Tuesday 1st November, 2022
Dissident SLPP MP Dullas Alahapperuma has used an interesting analogy to describe the government’s fear of elections or ‘polls phobia’, which he has likened to Amou Haji’s aversion to water. He has driven his point home. His speeches are usually replete with figures of speech and local idioms, which help convey his message very effectively. Amou Haji has been in the news recently. He was an Iranian hermit who did not bathe for over 50 years and came to be known as the world’s dirtiest man. His neighbours managed to persuade him to take a bath, at long last, and he died a few months later, according to media reports. It is not clear whether his last bath, which he must have loathed, had anything to do with his demise, but an election will certainly be the kiss of death for the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe administration, which abhors electoral contests.
The Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government, in our book, is like the grocery of Kailash ‘Kalau’ Singh, an Indian, who did not wash himself or brush his teeth for more than three decades, and thereby drove all his customers away, according to a report published by The Hindustan Times years ago. It is not known whether he is dead or alive because nothing has been reported about him of late. Media reports said he had given up bathing in the hope that it would help solve India’s problems! The Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government has also trotted out such an absurd excuse for not holding elections. Whether its leaders care much about their personal hygiene, one may not know, but they have caused all political institutions to stink to high heaven like the Augean stables. There is however a significant difference between Singh and the Sri Lankan government; the former would have ‘fire baths’ (read standing near a bonfire at night ‘to kill germs’!) and the latter is playing with fire.
Alahapperuma has torn into the SLPP-UNP alliance for conspiring to use the 21st Amendment to the Constitution to oust Election Commission (EC) Chairman Nimal Punchihewa, as part of its strategy to postpone the local government (LG) elections. Nothing could be scarier to an unpopular regime than the prospect of having to face an election, and therefore the incumbent administration will not scruple to play dirty to prevent its electoral weakness from being exposed.
The EC is now in a position to hold the LG polls before March 2023, and the government’s efforts to prevent it from doing so are bound to get down and dirty in time to come. When President Ranil Wickremesinghe prorogued Parliament, it was obvious that Prof. Chairtha Herath and Prof. Tissa Vitarana, who were heading the COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) and the COPA (Committee on Public Accounts), respectively, would be thrown overboard, as they had got tough with the corrupt and ordered probes into many crooked deals. The government, which is planning to reinvent the wheel by appointing another Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on electoral reforms in a bid to postpone the LG polls, considers EC Chairman Punchihewa an obstacle in its path. So, it will do everything in its power to get him out of the way.
As for the proposed PSC on electoral reforms, Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena owes an explanation to the public. In June 2022, the final report of the PSC to Identify Appropriate Reforms of the Election Laws and the Electoral System and to Recommend Necessary Amendments was tabled in Parliament by Gunawardena himself; he was the Chairman of the PSC and Minister of Public Administration, Home Affairs, Provincial Councils and Local Government and Leader of the House of Parliament. Has the government chosen to deep-six it?
Now that Alahapperuma has raised the alarm, and taken up the cudgels on behalf of the EC chief––quite rightly so––how does the Opposition propose to thwart the government’s sinister move? Mere warnings, rhetoric, requests or signature campaigns will not do. Popular support will have to be mobilised for the Opposition’s efforts to prevent the ouster of the EC Chief and have the LG polls held without further delay. Will it pluck up the courage to grasp the nettle, or will its bark continue to be worse than its bite?
