Welcome to the house of horrors
At one point of time, last Thursday, this writer found himself in the Gallery of parliament, bent over the railings, screaming the words "order order order.'' Obviously, it was in transgression of parliamentary privilege and should have invited a terrible reprimand in the natural order of events.

But, nobody below took any notice, which spared this writer an ordeal. But on a day in which television rights should have been sold to Nimbus or World Tel to capture the one day proceedings in parliament, a cry for order from the Gallery was not mischievous.

For one thing, there was no Speaker in the House for nine and a half hours. Its being held on authority that this is a record for any parliament -- one world record soundly established at this one day encounter. With no Speaker in the house, there was a lacuna in maintaining order in the House. The Secretary General of parliament, a paid official, was intimidated to the point where she lost all sense of circumspection, and was caught by the microphones left carelessly-on at her table saying "please let me go to the toilet and come will you, until all this is over.'' Then she promptly left for her ablutions.

Under these circumstances, establishing order from the Gallery, though it was a feeble attempt, may even be legally tenable, we daresay. The House was left to its own devices. Any device may have been acceptable, before the Members actually came to blows. But the end of the day, they hadn't come to blows, which hugely disappointed some of the Jinthupitiya crowd who had been working up a sweat for exciting pinch hitting towards the end of this one dayer. But some rare strokes and audacious pinch hitting was invented nevertheless. Missiles (real and verbal) were thrown at the Jathika Hela Urumaya monks, who by the end of the day saw themselves going from hero to zero But, shouts of "thattaya-ganaya hora-ganaya'' are the only ones that are printable here…

Those who do not indulge in pinch hitting were compelled to do so at the end of the day, and when Ranil Wickremesinghe said that he was "shocked'' in his congratulatory speech after Speaker W.J.M. Lokubandara was elected after three rounds of balloting, it became very clear that this was the most dramatic one-dayer witnessed in this country - - even by Arjuna Ranatunge. It could even shock Ranil Wickremesinghe. The unthinkable happened. Ranil Wickremesinghe was seen by the public as being capable of displaying at least one emotion.

For Sripathy Sooriyarrachchi the House was a promenade. For Pavithara Wanniarrachchi it was a place for tanning herself under lights. But, everytime we were secure in the idea that the House could not plunge in to any deeper depths of depravity, I can assure you we were always surprised. Therefore, when missile attacks were aimed at the monks from the UPFA benches, it was in fact anti climactic. We had seen everything. The crowd was jaded. It was a one day game which contained all the unorthodox and agricultural strokes in the book.

It had shocked so much, in the end things lost their shock value. Four letter words had only secondary and incidental shock quality, like falling debris long after a bomb attack. MPs from the Wanni were visibly shocked. They had not seen anything like it in 25 years of terrible war. But then, they too slowly became inured at the end of the day and could not be shocked anymore. In the end the word shock itself had lost its import. When it tripped off Ranil Wickremesinghe's tongue we could see he didn't mean it. So there was no deliverance at all - in the end we couldn't even be shocked that he was shocked.

Back to Top

Back to Columns

Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers Ltd. All rights reserved.