When Crisis Becomes Critical
Rajan Philips
Believe it or not, South Korea is going ahead with its parliamentary elections on April 15, and the Covid-19 response of the Moon Jae-in government is dominating the campaign. Like Sri Lanka, South Korea also has a presidential parliamentary system and the governing (liberal) Democratic Party of President Moon Jae-in is predicted to retain control of its parliamentary majority. Public opinion went against the government early on during the campaign when President Moon was reluctant to ban travel from China. But it has since turned in favour of the government, which now has easily the best record in the world in the fight against the global pandemic. The unemulated secret of South Korea’s achievement is its mass testing and loads of data. They are the only preventative weapons against the novel coronavirus until a therapy or a vaccine is found.
Sri Lanka after foot dragging at the highest levels found courage in its Election Commission to cancel the April 25 elections soon after nominations closed on March 19. The country has since been under a national curfew to prevent widespread transmission of the virus. Elections are not expected to be held any time soon and indications are that the Supreme Court might be asked to show a way out if elections have to be postponed for more than three months after dissolution. Unlike South Koreans, Sri Lankans will have to wait to give their verdict on the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. For now, even diehard UNPers are palpably relieved that it is Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and not their disastrous Sirisena-Wickremesinghe duo, who is at the helm in the island’s fight against Covid-19.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is assuredly in power for five years, with or without the SLPP winning the parliamentary election. And no matter if it wins two-thirds big, a simple majority, or the highest number in a hung assembly. The question though is how long can the current quarantining of parliament continue? Things could have been made a lot easier if the President’s dissolution gazette was rescinded and nominations were not accepted. And the old parliament could have continued till August to complete its full term.
Instead, the government’s political calculations led to going ahead with the nominations to take advantage of the elephantine split in the old but by no means grand United National Party. Until decision-making on the election landed on the Elections Commission when the nomination process closed, the government was gung-ho on having the election and hoping to ride the viral wave to a two-thirds majority. The best laid SLPP plans were brought to nought by a virus far deadlier than mice. And postponing the elections, however belatedly, became the best independent executive decision ever made under the 1978 Constitution.
Admittedly, there is nothing much the old parliament can do in the current fight against the coronavirus. Equally, there is likely no one in the country with the appetite to see any of the dissolved MPs (with all due respect to the few good among the rotten many) resurrected to political life. Although, many of the old bandicoots will reemerge after the elections as almost all of them stand nominated by party apparatchiks regardless of their disqualifications; or, in fact, because of their disqualifications. Nonetheless, parliament as an institution is a great deal more than the sum of its members and it cannot be indefinitely quarantined.
While parliament’s involvement is not directly needed in the fight to contain the coronavirus, its role is essential to give the sanction of legality to executive and administrative actions, and the direct vote of approval by parliament is a fundamental requirement to authorize the government’s expenditures and economic and humanitarian responses during the current shutdown. And it is not necessary to summon the entire parliament into a continuous session. As has been done in many countries during the current crisis, the Sri Lankan parliament can be recalled from time to time and inviting only the requisite minimum number of MPs who would be proportionately selected by the different political parties.
The longer the country gets used to being without its parliament, greater will be the prospect of parliament becoming a redundant disposable. Already self-serving individuals are beginning to question the need for parliament, to envisage a future soft dictatorship without a bothersome legislature, and to suggest that Sri Lanka has accidently stumbled on a Singaporean style government and must keep it that way. These are aspirations similar to the advices that Maithripala Sirisena was given and for acting on which he paid dearly and politically.
Government is god
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is considered to be too smart to fall wholesale for such supplicant entreaties like his predecessor. But there have been more than retail problems. The most important are the legitimate, indeed humane questions about the impacts the constantly extended curfews are having on the people and disabling them from getting their basic necessities of life. The government has responded through a large (constitutionally questionable) cabinet-size Task Force under Basil Rajapaksa, but the question is how long this arrangement is to go on, because there is no quick end in sight in the fight against the coronavirus.
