance’. If they listen to reason, the sahodarayas and the sahodariyas will do just that. Then, and only then, will they stand head and shoulders above the rest of them all. The government-backed newspapers brand them as a spent old force but if they show up with honesty and a genuine desire to make a change for the better, egg and stone attacks notwithstanding, all other political parties will learn a really bitter lesson. It is also most important for them to come forward as a single unified party and not be a part of a coalition or a ‘sandhanaya’. This writer hopes that the likes of the prince, Vijitha, T-win, Lal the kantha, Bee-mal, h-rini, Sunil the handun …., together with a conglomerate of assorted comrades would take these random musings seriously. They must realise that our people have tried all other so-called front-runner parties and are sick to their back teeth with them. They will not think twice about trying out another novel lot. So, keep that firmly in your mind JVP, if you really want to get anywhere in this rat race.

Then of course there is the daasa guy from the opposing force who routinely shouts at a pretty high decibel level even when he has to convey something that is not of vital importance to the people. I do not think he realises that the sound level is not the thing that makes an impact, except on our eardrums. It is the substance that is vocalised that is of the essence. He should perhaps learn a lesson from a very prominent and very senior member of the powerful ‘clan’ who even when he held the highest position of the land, never raised his voice. He would speak most attractively and really modulate his voice as a part and parcel of his charismatic personality. In addition to the connotations on the sound level, the lot in that party of daasa are promising various types of corrections they would take to counteract the misguided and disastrous steps taken by the current lot in power. Of course, they do not mince their words and are on an attack mode all the time, with the ear-splitting voice blaring at the highest pitch. However, they and their affiliated colleagues have also promised all kinds of things in the past but their performance record is rather abysmal. Their henchmen too have tremendously benefited from all kinds of crafty manoeuvres and even blatant scams in the past. They too have not had the courage to ever come before the people and admit their mistakes. They probably think it is infra dig, but the truth is that the general public hold them responsible for all those misdemeanours and transgressions.

Then there is a cluster of other little lots of also-ran types who are not even worth bothering about. There are the likes of dehydrated pumpkins, the overfed rounded ones, the old man with dubious tendencies, the contingent of believers in extremism as well as fanaticism, and all kinds of we-are-also-there types. They are thoroughbred nincompoops and ignoramuses.

Judge all of our politicians and every single one of them by what they have promised in the past and what they have delivered; by what they have said they will do and what they have actually done and whether they are empathetic to their country-people or whether they have been the nasty vultures that sucked the life blood of the populace for personal benefits and those of their hangers-on. Did they pamper to the whims and fancies of their henchmen, even if those worthies were going against all that is decent and lawful? Most unfortunately and quite sadly, the answer is in the affirmative in the case of the majority of our legislators.

Niccolò Machiavelli is deemed to be the representative par excellence of the lack of morality and ethics in politics. The theory that ‘the end justifies the means’ encapsulates his political and moral thought. The popular conception is that Machiavelli’s political methods are amoral, evil, but yet perhaps rational and pragmatic in a perverse sort of way. It was advice like “It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong”, offered by Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince, that made its author’s name synonymous with the ruthless use of power.

It was John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the iconic President of the United States of America, who came out with the oft quoted line in his 1961 Inaugural Address “My fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country“. We should constantly remind our set of politicians of all hues that the same sentiments apply equally well to them as far as what they can do for our beautiful country and certainly not what our Motherland could do for them.