Hypocrites as democrats
Thursday 30th May, 2024
Opposition politicians and some of their government counterparts have taken up the cudgels for the people’s franchise following UNP General Secretary Palitha Range Bandara’s call for postponing the next presidential and parliamentary polls by two years. They say they are ready to do all it takes to prevent the postponement of elections.
Bandara’s proposal could be considered a trial balloon floated at the behest of the UNP leadership. However, it is doubtful whether the UNP will dare make an attempt to postpone the upcoming presidential election. There is no constitutional provision for such a course of action. President Ranil Wickremesinghe has reportedly said the presidential election will be held, but why the UNP’s proposal at issue has caused so much concern to the public is understandable.
The UNP has an ugly history of trifling with the people’s franchise; it caused a general election to disappear, so to speak, in 1982, with the help of a heavily-rigged referendum. Old habits are said to die hard. The UNP must be made to regret having entertained the idea of postponing national elections again.
The question however is whether some of the self-proclaimed champions of democracy could be trusted with the task of protecting the people’s franchise, given their sordid past. They are trying to win some brownie points with the public by condemning the UNP, which they once honeymooned with and assisted in suppressing democracy.
Prominent among those who are hauling the UNP over the coals are the JVP/NPP and the SLPP. JVP/NPP Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake, MP, has declared that his party will never allow the UNP to postpone elections. Amusingly, the SLPP, too, has jumped on the bandwagon; its National Organiser, Namal Rajapaksa, has said his party is ready to go to any extent to defeat the UNP’s move to postpone elections. He has claimed that under the Rajapaksa governments, elections were never delayed. These politicians seem to think Sri Lankans have drunk from the Lethe (‘River of Forgetfulness’) or are a bunch of fools.
Both Namal and Anura apparently have a very low opinion of public intelligence. The SLPP has postponed the Local Government (LG) elections twice. First, it put off the mini polls on President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s watch in early 2022, unable to face the public; the second postponement of the LG polls came under President Wickremesinghe, who audaciously claimed there were no funds for elections. The SLPP endorsed his position. What moral right does the SLPP have to condemn the UNP for stifling democracy while helping President Wickremesinghe make draconian laws? The Rajapaksas are running with the public and hunting with the UNP, in a manner of speaking.
The JVP, which has taken the moral high ground, unflinchingly helped the UNP-led Yahapalana government postpone the Provincial Council (PC) elections. It voted for amending the PC Elections Act for that purpose in 2017. What Parliament passed became a textbook example of the proverbial Christmas tree bill, given the sheer number of riders; the final draft contained more additional sections than the original text due to extensive committee-stage revisions effected by the Yahapalana government to bypass judicial review. The TNA, the UNP, the UPFA including its dissidents, the SLMC, etc., voted for that obnoxious Bill. The SJB politicians and their SLPP counterparts were in the UNP and the UPFA, respectively, at the time.
The SLFP postponed a general election in 1975 by two years, creating an extremely bad precedent, which the UNP followed eight years later. The JVP committed heinous crimes in a bid to sabotage elections in the late 1980s. Its sparrow units murdered people and/or cut off their hands for voting. Those brave men and women who sacrificed their lives to save democracy have been forgotten, but the criminals who were responsible for heinous crimes against them are commemorated every year! The JVP’s spree of violence aimed at scuttling elections in the late 1980s stood the UNP in good stead as it created conditions for widespread rigging, which helped extend the UNP’s undemocratic rule.
There is no gainsaying that the UNP deserves all the bashing it receives, and must be prevented from suppressing democracy, but its critics are no paragons of virtue, as can be seen from their ruthless attacks on democracy or contribution thereto in the past or even at present. No wonder anti-politics is on the rise with public resentment welling up. The least that the self-styled defenders of democracy could do to assuage public anger is to apologise for their sins and seek forgiveness.
Hypocrites as democrats