When a crumbling govt. fears people

Tuesday 8th November, 2022

It is not only disreputable characters who turn up like bad pennies; some retired public officials also do so. Former Election Commission Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya is in the news again. A few moons ago, he was seen in public holding a placard and pledging solidarity with anti-government protesters. He became a social media sensation, but thanks to his new appointment, he has drawn heavy fire from many irate netizens for what they call his complicity in a conspiracy to postpone the local government (LG) elections.

Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, who is also the Minister of Public Administration, Home Affairs, Provincial Councils and Local Government, has appointed a national delimitation commission with Deshapriya as its Chairman. The government would have the public believe that the electoral system has to be reformed and the number of LG members brought down to 4,000 from 8,000 before the LG elections are held. This is widely seen as a move to put off the mini polls once again.

Reforms are meant to bring about improvements to a system. But in this country, it is the other way around. Electoral reforms, which introduced a mixed representation system, led to a huge increase in the number of local government councillors from 4,000 to 8,000. Ranil Wickremesinghe was the Prime Minister when the first LG polls under the new electoral system were held in 2018. He should have taken action to reduce the number of local councillors at that time. This task, in our book, does not require a long-drawn-out delimitation process. The solution may be to amend the election laws to fix the number of councillors at 4,000, and effect seat allocations on the basis of wards and lists (under the Proportional Representation system) at a ratio to be determined. The Select Committee of Parliament to Identify Appropriate Reforms of the Election Laws and the Electoral System and to Recommend Necessary Amendments, headed by Gunawardena has, in its final report, proposed that overhang seats be done away with. (Political parties get overhang seats when the number of their candidates returned on the ward basis exceeds that of the seats they receive under the PR system.) The implementation of this particular proposal may lead to some practical issues, but is not impossible. It should be given a shot.

It is not difficult to see why the government fears elections and is all out to postpone them again. The SLPP-UNP combine can retain its hold on power by manipulating numbers in Parliament, where souls are there for sale, but as for winning popular elections, it stands the same chance as a cat in hell. What marked the beginning of the end of the Yahapalana government was the 2018 LG polls, which served as a launchpad for the SLPP’s winning streak. Ironically, today, both the UNP and the SLPP are together, doing their darndest to avoid elections because of their unpopularity!

It is said that when governments fear the people there is liberty, and when the people fear governments there is tyranny. But it is doubtful whether the same can be said about Sri Lanka. We have a government that fears the people so much so that it postpones elections, unable to face them, but there is no liberty; the suppression of people’s rights continues. A person who scolded a minister recently has been arrested, we are told. The question is why those who have enriched themselves at the expense of the public and bankrupted the country, causing untold hardships to the people are not dealt with in a similar manner. Shouldn’t they be made to pay for their economic crimes?

Deshapriya’s appointment reminds of an Aesopian fable where a fox which falls into a well manages to escape by luring a goat into jumping in, and leaping onto its back. Deshapriya has sought to pooh-pooh his critics’ claim that the delimitation process could be used to postpone elections. He says the allegation is baseless. He is au fait with election laws and the electoral process, but if it turns out that he has allowed the government to use him as a cat’s paw to pull political chestnuts out of the fire, his reputation as a former upright public official, who stood up to politicians, will suffer irreparable damage. Let him be warned that a person who chooses to lie down with dogs runs the risk of getting up with fleas.