A voter’s plea: ‘You don’t have to do anything, but please don’t steal’

By Malinda Seneviratne

(October 12, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Somewhere in the mid 1990s, I had the opportunity to meet Nissanka Wijeratne, Education Minister in JR’s first Cabinet. I was just accompanying my father, who was paying a courtesy call on an officer who was senior to him in the CCS.

At some point in the conversation, the issue of the Workers’ Charter, at that time the signature initiative of Mahinda Rajapaksa (he was Labour Minister), came up. Powerful figures in the business sector had lobbied the then President and had stopped it. Wijeratne had something interesting to say: ‘He should get the UNP (then in the Opposition) to table it; he’s friendly with Anura Bandaranaike and he can get it done. Politics, after all, is the art of the possible.’

The Workers’ Charter

A lot has happened since then. The Workers’ Charter never got off the ground. Anura B is gone. Mahinda Rajapaksa is the President. All this is beside the point. I am thinking of that line, ‘politics, after all, is the art of the possible’.

Today, I spent a lot of time thinking about the word ‘possible’. I am thinking about it in the context of the Southern Provincial Council election which was held on October 10, 2009. The results are out. Nothing exciting to say about the results. Just a single word: expected!

What really is the ‘possible’ we can expect from politicians these days, I wondered. If one were to list all the promises and check them against delivery, there would be a huge imbalance. The people know this, which is why people don’t really take too much notice of election manifestos and the I-will-deliver-heaven-and-earth type of promises.

Election time is the season for wild proclamation: I will do this, that and the other. Elections also reveal to us very starkly the true dimensions of the human resource problem we face as a nation. Simply put, there aren’t enough competent people to go around. This goes for all parties, the winners, the losers and the no-hopers. For the most part, either you have to be someone of someone or have enormous sums of money to invest (yes, it is a business; one invests, one collects profit).

If there is ‘leadership’, it is because someone can purchase a following or has acquired a reputation for strong-arm tactics. There are exceptions, but that’s very rare.

Udaya Gammanpila (UPFA) for instance came in third in the Colombo District in the Western Provincial Council election, behind two men who would have each out-spent him a hundred times or more. More importantly, he got more votes that many other candidates who out-spent him by a considerable margin.

He was not a thug either. On the other hand, a candidate from the UNP, who was similarly handicapped in terms of funds and did not use strong-arm tactics, Shiral Lakthilaka, didn’t get elected. Both, relative to the rest of the field, are to my mind ‘can’ candidates. One got elected, the other didn’t. But out there in the overall political milieu it does not break 50-50.

The ‘out there’ is a carnival of incompetents and thugs. Good at winning elections, good at making bucks, but when it comes to ‘doing’, it is not about Kireema but Karageneema; not the electorate but self. Yes, this is true of all parties. Let me repeat: the winners, the losers and the no-hopers.

Election campaign

Consequently it is prudent to prune our dreams about ‘possible’. The truth is there is no ‘art’ in the possible. There is ‘crude’. This would be sufferable I suppose if that ‘crude’ did not refer to mismanagement, patronage and outright theft.

I know of a person who toyed for a while with the idea of contesting. He even got an election campaign designed. He planned to position himself in terms of the ‘possible’ and it was quite creative.

He framed his candidature and the profile he planned to project in lines such as the following: a) I will not say that I will put an end to corruption, but I promise I will not steal, b) I will not say that I will eradicate inefficiency, but I promise that I will be efficient. He didn’t have the money to even print these lines in posters. He decided not to contest.

I am not sure that the voters have any moral right to demand anything spectacular from those they elect given that they’ve repeatedly voted in inefficient thugs bent on pilfering public funds. One can’t really put them to the sword for this, however, since more often than not they are asked to choose between two or more despicable creatures.

The voter’s stock increases right up to the time the polls close. From this point it is all downhill. There are no voters after the results are announced; there are instead only ‘irrelevants’. But since the candidate requires their votes, they can in turn ask for favours, regardless of the deliverability of the same. If not for anything, for entertainment. Should they ask for transparency, accountability and overall good governance? Should they demand that the cost of living be brought down, that jobs are created, hospitals better equipped, the school system managed more efficiently? No. Such things are of ‘impossible’ kind.

Don’t steal

I believe it is better to keep things within the believable frame. I offer a neat, clear, easily understood two-point demand sheet to be given to each and every candidate.

First of all the candidate should be urged to do nothing; given competency levels, ‘doing’ would probably cause more damage than not-doing. Doing is a recipe for undoing. So, the message should be, ‘it is ok to contest, and well done for winning, but please, please, please, don’t do anything’. The second is, ‘don’t steal’.

In other words, keruwe nethuvata kamak nehe, eth horakam karanna epa (it is ok if you don’t do anything, but just don’t steal).

How’s that, ladies and gentlemen, for the true dimensions of the ‘Art of the Possible’ in Sri Lankan politics?

-Sri Lanka Guardian