Don’t Elect A Cat To Defend The Mice – A Response To Kumar David
TU Senan
Canadian politician Tommy Douglas once told a story called ‘Mouseland’ that beautifully sums up the bogus choices that the masses are often faced with in an election.
“…when they couldn’t take it anymore, they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. Then they went back to the white cats. Then to the black cats. They even tried half black cats and half white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got one government made up of cats with spots on them”
“Trouble wasn’t with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice”.
But Kumar David, responding to an earlier article , claims that it’s ok to elect a cat if it can be tasked with one job –ie “abolishment of the executive presidency”. He claims the “individual is irrelevant, can even be a broomstick, as long as this ONE JOB gets done”. Kumar – also the sole ‘owner’ and copyright holder of the proposal for a ‘common candidature’ – missed all the important points that are made in the article and the very reason for writing such an article.
Kumar’s version of a ‘common candidate’ proposal is rapidly being invalidated by developing events. The idea of rallying Muslim votes behind a Buddhist monk-cat or uniting Tamil votes behind a Sinhala nationalist-cat just because they made vaguely positive noises about a different parliamentary system, is fading now. Why? The UNP leadership, visualising a split in the SLFP, will not surrender the opportunity to others. Similarly it would be suicidal for the TNA to come out and support an openly Sinhala nationalist-cat. There is no chance that the FSP, JVP, or USP will support a UNP candidate.
All these factors are well known – including by Kumar. What is also widely understood is the failed policy of supporting war criminal Fonseka in the hope it would remove the ruling family post haste.
