Editorial-December 29, 2013
Opposition
and UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe is reported to have looked askance
at the practice of film and sports personalities taking to politics on a
part-time basis. True, some people tend to prostitute their popularity
and wallow in politics, which has become the last refuge of every
scoundrel so that they will be ‘more equal than’ others. However, the
fact remains that players and artistes cannot enter politics without
being invited by political parties.
Senior political leaders who often lament about the sorry state of
affairs in politics which has come to be bracketed with the oldest
profession in the world ought to get their priorities right. First, they
must stop nominating anti-social elements to contest elections. It was
only the other day that former Cabinet Minister and present UNP
Leadership Council member Mangala Samaraweera, MP, told Parliament that
there were drug dealers among its members.
If the self-righteous political leaders stop the deplorable practice of
allowing criminals to face elections and win by showering bribes on the
poor this country will be a much better place. Full-timers don’t
necessarily make good politicians; some of them are responsible for
various crimes such as extortion, murder and rape. In a country doomed
to put up with failed political leaders and lawbreakers in the garb of
lawmakers, perhaps, we should stop worrying about cricketers and cinema
artistes entering politics.
People also get the politicians they deserve. An actress was elected by
the people of Gampaha at the last general election with a higher number
of preferential votes than most of the Opposition heavyweights simply
because she had played the lead role in a third-rate ‘mega teledrama’.
Interestingly, she contested on the UNP ticket! She happened to admit in
a television interview that she was clueless about the country’s
Constitution.
We have politicians emulating cricketers, film starts et al whose entry
into politics has come in for criticism. Apart from doing their
damnedest to be in the public eye, they play dilscoop and reverse sweep
in handling public funds and bowl googlies and doosras to the people
who, true to form, attempt silly strokes and get caught or stumped. They
have at heart anything but the national interest. There are politicians
who try to be popular by taking part in singing and dancing
competitions. Some of them even act in films and teledramas. Besides,
they do quite a lot of acting in real life; they pretend that they are
not au fait with people’s problems.
The Opposition leader has mentioned Vijaya Kumaratunga, who, he says,
gave up acting and took to full time politics. The price Vijaya had to
pay for that decision is only too well known. Suffice it to say that,
hounded out of the SLFP, he ducked bullets from the UNP until his tragic
death at the hands of the JVP. The country lost a good human being and
excellent actor who made the mistake of entering politics. This is the
fate that awaits good men and women who refuse to sell their souls to
the devil in politics. Time was when we saw millionaires become paupers
because of their politics but today it is the other way around. As the
late Anura Bandaranaike put it very eloquently, politicians who wore
flip-flops and rode bicycles some decades ago are now moving about in
luxury vehicles and living in palatial houses.
The need is not just for politicians, full-time or part-time, but real
statesmen, the difference between them being, as American theologian and
author, James Freeman Clarke famously said, that the former think of
the next election and the latter of the next generation. Clarke also
said: "A politician looks for the success of his party; a statesman for
that of his country. The statesman wishes to steer, while the politician
is satisfied to drift."
Even learned men and women and professionals in politics have failed to
make a difference in their chosen field. They are like clean fish put
into a dirty pond; they have to adapt or perish. The ones who get
elected to Parliament or nominated via the National List end up praising
the Emperor’s New Clothes as they know if they refuse to do so and fall
from grace as a result they will be made to walk the plank. This, they
fear like death because they’ve never had it so good!
