“Incidentally, in a nation where price-rise has become a phenomenon not worthy of public discourse any more, and where there are more ministers per million population than anywhere in the world, such self-indulgence on the part of the political class would leave a bad taste in the mouth, to say the least. That the UNP may be ripe for another batch of defections became known when the JVP split months ago, what with the ruling SLFP-UPFA not wanting to confer greater legitimacy on the latter, if it could help. “
by N Sathiya Moorthy
by N Sathiya Moorthy
(September 08, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Voting is over, long live voting. Though President Mahinda Rajapaksa has announced that he does not intend to slap a snap polls to Parliament ahead of time, riding the wave of the twin Provincial Council poll victories in North-Central and Sabaragamuva, it is no guarantee that there would not be other polls elsewhere in the country. Rather than winning or losing elections, political parties and their leaderships have begun making polls a diversionary tactic to keep off 'marauders' from power.
Starting off with a new promise of polls has been Minister Douglas Devananda. The EPDP leader, who heads the three-member, high-power Special Task Force (STF) for attending to the development works in the war-torn Northern Province, has spoken about what had been suspected for some time now. The EPDP leader that he also is, Devananda has said that the Government was considering early elections to the Jaffna Municipal Council, if only to test the waters in the North – and thus the mood of the larger Tamil population in the Province, and possibly elsewhere too.
For his part, President Rajapaksa has since referred to elections for the Northern Provincial Council, as well. Of course, he has punctuated his proposal with the caveat that the polls in the North would have to be preceded by military victory over the LTTE. Instead, it should be preceded by permanent peace in the North, where a satisfactory political settlement to the ethnic issue is a condition precedent for ushering in the much-needed development.
The picture is clear. The Rajapaksa Government is trying to repeat an East in the North, in what is projected as the 'development' promise for the Tamil areas, even if only to a limited extent. Whether Jaffna is Batticaloa, for the Government to follow up on local government elections with Provincial Council polls is far-fetched at the moment. Not only because war is still raging elsewhere in the Northern Province and that the number of internally-displaced citizenry, but also because any Provincial Council poll now or later without a final settlement to the 'ethnic issue' would revive issues pertaining re-merger with the East.
The fact that President Rajapaksa did resist the temptation of going ahead with his initial proposition to have nominated Provincial Council for the North did not go unnoticed. In its place came the STF, yes. There were legal impediments to such nomination. That also left the re-merger question as open as the de-merger may have sought to close it. Today, if possible elections in Jaffna could reopen the issue, or shut the doors on it for good, then you may have a problem.
For all this however, for anyone to conclude that any elections now in Jaffna would be violence-ridden and would be a denial of the Tamils' right to self-determination could well be a fallacy. The demand of the Tamils in Jaffna and the rest of the North for growth and development has been as critical as their crying need for humanism and human rights. If municipal council elections could ensure that there is a representative body to deliver development, however lop-sided either be, some beginning would have been made.
Polls in Jaffna could well be akin to the earlier elections in the East, It is for the Rajapakse Government to demonstrate its sincerity and commitment to developing the East as it had promised. It is such conviction, first on the part of the Government and then on the part of the Tamil and the rest of the population in the East that would convince their brethren of every faith and ethnicity in the rest of the country.
Polls as a tool to deliver development are welcome, yes. It is elections that distinguish a democracy from dictatorship, and polls in the North could throw up a few militants onto the mainstream as it did in the East. Yet, the Government would do well to consider other options to deliver development to the North . After all, the North is not the East, and Jaffna, with war still raging not very far away, is not Batticaloa.Development as a quotient to measure peace in the North is as good as polls in the present context.
Either way, the Government would have convinced the Sri Lankan society nearer home and the international community otherwise about the progress being made on the peace front, peace being a pre-requisite for prosperity. In a country whose development demands far outrtrip capabilities even under normal circumstances, the international community would then put in money where their heart is now.
The Tamil areas in particular and the whole of Sri Lanka otherwise can do with a lot of development, quick and fast. Call it the 'ethnic war', or acts of violence or whatever, the continuing military/militant activities is sure to rattle not just the local community. Prospective investors would be scared away -- and more so foreign investors. . Last fortnight's LTTE air-raid on Trincomalee, while not achieving much by way of military gains, may have already set the foreign investors thinking.
It is in this context that reports about higher pay and emoluments for the nation's ministers and parliamentarians cause eyebrows to rise. It is not as if the political class remains unaffected by price rise and inflation. Their commitments are more, yes, and so or their concerns. That is granting the honesty of purpose and sincerity of execution on the part of individual parliamentarians and ministers, whether in Sri Lanka or elsewhere.
Incidentally, in a nation where price-rise has become a phenomenon not worthy of public discourse any more, and where there are more ministers per million population than anywhere in the world, such self-indulgence on the part of the political class would leave a bad taste in the mouth, to say the least. That the UNP may be ripe for another batch of defections became known when the JVP split months ago, what with the ruling SLFP-UPFA not wanting to confer greater legitimacy on the latter, if it could help.
In the process, the UPFA resisted the temptation of admitting all those UNP Members of Parliament who were ready to cross over in the earlier instalments lest that should deny former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe the continuing status as the 'Leader of the Opposition'. With the twin Provincial Council polls too confirming the reduced voter-support for the JVP, the temptation and the need for the UPFA to try and weaken the UNP parliamentary party at the very least could not be ruled out, either.
As is known, already senior Ministers are openly talking about engineering further defections from the Opposition UNP, thus possibly and wilfully causing an increase in the number of ministers and the public expenditure on them, there is now a danger of obust Provincial Councils with active Ministers at their levels adding to the cost, and thus to the dismay of the people at large.
Now that the Provincial Council polls in North-Central and Sabaragamuva are behind it, the UNP, the JVP and the rest of the political Opposition in the country too would in turn be tempted to revert to an old game from the past years. They would try to vote out one more budget of the Rajapaksa Government could keep Parliament and the nation's polity enthralled in a make-believe world of theirs, . If the JVP and a few others should join the club this time round, President Rajapaksa need not be conferred all the credit and honour. Unfortunately for the Tamils and the rest of the nation, what may have thus begun well might get mired in a political controversy of unproductive, if not sinister consequences, if the Budget Session of Parliament took the previous year's route. That was when the budget vote became a national past-time and a crudely-executed, cruel entertainment, diverting the attention of political parties from the respective leadership crises that they faced and those leaderships from the moral crises that they were up against. If nothing else, the Opposition parties fed their dissident ranks, with hopes of defeating the Government . You can now hear the same strings ahead of another budget session, with the Opposition reviving faded excuses to paint the Government as corrupt, autocratic and unpopular – after it had won three Provincial Councils in a row.
Yet, all this should not deviate from the good and conscientious work that Members of Parliament are not incapable of doing. The collective wisdom of some members of Parliament, cutting across the 'Great Political Divisions' to come up with a possible solution to the stalemated national discourse attending on the 17th Amendment is commendable. With the UNP, JVP and even the TNA involved in the effort, it is the kind of initiative that the peace process on the ethnic front can do with, considering that the good work being done by the APRC is stymied in a political controversy.
Reports about the armed forces vacating a small piece of private land in a High Security Zone (HSZ) in the Tamil areas, and a freshly-recruited batch of 125 Tamil-speaking policemen in the East being sent to India for training are decisions that go even in a small way to address the concerns and aspirations of the community, which needs to live, and needs to be ensured peace for them to live and prosper. There is a long way to go, and symbolism needs to be replaced by systemic changes and systematic follow-up, if such efforts are to be taken seriously, particularly with the Tamil polity and the people but not stopping with them.
(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, the Indian policy think-tank headquartered in New Delhi ) - Sri Lanka Guardian
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