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Hitler
- style approach advocated The President is pursuing this tango with the Norwegians, whom she and the JVP jointly scorned not so long ago, notwithstanding the JVP's embarrassment, and clearly, the sharp divide on this issue in the joint manifesto between the two parties has been resolved to the liking of the President, and not the JVP. The President herself opted to take this approach and invited the Norwegians only hours after she and her JVP partner had lost the election for the Speaker's post. That move itself was to divert attention and win some international backing as a sop for the ignominy of defeat at home. The smoke-screen has come by way of a debate on Constitutional Reforms. And the JVP has entered the fray in robust style. Offering flowers at the Dalada Maligawa and falling at the feet of the Mahanayakes on the one hand, and throwing verbal abuse at the monk-MPs from the JHU and stoning their viharas on the other. The Presidential adventure with the Norwegians has placed the JVP in an awkward situation.Having demanded that the Norwegians be given the boot, they are now getting entangled in their own web of deceit, trotting out excuse after excuse as to why the Norwegians must remain as peace-broker. The experience is no doubt a new one, and the young JVP is coming to terms with the reality that opposition politics and governance are like the sun and the moon. The real danger, however, is their recent public pronouncements in shooting their way out of the Norwegian saga. They have begun dismissing the very Parliament they have been elected to, merely because they lost the election for Speaker. And they talk of mobilising the people, whose mandate they say they have, to run roughshod even over Parliament by getting on to the streets, and to do the things which will trigger off anarchy in this country. Blood-curdling, spine-chilling things are being said on state-run media threatening to smash down any obstacle on their way towards implementing constitutional reforms and that the new Speaker will have to go to Parliament by helicopter because the masses will surround him otherwise. That is parliamentary democracy for you that the new reforms are hoping to strengthen. The JVP seems to be getting carried away by the mandate they received together with the PA, which is 45 per cent of the total vote, forgetting for a moment, the consequences if the balance 55 per cent also get on to the street. Certainly, the new Government won a decisive victory in the 'south', but what of the rest of the country? And they are the ones who argue, quite rightly, that Sri Lanka is not just the 'south'. And the JVP, especially, is getting more than irritated that their nationalist-religious grassroots vote-base is getting eroded by the JHU. As political analysts have rightly pointed out, even the late S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, having come on a nationalistic platform, over-estimated the "mandate" he received, and came a cropper when he tried to strike a deal with the Federalists of the time. The JVP might just be allowing their slip to show. There is a frightening advocacy of the tactics Adolf Hitler adopted to his creation of an ultimate Dictatorship. Hitler led a relatively small party to electoral wins through a well-oiled party machinery, took control of the Bundestag(Parliament), eventually burnt it down, unleashed his SS storm-troopers on all opposition through a reign of terror, threw out the Constitution and crowned himself The Fuhrer, leading a cultured Germany to ruination thereafter. And the Germans loved Hitler all along until realisation dawned on them too late in the day. It is only a month since the UPFA victory and the vibes and voices emanating from the new Government, especially from the more vocal JVP, is on those unfortunate Hitlerite trends. Debating Constitutional reforms is one thing, but to threaten opponents is another. The Doctrine of Necessity has been thrown into the public domain by proponents of a new Constitution, that is,. how to create a new ' revolutionary ' Constitution without adhering to the present laws of the land. The other day, an SLFP lady minister correctly pointed out to the deficiencies of the present 1978 Constitution saying that 18 amendments have been passed since its enactment 25 years ago. If the Doctrine of Necessity can permit a new Constitution soon after every election by a direct vote of the people, and at the rate we are going now, having had three elections in five years, we might have 18 new Constitutions (not mere amendments) in the next 25 years. |
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