Financial Times

Codes of conduct and brothels
Has the UNP leadership lost its collective mind? Has it decided to destroy the very foundations of the new society ushered in by its predecessors in the initial wave of reforms that followed the economic liberalisation introduced in 1977? A society that, as it has evolved today, is dominated by the worship of money and wealth, crude displays of social status and muscle power, and the tender fixing that has allowed a handful of cronies and hangers-on of the ruling elite to amass overnight fortunes at the expense of the rest of the nation.

How else can one consider the latest announcement by the party of a code of conduct for its elected representatives? According to press reports last week, which quoted UNP deputy leader Karu Jayasuriya, the code was drawn up to create a 'new political culture'. Presumably the party is not satisfied with the culture of the PSD or MSD goons wielding clubs and automatics that replaced the culture of JSS thugs armed with bicycle-chains.

The code reportedly bans the UNP's elected representatives from visiting casinos and brothels, although it uses the more polite 'places of ill-fame' term. Has the UNP leadership given any thought to how casinos and houses of ill-fame would survive if they are deprived of the custom of some of their best clientele? By expressly prohibiting such visits to brothels in its code of conduct, is the UNP admitting that its members have been breaking the law? Or that they are liable to do so?

And what alternative would be available to those pot-bellied elected representatives and their barrel-chested bodyguards and henchmen with a penchant for violence? For the firing in the air, the beating up of hotel guests and staff, the smashing of furniture? The ape-like displays of misguided machismo that the public would no doubt find amusing and entertaining if they were not so infantile and dangerous?

The fact is that if the UNP is reduced to drawing up a code of conduct for its members to ensure they behave better, it is tacitly admitting that it has failed to usher in the 'new political culture' that we were promised in the jubilant aftermath of the last general election. Since then the voting public has been regaled with repeated tales of corruption, tender fixing, irregular privatisation, or just plain thuggery.

The most effective and only way the UNP can avoid its elected representatives from giving the party a bad name by their crude public behaviour or the shady deals fixed away from the public gaze is to not give membership to such people in the first place or to expel them at the slightest transgression. But the UNP has done neither and, like the SLFP, is seemingly unable to do so. Even the most serious transgressions of what is now a code of conduct have been tolerated. Apart from making the usual noises hardly any action has been taken against those responsible.

There have been reports of ministers asking for bribes from investors, local and foreign, to approve projects - the kind of corruption and crony capitalism that was rampant in the 1970s and '80s in South East Asian nations, now hailed as NICs whose feats are to be emulated.

The UNP leadership can only be described as effete in its inability to rein in the more violent and crude elements of its membership. What is required is for the UNP not to nominate such people in the first place, to swiftly take action and even get rid of anyone who engages in such behaviour. Without that a code of conduct would only be an empty gesture.

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