Polls today to elect a new Parliament. Curiously, voter enthusiasm has been at a low ebb- The Island Editorial

Happy voting!

The Island Editorial Thursday 14th November, 2024

Sri Lanka goes to the polls today to elect a new Parliament. Curiously, voter enthusiasm has been at a low ebb, compared to that in the run-up to the 21 September presidential election. It has been interpreted as voter apathy in some quarters, but whether it is so will be seen only when the total number of votes to be polled is announced.

Stakes are extremely high for all political parties in today’s contest. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has urged the public to ‘fill the tenth parliament with only NPP members’, and former Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa is seeking a mandate to control the legislature. Some political parties are asking the public to help them form a formidable Opposition. Whether their wishes will be granted remains to be seen.

President Dissanayake and his party, the JVP-led NPP, have embarked on a mission to ‘cleanse’ Parliament. Ironically, the JVP/NPP has been an integral part of the Augean stables it has undertaken to clean!

Steamroller majorities are jinxed in this country, for they result in corruption, overreach, abuse of power, attacks on democracy, especially the suppression of dissent, and economic mismanagement. They are a curse for the people. Hung parliaments are also detrimental to the country’s interests in that they lead to political instability as cooperation is something alien to the parties in contest; they subjugate their own interests to those of the people.

Most Sri Lankan electors let their rising choler get the better of them and resort to punitive voting to express their frustration with the incumbent rulers instead of making a careful and reasoned assessment of candidates’ policies, abilities and integrity. This results in massive waves of popular support and huge majorities much to the benefit of crafty politicians who make themselves out to be saviours.

Sunday, November 10, 2024 Sunday Times

 

In underdeveloped democracies, the basic law often becomes the first casualty of mammoth majorities, as they are misused to amend or replace it to consolidate the winner’s power. A huge majority in a weak democracy could also serve as a passport to autocracy. Examples abound in this country. There is reason to believe that but for its five-sixths majority, the J. R. Jayewardene government would have acted differently, mindful of public opinion, and perhaps savage attacks on democracy and bloodbaths which characterized that regime would not have occurred. It was the abuse of the SLFP-led United Front’s two-thirds majority to extend the life of Parliament by two years and other excesses that enabled the UNP to sweep the parliamentary polls in 1977. A two-thirds majority drove President Mahinda Rajapaksa to abuse power to his heart’s content and amend the Constitution to do away with the presidential term limit. The 18th constitutional amendment became his undoing. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa acted similarly; he misused the SLPP’s two-thirds majority to amend the Constitution and carry out disastrous experiments and in the process ruined the country and his own political career.

Obtaining popular mandates is one thing but delivering what they are given for is quite another. Sloganeering and empty rhetoric can help whip up public resentment to engineer regime changes when the people are desperate for change, but they alone cannot ensure the stability of any government. The fate that befell the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration is a case in point. Those who infuse the people with hope and elevate their expectations beyond measure to capture power but fail to deliver run the risk of having to head for the hills with the irate public in close pursuit.

One can only hope that whichever party wins today’s election, economic recovery, battling corruption and strengthening the rule of law will figure high on the new government’s agenda; the escalating cost of living will be reined in; the doctrine of the separation of powers will be upheld; streets will remain peaceful and, above all, no need will arise for roads to be barricaded again near the President’s House and Temple Trees.

Perhaps, nothing exemplifies Sri Lanka’s predicament than the Brechtian aphorism—’Pity the land that needs heroes’. This country has had many bogus messiahs to contend with, but the search for new ones continues.

A country cannot be anything but what its people make out of it, and the people are said to get the governments they deserve. So, it is Sri Lankans’ call, today. Happy voting!⍐