Columns

• Adversity makes parties jump into poll bed with adversaries

No matter how jarring the clash of conflicting dogmas may sound, two major parties have drawn ranks and seem intent on striking an unholy alliance of strange bedfellows in the belief that such a union, bonded together by no other tie than the common craving to hold onto power, will bring home the bacon.

It’s no secret the UNP, once the Grand Old Party that, until recently, never held truck, with any major force to contest the elections except with minor fringe parties to showcase its liberal attitude, is in talks with the ruling SLPP to form a coalition to contest the local government polls.

The UNP elephant that once lorded the political woodlands, was wiped out from the electoral map when the SLPP’s triumph at the general elections made it extinct two years ago. The SLPP’s lotus bud that had held the promise of bloom but never did flower was peeled open six months ago, its seed-bearing stigma core cursed and crushed, mutilated to propagate no more.

Thus it is ironic that these two written-off parties — one, a presidentially protected species, and the other, now an accursed and destroyed demon seed bearer — can still entertain the fancy that a blended cocktail of western liberalism and racial chauvinism will be the knockout draught from the UNP and SLPP hot air barrel to make the populace swoon with delight and vote for an encore.

SLPP Secretary Sagala Kariyawasam talks of a Pohottuwa victory as if the cat is already in the bag. “The SLPP can win the majority of divisions at the local polls,” he says, adding, “talks with the UNP are not over.” As for the UNP, Navin Dissanayake emerges from seclusion to say, “We have no problem in joining the SLPP, we have no permanent friends or permanent foes.”

But beneath the bluster, there lurks defeat staring in the parties’ faces. The final date to hold local government elections is fast approaching. The Election Commissioner, constitutionally bound as he is to conduct it, announced last month his intention to call for nominations in January. The final deadline for Local Government Councils to be set up is March 20. Will the feared Ides of March dawn five days later this year for the ruling party?

Ironically, whichever party wins this third-tier grassroots chamber, the position of the President or the 225 MPs in Parliament will stay untouched. Their power will remain intact. So why are they all hot and bothered over an insignificant little election among the domestics?

Perhaps, the answer lies in an almost certain loss of face. Despite Gotabaya’s insistence to serve his full presidential term, he was forced to flee and resign when it became apparent that he had lost the people’s mandate, causing his tenuous constitutional right to remain in office to crumble in the dust.

But where was the tangible proof which a court of law would have demanded to deny him his legal right to hold office?  Even without the evidence, an air-fairy belief in the people’s collective consciousness sufficed to render his much-vaunted legal right, as potent as a scarecrow in the constitutional book. What was damned was not his legality but legitimacy.

No one expects history to repeat itself so soon an hour since its last enactment. But if the prophesied results of the local government polls prove true, it will shatter the SLPP claim that it still has the people’s mandate to govern. Their MPs’ legal status will remain unaffected but indirectly their collective legitimacy will be placed in question.

A negative result will be a death blow to their inflated egos, the public pin that will burst the bubble of deception. It will expose their charade, it will kill their pretensions. It will leave them naked with barely a fig leaf to hide their shame.

Worse. It will condemn their chances for happy ballot comebacks at their own parliamentary elections two years hence. It’s a dreadful prospect they cannot face or stomach. It will increase the demand for their own mandate to be put to the test pre-maturely when the President gains, in March, the discretionary power to dissolve Parliament and call for elections.

So what are the options they have to postpone the constitutionally imposed deadline for the day of judgement?

They have two strategies. Both have already been set in motion.

On Wednesday, an SLPP MP’s private bill to alter the composition of local councils was introduced in Parliament.  It seeks to make political parties nominate a mandatory 25 percent of youth below 35, including the existing 25 percent quota of women, in its list at future polls. It is a bill which, at another time, would have been readily embraced by both sides of the House. But after nominations for local councils have been announced, its sudden presentation, on the eve of a local polls battle, has rendered it tinged with a different political hue.

The Opposition fears it is a Trojan Horse. They fear the trap will be sprung before local polls are held in March. For if the bill becomes law before the poll date, nominations filed will have to be scrapped and new nominations, in line with the new Act’s 25 percent youth requirement, will have to be filed again, thus postponing the elections.

Despite Government assurances that the bill will not be enacted before the polls, the Opposition remains wary, for they know the Government has the majority numbers to steamroll the bill into law in a jiffy and to hail its advantage to youth as justifying a delay in the polls.

But will not such a move, though perfectly legal, be decried as rather a crude use of power to avoid facing the people’s judgement? Indeed, it will. But what if the call to put off polls came from the people?

The second strategy to make the call arise from the grassroots is well underway. While the process goes on to enact a statute that may indirectly delay the polls, the ground is being prepared and fertilised, made ready to receive the seed that will make sterile the constitutional book.

The carrot is more food at cheaper rates. The stick is more hardships and more shortages.

SLFP pole vaulter Mahinda Amaraweera, who bartered his sworn loyalty to his party for a cabinet seat in the SLPP government, is now intent on swaying the citizenry to barter their universal franchise for a cheap plate of rice.

In a lengthy statement issued on Tuesday, Amaraweera laboured in his call for ‘the snap elections’ to be put on hold. He wanted the 10 billion bucks already reserved in the budget for polls, to be given to him to buy paddy from farmers at a better price. He will then sell the rice to the people at a lower rate. “The people are asking for the cost of living to be reduced,” he said. “We must fulfill their demands first. These polls can be held later.”

According to the Minister, the LG polls are a snap election. It is not. It is a scheduled election as per the constitution, with the Election Commission charged with the duty to conduct it. It’s distinct and is not subordinate to Amaraweera’s ministerial responsibility to provide rice to the public.

The UNP chairman and its’ only national list MP Vajira Gunawardena, said on Tuesday, “This is not a time to spend 20 billion on an election,” while SLPP’s MP Shantha Bandara joined in to say, when 3.9 million families are dependent on government aid to exist, when there is a threat of malnutrition, can the Finance Ministry spare over 10 billion rupees to hold elections?

It’s the same line taken by those with a polls phobia who point at the disastrous state of the economy, run down by the SLPP Government, and ask, ‘can we hold polls without sinking further? It’s the sure-fire recipe any corrupt regime can use to deny the people their franchise ad infinitum by referring to a destroyed economy they themselves have destroyed and claim that to hold an election in such an adverse clime, will only make the situation worse.

To top it all, a retired army officer filed a petition at the Supreme Court, praying the court to postpone the polls on the ground that it was against the country’s welfare.

When Government ministers and MPs call to defer elections for the public good, when the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is invoked to indirectly, deny the people their right to vote by suspending a constitutionally scheduled local government election, lest it harms the country’s welfare, isn’t it time to take stock and ask, ‘what price democracy’ in Lanka?

Is the value of democracy in Lanka to be weighed against how much rice its cost can buy? Or how many hungry destitute mouths its cost can feed? Or how many malnourished children its cost can enrich with nutrients?

The right to vote is the foundation upon which democracy and its pillars solidly rest. It’s around this universal franchise of the citizens that all other rights and freedoms revolve.  Without it, democracy ceases to exist.  Without it, the constitution might as well be torn up.

As former Chief Justice Priyasath Dep said, granting leave to appeal in the Local Government Election case in 2017, “There is no provision in law to keep on extending the period indefinitely. Franchise would mean the right to vote and citizens should not be denied of such right or privilege.”

In world and local eyes, the Government will be found wanting in judgement and unbecoming in conduct if it fails to hold elections on the due date. The people demand it. Any denial of the right to the franchise may result in a backlash.

In 1977, Mrs. Bandaranaike’s SLFP coalition government arbitrarily extended its term by two years. I977, J. R. Jayewardene’s UNP Government won a landslide victory with a five-sixth majority in Parliament.  A sufficient duration has now passed for history to repeat itself.

World mourns Pele who wrought miraculous feats with his feet He was no king nor pope, with legions to command or a congregation to lead, nor a president or prime minister of any state nor even a political leader of any group but a simple man who rose from the slums playing football to become monarch of the game. He was an icon, the revered idol of a people’s hearts, whose temple was the stadium where he became transformed into a god incarnate, a temple where thousands came to pray and behold the miracle feats he wrought with his feet for their nation’s glory. This week the Avatar, whom death had outplayed on penalty points, made his last appearance at his worshipped abode to be enshrined in memory, immortalised in football’s history, and deified in Brazil’s pantheon of heroes. And so the people came, they came from all stations in life, the young, the old, the hearty and the sick, from the ranks of the rich and from the ghettoes of the poor, they came in ceaseless stream to Vila Belmiro, the Santos football stadium, where the final remains of soccer’s greatest star, the great Pele, lay in state, taking center-stage. O REI, THE KING: Universally acclaimed as the greatest footballer of our times, Pele makes his final exit from the earthly stadium to live enshrined in football’s temple of fame. As they — two hundred and thirty thousand of them — filed past the closed coffin, draped with the Brazilian flag, some silently cried, some undisguisedly wept – “I cried,” said one mourner, “I would do it 10 more times, a thousand times as Pelé scored” — some bowed, some knelt, whilst many stood in reverential hush, deep in prayer. All had come to honour Brazil’s fallen legend and to pay their tributes to a man who had done his country proud and was its national treasure. Pele’s death last Thursday at 82, after a battle with colon cancer, led to an outpouring of national lament with a three-day period of mourning declared. Many considered the death of Pele, who from humble beginnings had risen to Himalayan heights but had remained a humble being unto the end, as a family bereavement. Perhaps, out of Brazil’s 214 million populace, the only Brazilian who didn’t know that he had died, was his mother, who, at the age of 100, was not told of the sad news. “She lives in a little world of her own,” her daughter said. Millions of football fans worldwide shared the Brazilian grief as if it were their own. Tributes flowed in, from around the globe to the legendary Pele: the man universally held as the greatest footballer of all time. Pele’s football feats were the stuff of miracles. The Brazilian Government was quick to recognise his genius early. In 1961, Pele was declared an official national treasure, effectively preventing him from being transferred out of Brazil. On Tuesday afternoon, the last remains of Edson Arantes do Nescient, better known to the world as Pele, were taken from the Vila Belmiro to be interred on the 9th floor of the world’s tallest cemetery, the Memorial Necrópole Ecumênica, overlooking the Santos football grounds where Pele first made his debut. ‘Age shall not weary him, nor the years condemn, at the going down of the sun,’ Brazilians will remember ‘O Rei, our King Pele.’