Midweek Politics: All Frosts, No Thaws In Impeachment Imbroglio
Dharisha Bastians
December 19, 2012
“I think he knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they’ll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they’ll roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the senate, it’s the sand of the colosseum. He will bring them death – and they will love him for it” –‘Gladiator,’ the movie (2000)
Prior to the decline of the Roman Empire, the emperor and aristocrats regularly provided cheap food and entertainment to the people of Rome to keep them good humoured and approving of their leaders. The Gladiatorial games and circuses both inflamed and gratified the passions of the populace, making them less inclined to engage and interfere with politics and neglectful of civic duty.
This appeasement of the citizenry’s base desires for ‘bread and circuses,’ the rulers believed, was the most effective way to rise and then hold on to power. The bread and circus tactic is still used by regimes across the world to great effect, temporarily blinding the people to economic burdens and injustices perpetrated upon them by their rulers. Sri Lanka last week seemed a case in point.
Night racing
After several weeks of hectic prepping, the spectacle that was the Colombo Night Races unfolded last weekend at the makeshift track at Galle Face. In the run up to the event, army soldiers were hard at work, piling up sandbags and setting up the spectator stands for audiences that were expected from around the city and other parts of the island to witness the popular drag race style sporting event get underway in the streets of the capital.
Flashy sports cars fixed with special lighting effects make this a particularly entertaining spectator sport and proved vastly popular when the Carlton Sports Club pulled the races off last year. This year the organisers took the event one step further, even introducing a three wheeler race, with drivers decked in full black racing outfits and sporting helmets.
Every year the races come with their share of controversy, due to road closures and general inconvenience to the public and hotels and restaurants in the Fort area. This year however, thanks to the racing car duty concession which became the highlight of the Government’s budget for 2013 and came just weeks before the racing event took place, opposition parties found more fodder than ever to wrap the Night Races in scandal and allegations of corruption.
The JVP has charged that the Carlton Sports Club with its affiliations to the ruling family, had received Rs. 200 million in tax concessions to import fancy racing cars and notified of the duty reduction well ahead of the budget presentation. The main Opposition UNP made the Lamborghini-Badagini slogan the keystone of its anti-Budget rhetoric, which constantly reiterated that the UPFA Budget for 2013 was a bonanza for the one per cent and created further economic distress for the rest of the country. But all this notwithstanding, the Colombo Night Races drew large crowds throughout the weekend and was generally heralded as a much needed boost to the city’s seasonal night life, with fireworks displays and after-parties for revellers once the races were over.
Almost as soon as the races ended, the Government slapped a mammoth Rs. 10 increase on petrol prices, once again fulfilling economic predictions that price increases would be inevitable before the end of the year in order to help to bridge the growing trade deficit.
Almost as soon as the races ended, the Government slapped a mammoth Rs. 10 increase on petrol prices, once again fulfilling economic predictions that price increases would be inevitable before the end of the year in order to help to bridge the growing trade deficit.
