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Free for all in Lankan Parliament

It was sheer drama. And political drama at that! For a country replete with dramatists from Shakespeare to Osborne, it seemed easy enough to produce such modern-day fourth wall drama-not on stage but on television.

For some Sri Lankans holidaying here it seemed sheer ecstasy watching the drama unfold from front row seats, as it were, in the comfort of their snug sitting rooms.   As minutes dragged into hours and the “Mother of all parliaments” turned into bedlam, the Sri Lankan visitors appeared very much at home.

For, had not their own parliament at Diyawanna Oya seemed more like England’s historic battle of Waterloo than the playing fields of Eton which turned out the country’s current Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the source of much of the UK’s present political mess?

At least, a couple of Sri Lankans accustomed to unending teledramas at home thought the script had been plagiarised. After all, it was just a year or so ago that they had witnessed Sri Lanka’s own representatives of the people engaged in hand-to-hand combat as books and copies of the Hansard flew across the floor with little respect for even the words of the Lord.

Of course, there were differences in costume, dialogue and stage directions. The peoples’ representatives here were dressed in business suits, instead of the traditional dress worn by many Sri Lankan MPs who found it easier to raise the cloth a few inches as the occasion demanded.

Where some Sri Lankan lawmakers and perhaps a few lawbreakers among them, were weaponised, armed with chilli powder and other biological weapons of not so mass destruction, their British counterparts resorted to guerilla warfare with verbal ambushes, throwing verbal handbombs with shouts of “shame, shame”  deploying less lethal weapons.

There was yet another essential difference. Compared to the happenings in the House of Commons, the Diyawanna Oya peoples’ representatives provided a master class with the long arm of the law, which gathered en masse to escort the Honourable Speaker to his appointed place and absorbing some blows on the way. This surely was an unprecedented occasion that should go down in Sri Lanka’s parliamentary history as a day of shame.

One could understand if Common’s Speaker John Bercow, now due to retire after 10 years in the Chair, came armed like one of King Arthur’s knights. But there he was with neither cloak nor wig shedding traditional costume for comfort and a sign of modernisation while in what we call our original home the customs we had picked up from our colonial masters remain unchanged unless climate change and hotter days force our people to capitulate.

What made the staid British Parliament to change so radically for a couple of days or so was the attempt of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and a cabal of his followers from the ruling Conservative Party to ‘do the dirty’ on the elected members by suspending parliament for five weeks instead of the customary three which many argued was an attempt to silence parliament and deprive members from holding the government for accountability.

All this because of what the Brits call Brexit — the exit plan from the European Union.

Boris had promised that the government would pull out from the EU by October 31 “do or die”. Having taken a lead in the referendum campaign to pull Britain out of the EU, Boris Johnson uttered several untruths, one of which was displayed on the side of his campaign bus. That was only one of them uttered until more recent days.

Parliament brought in several bills to defeat the Conservative cabal which it did. No prime minister in British history has lost six parliamentary votes in as many days as Johnson has faced.

In fact, Johnson said that one bill — which called on Johnson to discuss a withdrawal agreement with the EU — that extends the exit deadline from October 31 to January 31 received the Queen’s accent and became law.

But the prime minister said he would not obey the law which brought a barrage of criticism on his head. It was said that he could very well go to prison for such high-handed action as treating a law passed by Parliament with such contempt.

Sri Lankans watching the on-going drama last week recalled that Sri Lanka’s President Sirisena also tried to pull a few tricks from up his long sleeve by sacking Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and planting instead Mahinda Rajapaksa who he stabbed way back in the back, metaphorically speaking, as prime minister.

Thereafter, Sirisena prorogued parliament which he had also done early in his term thereby nullifying a discussion of the COPE report on some Bond deals and dealers. What happened to Sirisena happened later to Johnson. While Sirisena’s action was ruled as unconstitutional, a court in Scotland ruled against Johnson and said he had misled the Queen with regard to the reason for suspending parliament.

The Supreme Court in London is now due to rule in two day’s time on Johnson’s actions which many claim is intended to subvert democracy.

The Boris Johnson saga in which ministers, including his brother resigned, and several senior members of the Conservative Party were sacked and the Tories in trouble, needs no reiteration. The conflicts within the Conservative Party and the UNP have shaken up both ahead of EU discussions and Sri Lanka elections.

There are many parallels with Sri Lankan politics that the Colombo media, both print and electronic, have given sufficient publicity to the corrupted spectacle here so they should be aware of the comedy that is playing out here.

The holiday-makers must be thankful for this rare opportunity to witness parliamentary democracy breaking down under Boris Johnson’s egomania and rightward lurch to populist nationalism.

The dramatic scenes enacted by our parliamentary actors and actresses who might have better served our thrice blessed isle if they had sat the basic public exam such as the “O” levels and picked up some initial bits of knowledge rather than impose cart loads of ignorance on the general public.

That is one reason why our home grown drama is interspersed with interludes of comedy that provide titillation to students in the public galleries enjoying live comedy.

Thankfully, British parliamentarians are far more educated and speak more sensibly than many of the Sri Lankan lawmakers today whose seemingly skilled ‘arguments’ are as watertight as a sieve.

It is too common in Sri Lanka today to hear talk of “national security”. It has come to mean whatever politicians choose it to mean. The lazier and more mendacious the politician the vaguer the usage.

We might not hear too much of it over here unless another referendum is called over the EU withdrawal. But as Sri Lanka approaches the election D-day, every tidbit politician becomes an expert on security and displays his or her nationalistic cockles.

May the deities help us all!