A political culture that makes you throw up
Sri Lanka will register a 5.5 per cent growth rate this year, quite resilient for a country that has gone so mad that when there are no churches being burnt by pyromaniacs, they simply turn to burning temples. Talking of another country's poor economic performance, a wag known to me wrote "Surely, it is not our lack of resiliency and inner strength (that must be the cause of the bad economy.) Without the two, we would have long committed mass suicide.''

Sri Lankans also definitely would have committed collective mass suicide long ago if not for their considerable resilience and inner strength. But at least this much can be said. When the last election was announced shortly after the February 4 Independence Day celebrations there was considerable anti election sentiment in the air. But with the inevitability of elections looming, there was subsequently a sense of renewed hope. People by and large held in suspension their regular tendency to call all politicians stupid asses. There was at least a vague inkling that something will give– and that perhaps a new combination of forces on the horizon will offer some novel and refreshing possibilities.

After the election and the UPFA government was formed, there was a sense of responsibility that a government that's elected by the people should be given the maximum amount of ballast by the social commentators and analysts. There was also the detail about not wanting to cause a run-on financial system by panic mongering and by triggering general anxiety and insecurity.

But, when there is no redemption around the corner, and all political forces and all of civil society is comatose as a result - there is nothing much left to do except to relapse into the familiar pattern of questioning the sanity of all politicians. If this was to be done on a clinical list basis, one had to arrive at the following breakdown:

The JVP: The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna was for many people the significant difference in the last election. Their emergence with a fairly loud bang was looked at as a watershed event in the system.

But, their primary task in the last few weeks after the Speaker's fiasco in Parliament, has been to defrock the Buddhist monks of the Jathika Hela Urumaya, at least figuratively speaking (even though in some temples this has been almost accomplished in a literary sense.) Other than causing more tension within the system and provoking more anger, this strategy does not serve any purpose for a member of an Alliance whose first priority should be to form a government.

But, it is as if the JVP cannot deign to form a government, or that the task is somehow beneath these firebrands on the rebound. It indicates that the JVP believes there is something called government by entitlement. Yet, there is no such thing called government by entitlement.

The JVP has to work at forming a government. Columns such as these and perhaps a few others even enunciated the way the JVP can get around to doing this along with its Alliance partners because the UNF opposition could never reach a 113 that's the majority in parliament unless some UPFA or JHU politicians decide to support the UNF -- which at this point of time is not even a remote or talked of possibility.

But yet the JVP does not get about the task of forming a government in any meaningful way. The government they must feel should fall on their plate like manna from heaven.

The SLFP and the President:
If the simple question is asked "is anything in this country better really that it was before the 4th of November 2003, when Kumartunga took over the three Ministries from the UNF government?" - we have to say by way of answer that other than mentally making note of a watershed in Sri Lankan politics because of the emergence of the JVP, the country would technically be in the same situation. In fact the country would be worse off now, even considerably worse off than it was on November the 4. Chandrika Kumratunga is now about to embark on the same course of action that was embarked upon by the UNF, judging by her call for Norwegian facilitators.

Our grouse is not necessarily against the 'peace process', but the fact that Chandrika Kumaratunga did not have to go through a whole merry-go-around of an election if she was going right back to square one anyway. She could have merely used her vast Presidential powers and corrected the UNF's peace process without doing what she did on November 4 instead.

The SLFP like the JVP also does not seem to have the foggiest idea of forming a workable government and its membership has such a craven mentality that it will willingly collectively collapse just to be able to offer Kumaratunga the task of coming back to Parliament via an illegal Constituent assembly.

Basically Chandrika Kumaratunga is the only man in her party - perhaps even in her Alliance. The rest, being unable to stand up to the egregious whims of this Cleopatra, would probably collapse with her - - that's if the country does not collapse before that….

The UNF: The less said about this pathetic lot the better. If they cannot win, they cannot even lose properly.

When they win they do it in such a way that such a win cannot be consolidated. Eventually all their victories translate to losses. But, even when they are in the peripheries of power the UNF always keeps disturbing the system, and therefore is a peculiar aberration in the body politic. If Chandrika Kumaratunga is the only man in her party, there are no men in Ranil Wickremesinghe's party at all. They cannot even stand up to their leader who does not lead so much as he meanders. Anyway, all is known about the born-loser qualities of the current UNF, that it does not make much sense to dwell on it at length.

The JHU:This is a fringe group that matches the LTTE for its anarchic destabilizing influence. It has an overarching ideology and political philosophy to its credit but has nothing else -- except a great deal of venom of course -- to match this level of ideological commitment in practical terms. All the JHU does in the end is to cast the cat among the pigeons, and make the system an example of banal street theater. The street-theater of the absurd.

The TNA:This is the LTTE. Their commitment to Eelam is passionate, but they have been the perfect foil for the disunited and hapless Sinhala polity. If they cannot secure their separate state even with this lot of pathetic Sri Lankan politicians -- they probably deserve to be part of the Sri Lankan system anyway.

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