Puswedilla, Politics And Provincial Elections
Dr Dayan Jayatilleka
Having spent the better part of a decade overseas and exactly six months back home, I’d say the most accurate political insight I have got was at the showing of the satirical play Puswedilla, at the Lionel Wendt in May.
When a savage political satire produced in an urban centre for a sophisticated audience shows the Opposition leader as a snivelling clown and a pathetic prop while the President dominates the socio-political scene through sheer force of personality, and has the audience cheering, then the UNP is in some serious electoral trouble including in its own social constituency. Then again, who’d have thought that Mr Wimal Weerawansa, who hardly exemplifies urbane charm, would have beaten the leader of the UNP in the popular vote in the district of Colombo?
A satire such as Puswedilla staged not late at night on a campus or bohemian coffee club but at the city’s leading theatre tells me that however distorted and devalued our democracy it isn’t a dictatorship or tyranny that we live in. The stormy cabinet meeting on the 13th amendment some weeks back contrasts with the UNP’s Working Committee decision around the same time, to sack over a dozen dissidents. In which dictatorship does open dissent and plurality of views in the Cabinet stand in stark contrast to the suffocating atmosphere in the main Opposition? The conformist zombies do not seem to be in the regime but in the main opposition.
