Govt.’s cockamamie reasoning

Friday 3rd March, 2023

The government parliamentary group is reported to have said the time is not right for an election. Ideally, no country should not go to the polls during a crippling economic crisis, but it is the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government that has created a situation where it is left with no alternative but to hold an election to defuse a massive build-up of public anger, which has the potential to trigger a tsunami of political upheavals. If an interim all-party government had been formed towards the latter stages of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration to resolve the economic crisis, with a time frame being set for an early general election, nobody would have asked for local government elections; there would have been political stability, which is a prerequisite for economic recovery.

Gotabaya was willing to consider the call for a unity government, but the other members of the Rajapaksa family and their hangers-on threw a spanner in the works; they wanted to retain their hold on power. They brought in Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Prime Minister, and then made him the President for political expediency. The people asked for the discontinuation of the Rajapaksa administration, which bankrupted the country, but what they have got is an extension of the Rajapaksa rule in all but name. It is old toddy in a new pot, so to speak. Almost all politico-economic factors that led to last year’s popular uprisings remain unaddressed; they include economic mismanagement, corruption, waste, the abuse of power, cronyism, economic hardships, the culture of impunity, the collapse of the rule of law, and the theft of public funds. Above all, what the current regime is doing is the very opposite of what the SLPP promised in its election manifestos.

The SLPP presented itself as an alternative to the UNP-led government (2015-2019), and sought a mandate for undoing what its predecessor had done. But today the SLPP has joined forces with the UNP and deep-sixed its original policy programme. The current dispensation therefore lacks legitimacy, which is a sine qua non of public acceptance, popular support, and political stability. It therefore has to secure a fresh mandate at a popular election to prove that it enjoys public support for its policy reversals.

Most of all, the local government institutions must be prevented from going the same way as the Provincial Councils, which are now without elected representatives and under the provincial Governors appointed by the President. True, there are too many local councillors, who number more than 8,000. This number should be halved. But the mini polls must not be made to wait until electoral reforms are introduced to reduce the number of councillors, for it is a long-drawn out process that can drag on till the cows come home. As an interim measure, the cost of running the local government institutions could be reduced by curtailing the allowances their members are entitled to.

Having derailed the local government polls on the grounds that the economy is too weak to afford an election at this juncture, the government is now trying to paint a rosy picture of the economic situation. This is an instance of self-contradiction.

Unprecedented economic hardships are not the only reason why the public is in high dudgeon to the point of taking to the streets at the drop of a hat. Equally rankling is their realisation that the government politicians are tone-deaf to their suffering. Instances of the ruling party MPs displaying their cavalier attitude to the predicament of the public are not infrequent. They talk as if the people were responsible for the country’s bankruptcy! Worse, they seem to be deriving some perverse pleasure from the people’s plight.

Protests against the postponement of the mini polls are growing in intensity, and police attacks on them have already claimed one life. The situation is bound to take a turn for the worse with the passage of time. Instead of claiming that the time is not right for elections and trying to crush protests with the help of the police and the military, the government had better address the causes of public anger, adopt a conciliatory approach, and allow the people to exercise their franchise.