A foregone conclusion?
Editorial-September 21, 2013, 6:45 pm
The results would be trickling in or may already be declared when you read this and you will know whether the pundits were right – that the UPFA took the North Western and Central Provinces and the TNA won in the North. Be that as it may, we repeat what we have always held, that the Provincial Councils are a huge white elephant foisted on the people by President J.R. Jayewardene whose arm was twisted by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India to satisfy the regional autonomy aspirations of the Tamils. There was never any demand for such autonomy from the South but, as then Minister Lalith Athulathmudali famously said, ``we cannot give to Jaffna what we will not give to Hambantota.’’ So PCs island-wide were spawned. Ironically, except for a brief period when the North East Provincial Council under Chief Minister Varatharajah Perumal (incidentally where is he now?) of the so-called `temporarily merged’ North and East held office, the regions pleading and demanding autonomy did not have it and a new parasitic political class of Provincial Councilors went their merry way guzzling tax rupees elsewhere in the country with their sights on a step up the ladder to parliament.
Yesterday’s was the first PC election of the Northern Province held after the de-merger of the North and East. The other two elections were called before time by the president, no doubt anxious to demonstrate at home and abroad that he continues to enjoy the support of the majority of Sinhala voters. Two out of three is not a bad score (if that’s the way it went), he well knows. Mahinda Rajapaksa has long used the PCs as a political windsock both to inform himself and for sundry other purposes, all serving the cause of his personal and dynastic projects. The tragedy for the Sri Lankan taxpayer is that they must carry the tab for the re-election of their representatives who have now found that the PCs and the humbler local government institutions are all happy hunting grounds to blood their kith and kin into the great and rewarding game called politics. The promise of the rulers that they will not anoint relatives with their party tickets to run at these elections was broken very quickly after it was made on a previous occasion and a whole clutch of big shot family members were in the fray at yesterday’s contest. No doubt quite a few of them would have by now got elected.
No major election incidents had been reported as this is being written and the run-up showed more internecine battles within the ruling party for preference votes rather than between rival parties. A great deal of attention remains focused on whether Minister Johnston Fernando’s son or Dayasiri Jayasekera will win more preference votes. Both sides, obviously, were not short of money which was visibly splashed. Dayasiri made a virtue, and virtue it was given the shoddy history of this issue, of having resigned his parliamentary seat when he crossed over from the UNP to the ruling coalition. This was unlike too many of his green party colleagues (including Johnston) who gratefully took their mess of potage and helped further bloat an already bloated cabinet. The voters must not forget that they first voted for a party before they expressed a candidate preference and defections distorted their choices. Although there is provision in the law that defectors would lose their seats, the courts have been too generous to this rapacious lot, permitting them to enjoy office by the grace of the president while technically remaining members of an opposition party! Whoever said that the law is an ass obviously got it right. There is of course now some slow movement towards amending the proportional representation based electoral system. Sadly this is not about strengthening democracy but making things more comfortable for the political class. The people come last in these calculations.
A figure that would merit attention from today’s results is the voter turnout – were people apathetic about these elections with little interest in exercising their franchise out of the knowledge that the real winners are those elected rather than the voters. Although there have been allegations, some of them wild about the military being used by the ruling party, the government will be acutely aware that the election in the North is under close watch both by the officially invited observation groups as well as the various NGO monitoring organizations that have developed into a virtual industry. Commonsense would dictate that any flagrant interference or chicanery would not be of benefit in the context of the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting especially if the result cannot be turned around. Yet there were reports that the home of the wife of an LTTE cadre, allegedly in custody, who is running at this election, had been attacked by a large group of men in uniform. Publication of such reports in respected newspapers like the New York Times can hardly redound to the credit of the government.
What kind of impact the UNP and JVP could make, at least in terms of whether they were able to improve their previous performance, would also be of some interest. But the opposition parties as much as the government party would be affected by general voter indifference, many analysts believe. You would know the results today although the preference vote counting would take longer to complete. Hopefully there will be a message to the rulers that although they won the war for which they have been heaped with much credit, their record of governance is abysmally poor. A wake up call would certainly not be misplaced.
