“Anyone wishing to change the political culture of this country would succeed if he recognises what is deep seated in the psychology of the people. There was a President who saw this but the methods he adopted like his Paththiruppuwa appearances, Sangeeta Sandarshanas and Gan Udawa festivals did not quite go down with everyone. Indeed, we are a long, long way from democracy.”_____________________________
by S.Pathiravitana
(February 17, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It has been said of some writers that they have the unique gift of making you think and laugh at the same time. This description came to my mind while reading V.P.Vittachi’s The Fretful Porpentine and Other Essays, because laughter and thought were not far from each other here. Only, I was telling myself for a moment that I should be really crying, not laughing. For, I came to realise that the characters who are being paraded across the pages of his book (some of whom were once my dear, dear political heroes) are, sadly the very people who have put poor Mother Lanka into such disarray today.
But they all had such good intentions, you know. The trouble with good intentions, however, is that they have been found to pave the path, attractively enough, to hell. (The second part of this book throws some light on similar performances by some political leaders in the West today). I have always feared that democracy will finally be taken over by the Mafiosi. This may be already happening elsewhere, and here in Lanka we see how some of our so-called democratic parties are lending every thing they can do to put the local Mafiosi on its feet.
Vittachi’s book should not be read only for its laughs. The questions that his writings imply are serious enough and cannot be lightly brushed aside. Is there some other way, he is wondering, we can choose people to represent us in the assemblies that matter? Why not entrust this to the Elections Commissioner? Let him prepare from each electorate a list of names of people qualified by law to enter parliament. Those unwilling to serve as parliamentarians can opt out. The remaining names can be put into a barrel from which the winners can be drawn out as in a lottery.
What everybody will now want to know is what happens to the existing political parties? This bane of our country will be permitted to exist, but their role will be confined to acting only as pressure groups and to lobbying for the policies they advocate. Selection by lottery will continue inside the parliament, too. This is for the selection of committees (as in the old State Council) that will be responsible for policy and administration. Each committee will then elect a minister by ballot after a Speaker for the House is appointed.
This is only a brief outline of a not too elaborate plan Vittachi has sketched .It may require some fleshing out. But the reasons he gives in defence of the lottery system of election as against the current elective principle seems incontrovertible and just the thing to revive our dying confidence in elections and referendums. "Ask yourself:" he tells us, "Is the elective principle so sacrosanct that we must put up with the exorbitant expense, the mindless killings, the bitterness and ill-will brought about by election malpractices, the distortions brought about by caste, creed, wealth, the cynicism of old men etc always bearing in mind that election is only a second-best compromise in democracy."
By second best he is only reminding us that in the original Greek concept every citizen was a legislator, just as every citizen was his own lawyer in the Sinhala system. But as time went on all the citizens could not assemble at one time and at one place, the elective principle came along as the second best.
In this vein he offers a number of remedies - abolish pensions for politicians, abolish provincial councils, restore Section 29 of the Soulbury Constitution, re-centralise the budget, give real power to the Ombudsman - but at the present pace of our political progress mere dreaming about such proposals is the only satisfaction we would seem to have. He calls this section a mere Postscript, but I would like to rank it as an important national service he has done
Nevertheless, his observations and comments in the course of his Civil Service career are very interesting and educative. In 1963, he was in Jaffna as its Government Agent. To his dismay, he discovered that the Residency had no flush toilets. As he tells it, "I was consternated," a word rarely brought into service in this modern age. But that is Vittachi. He begins his cover page with ‘porpentine’ a word familiar enough to Shakespeare and goes on to the rarely heard ‘absquatulate.’ They are all in the dictionary anyway, which I had to look up to uncover their meanings.
This propensity of his may be a kind of fallout from his favourite hobby, the regular exercise of compiling cryptic puzzles. Anyway, this word consternated diverts me at this moment to reveal, by your permission, something more of Jaffna and the first occupant of the Jaffna Residency.
I was told by a friend that it was only after 1947 that Jaffna got some sort of sewage disposal system. I may add that in 1947 parts of the city of Colombo, too, had no flush toilets at all. For that matter even in Britain, civilisation had still not visited Britain’s sewage disposal system at the time when the government of Ceylon appointed the first Government Agent to Jaffna. That was in 1830. He was Percival Ackland Dyke, a remarkable man, greatly admired and feared, who did many things to bring happiness to the life of the Jaffnese , but nothing about toilet facilities; perhaps because he did not feel the necessity not having enjoyed such things in Britain.
Vittachi decided to repair this omission in a manner that would have pleased Dyke himself. For it is not well known that Dyke built the Residency with his own money and that he bequeathed it to the officer in occupation of the Residency at any one time. When Vittachi discovered that the Residency belonged to him, he set about getting some flush toilets to the place. How he did it when officially there was no money for this purpose reveals his ingenuity in outwitting the high and mighty and, in this case, bringing profit, too, to the Residency. Already my review is too long, so I request the reader to get the full story from the book.
Jaffna, at the time the British fully manned the Civil Service, was thought of, for some reason, as a prize station by those in that service. For the entire period of the 19th century there were only two Government Agents appointed - Dyke and Twynham. Dyke, displaying some of the obstinacy of a Vittachi, protested once when the government reduced the salary of the Northern Province Agency from £1500 to £1200 but allowed only Dyke to draw his former salary as a concession. He was willing to accept his former salary, he said, but not as a favour. The matter called for the intervention of the Secretary of State who suggested that an ordinance be passed in order to allow Dyke to draw his earlier salary.
Dyke, a strict disciplinarian, came to be known as the Rajah of Jaffna for the firmness and benevolence he displayed. This reverential attitude of the people towards their leaders is something we find difficult to eradicate. One thing lacking in Vittachi’s proposals towards a change in our current political culture is the need for this interdependence between ruler and ruled as the title Rajah tends to suggest. The qualities of firmness and benevolence, along with eight other Royal duties, shown by our kings are derived from the sacred office of Rajah or King, which the occupant is called upon to fulfil.
The tragic consequences of their lack today, in which the firmness has turned into terror and the benevolence into fat commissions granted to lackeys, can be clearly seen in operation today. John Davy in his Account of the Interior in Ceylon regrets the destruction of the interrelationship which prevailed between ruler and ruled:
"When one considers this rebellion and its consequences one almost regrets, that we ever entered the Kandyan country. The evils immediately resulting from it, certainly greatly exceeds the original benefit we conferred on the natives, in removing a tyrant from the throne" (p 331).
Earlier he recounts what the Sinhalese have come to miss most after the new government was imposed on them.
"Accustomed to the presence of a king in their capital, to the splendour of its courts, and to the complicated arrangements connected with it, they could ill relish the sudden and total abolition of the whole system.
The King of Great Britain was to them merely a name; they had no notion of delegated authority; they wanted a king whom they could see, and before whom they could prostrate and obtain summary justice. These are a few only of the leading circumstances which tended to render the natives averse from us and our government, and anxious to attempt to throw it off "(p327).
Anyone wishing to change the political culture of this country would succeed if he recognises what is deep seated in the psychology of the people. There was a President who saw this but the methods he adopted like his Paththiruppuwa appearances, Sangeeta Sandarshanas and Gan Udawa festivals did not quite go down with everyone. Indeed, we are a long, long way from democracy.
Vittachi has made a valuable contribution to the nation by giving us a closer view of the people who have come to lead us during the last half century - a case, I must say, of the blind leading the blind This is an imperfect world and our leaders must necessarily be imperfect. Only those who realise this truth can claim some qualification to lead.
by S.Pathiravitana
(February 17, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It has been said of some writers that they have the unique gift of making you think and laugh at the same time. This description came to my mind while reading V.P.Vittachi’s The Fretful Porpentine and Other Essays, because laughter and thought were not far from each other here. Only, I was telling myself for a moment that I should be really crying, not laughing. For, I came to realise that the characters who are being paraded across the pages of his book (some of whom were once my dear, dear political heroes) are, sadly the very people who have put poor Mother Lanka into such disarray today.
But they all had such good intentions, you know. The trouble with good intentions, however, is that they have been found to pave the path, attractively enough, to hell. (The second part of this book throws some light on similar performances by some political leaders in the West today). I have always feared that democracy will finally be taken over by the Mafiosi. This may be already happening elsewhere, and here in Lanka we see how some of our so-called democratic parties are lending every thing they can do to put the local Mafiosi on its feet.
Vittachi’s book should not be read only for its laughs. The questions that his writings imply are serious enough and cannot be lightly brushed aside. Is there some other way, he is wondering, we can choose people to represent us in the assemblies that matter? Why not entrust this to the Elections Commissioner? Let him prepare from each electorate a list of names of people qualified by law to enter parliament. Those unwilling to serve as parliamentarians can opt out. The remaining names can be put into a barrel from which the winners can be drawn out as in a lottery.
What everybody will now want to know is what happens to the existing political parties? This bane of our country will be permitted to exist, but their role will be confined to acting only as pressure groups and to lobbying for the policies they advocate. Selection by lottery will continue inside the parliament, too. This is for the selection of committees (as in the old State Council) that will be responsible for policy and administration. Each committee will then elect a minister by ballot after a Speaker for the House is appointed.
This is only a brief outline of a not too elaborate plan Vittachi has sketched .It may require some fleshing out. But the reasons he gives in defence of the lottery system of election as against the current elective principle seems incontrovertible and just the thing to revive our dying confidence in elections and referendums. "Ask yourself:" he tells us, "Is the elective principle so sacrosanct that we must put up with the exorbitant expense, the mindless killings, the bitterness and ill-will brought about by election malpractices, the distortions brought about by caste, creed, wealth, the cynicism of old men etc always bearing in mind that election is only a second-best compromise in democracy."
By second best he is only reminding us that in the original Greek concept every citizen was a legislator, just as every citizen was his own lawyer in the Sinhala system. But as time went on all the citizens could not assemble at one time and at one place, the elective principle came along as the second best.
In this vein he offers a number of remedies - abolish pensions for politicians, abolish provincial councils, restore Section 29 of the Soulbury Constitution, re-centralise the budget, give real power to the Ombudsman - but at the present pace of our political progress mere dreaming about such proposals is the only satisfaction we would seem to have. He calls this section a mere Postscript, but I would like to rank it as an important national service he has done
Nevertheless, his observations and comments in the course of his Civil Service career are very interesting and educative. In 1963, he was in Jaffna as its Government Agent. To his dismay, he discovered that the Residency had no flush toilets. As he tells it, "I was consternated," a word rarely brought into service in this modern age. But that is Vittachi. He begins his cover page with ‘porpentine’ a word familiar enough to Shakespeare and goes on to the rarely heard ‘absquatulate.’ They are all in the dictionary anyway, which I had to look up to uncover their meanings.
This propensity of his may be a kind of fallout from his favourite hobby, the regular exercise of compiling cryptic puzzles. Anyway, this word consternated diverts me at this moment to reveal, by your permission, something more of Jaffna and the first occupant of the Jaffna Residency.
I was told by a friend that it was only after 1947 that Jaffna got some sort of sewage disposal system. I may add that in 1947 parts of the city of Colombo, too, had no flush toilets at all. For that matter even in Britain, civilisation had still not visited Britain’s sewage disposal system at the time when the government of Ceylon appointed the first Government Agent to Jaffna. That was in 1830. He was Percival Ackland Dyke, a remarkable man, greatly admired and feared, who did many things to bring happiness to the life of the Jaffnese , but nothing about toilet facilities; perhaps because he did not feel the necessity not having enjoyed such things in Britain.
Vittachi decided to repair this omission in a manner that would have pleased Dyke himself. For it is not well known that Dyke built the Residency with his own money and that he bequeathed it to the officer in occupation of the Residency at any one time. When Vittachi discovered that the Residency belonged to him, he set about getting some flush toilets to the place. How he did it when officially there was no money for this purpose reveals his ingenuity in outwitting the high and mighty and, in this case, bringing profit, too, to the Residency. Already my review is too long, so I request the reader to get the full story from the book.
Jaffna, at the time the British fully manned the Civil Service, was thought of, for some reason, as a prize station by those in that service. For the entire period of the 19th century there were only two Government Agents appointed - Dyke and Twynham. Dyke, displaying some of the obstinacy of a Vittachi, protested once when the government reduced the salary of the Northern Province Agency from £1500 to £1200 but allowed only Dyke to draw his former salary as a concession. He was willing to accept his former salary, he said, but not as a favour. The matter called for the intervention of the Secretary of State who suggested that an ordinance be passed in order to allow Dyke to draw his earlier salary.
Dyke, a strict disciplinarian, came to be known as the Rajah of Jaffna for the firmness and benevolence he displayed. This reverential attitude of the people towards their leaders is something we find difficult to eradicate. One thing lacking in Vittachi’s proposals towards a change in our current political culture is the need for this interdependence between ruler and ruled as the title Rajah tends to suggest. The qualities of firmness and benevolence, along with eight other Royal duties, shown by our kings are derived from the sacred office of Rajah or King, which the occupant is called upon to fulfil.
The tragic consequences of their lack today, in which the firmness has turned into terror and the benevolence into fat commissions granted to lackeys, can be clearly seen in operation today. John Davy in his Account of the Interior in Ceylon regrets the destruction of the interrelationship which prevailed between ruler and ruled:
"When one considers this rebellion and its consequences one almost regrets, that we ever entered the Kandyan country. The evils immediately resulting from it, certainly greatly exceeds the original benefit we conferred on the natives, in removing a tyrant from the throne" (p 331).
Earlier he recounts what the Sinhalese have come to miss most after the new government was imposed on them.
"Accustomed to the presence of a king in their capital, to the splendour of its courts, and to the complicated arrangements connected with it, they could ill relish the sudden and total abolition of the whole system.
The King of Great Britain was to them merely a name; they had no notion of delegated authority; they wanted a king whom they could see, and before whom they could prostrate and obtain summary justice. These are a few only of the leading circumstances which tended to render the natives averse from us and our government, and anxious to attempt to throw it off "(p327).
Anyone wishing to change the political culture of this country would succeed if he recognises what is deep seated in the psychology of the people. There was a President who saw this but the methods he adopted like his Paththiruppuwa appearances, Sangeeta Sandarshanas and Gan Udawa festivals did not quite go down with everyone. Indeed, we are a long, long way from democracy.
Vittachi has made a valuable contribution to the nation by giving us a closer view of the people who have come to lead us during the last half century - a case, I must say, of the blind leading the blind This is an imperfect world and our leaders must necessarily be imperfect. Only those who realise this truth can claim some qualification to lead.
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