A Panchikawatta (Not Supermarket) Of Constitutions And Government’s 13A Mischief
Rajan Philips
Depending on whose translation you look at, there is an interesting line in Plato’s Republic (Book VIII) where Socrates tells his pupils that in the ideal City State a citizen can walk into a “supermarket of constitutions” and pick whatever pleases her or him. The UNP’s marketing of its constitutional wares brings to mind not so much the emporium that Socrates had in mind but Colombo’s old Panchikawatta, the minefield of cannibalized machine and metal parts. The grand old party has pulled spare parts from every constitution and every constitutional proposal we know and has assembled a badly mangled contraption. The UNP’s proposals give options to buyers, but not the one option as has been duly noted, that would please many buyers, namely the option to change the UNP’s own constitution and its barnacle of a leadership.