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Poly-tricks, MOU's and Democracy in a country ablaze!

Somaweera Sirisinghe writing from New Zealand

The voice from Galle, Wijayananda Dahanayaka once said tongue-in-cheek that politics is nothing but "poly-tricks". He may have been pondering over his cleverly crafted gimmicks successfully employed to draw voter's attention during election time in a bygone era. Daha certainly wouldn't have imagined how "poly-tricks", aided by his contemporary Junius Jayewardene's constitutional hotchpotch would one day make an brake governments in Sri Lanka.

Coalition politics, the indisputable by-product of proportional representation, has in the form of another MOU caused the dissolution of Sri Lanka's Parliament. After a deluge of poly-tricks in recent months, the opposition garnered the numbers to claim the power of the government through the back door. Do these numbers reflect the will of the people who elected their representatives not long ago? Can a democracy in a country where voter turn-out is very much higher than the so-called western democracies tolerate such an action? These are the questions the politically conscious electorate will be asking on their way to the polling booths.

How did we descend into this abyss? JRJ's was understandably obsessed by the fact that two party structure under the first-past-post (FPP) system reduced the defeated party to a meagre number of parliamentary seats although a substantial number of votes have been secured country wide. He also was cock-sure that there would be right leaning small parties based on ethnicity and the dissidents who will cross-over to form coalitions to help the right wing to rule continuously. So he went on carefully cherry picking from more than one overseas constitutions what he exactly wanted. He succeeded in making a hotch-potch with an executive president, list MP's and the "manapaya" etc.

JRJ realised that the rising level of country's education and the high political consciousness of the populace that repeatedly changed governments by the ballot would never elect the Colombo based elite by popular vote. If this class of people dared to face an electorate they would have been defeated hands down. By making way for list MP's he elevated the hierarchy of the political parties to make it supreme over the choice of the people. The list was the leader's and his cohort's domain. Not even the party membership voted for them. A perverted democracy was thus established.

Changing the party by elected representatives including list candidates nominated by a party was kept in tact to give room for horse-deals. The fact that such actions annulled the will of the people expressed through voting for a particular party was never considered important. So poly-tricks was allowed to make its day!

It will be a sorry mistake if the benefactors of JRJ's legacy expect the voters to endorse poly-tricks for ever and send them to form the government at the coming elections. The people who are sick of poly-tricks would naturally look for a third force that could provide a "viable" alternative. The key word is "viable" that should be in the minds of the new generation of real politicians Sri Lanka needs.

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