{"id":64316,"date":"2017-03-19T10:34:24","date_gmt":"2017-03-19T16:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=64316"},"modified":"2017-03-19T03:03:40","modified_gmt":"2017-03-19T10:03:40","slug":"recognizing-the-yahapalanaya-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/03\/19\/recognizing-the-yahapalanaya-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Recognizing the yahapalanaya party"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Malinda Seneviratne<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

March 18, 2017, 5:53 pm<\/span><\/p>\n

Arjuna Mahendran, the former Governor of the Central Bank, is reported to have transferred out some 500 members of his staff.\u00a0 The Government is all set to demarcate specific areas for protests.\u00a0 The Government got some egg on its face with the appointment and removal of judges.\u00a0 There\u2019s the bond issue scandal.\u00a0 The big boys in the Government ranted and raved about Port City and the Hambantota Port when in power, and all but showed the middle finger to China while campaigning to oust Mahinda Rajapaksa.\u00a0 Today the very same worthies are crawling on all fours before China and appear to be brain-faded about the aforementioned projects.<\/p>\n

Just imagine!<\/p>\n

What if all of the above could be placed at the Responsibility Door of Mahinda Rajapaksa?\u00a0 What if it was the USA and not China?\u00a0 How would the champions of yahapalanaya have responded?\u00a0 Well, we are not hearing any shrieks of horror. We are not seeing any terse comments from the US State Department or the British Foreign Secretary.\u00a0 The yahapalana apologists for this Government have all gone quiet.\u00a0 Well, not all of them.\u00a0 Jehan Perera has been reduced to quoting Otto von Bismarck: “politics is the art of the possible”.\u00a0 Bismarck, interestingly, also observed, “The great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.”<\/p>\n

Let none of this surprise anyone.\u00a0 It\u2019s not about right or wrong.\u00a0 It\u2019s not about ethics.\u00a0 It\u2019s not about doing things right or better.\u00a0 It\u2019s not about good governance.\u00a0 It\u2019s all about power and those whose faces you prefer to see and those you despise for whatever reason.\u00a0 This is best demonstrated by the parliamentary machinations we have seen courtesy the yahapalanists.<\/p>\n

Maithripala Sirisena, leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), sacked the Secretary of his party and the Secretary of the coalition his party led (the UPFA) days before the General Election and moved to stop the respective central committees from convening.\u00a0 Did the good governance advocates mutter \u2018tut-tut\u2019?\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 That\u2019s yahapalana democracy, the \u2018politics of the possible,\u2019 and decisions by iron (we are yet to get to \u2018blood\u2019 but don\u2019t be surprised if we do). The end, so to say, always justified means.<\/p>\n

Just the other day Speaker Karu Jayasuriya stated that the National Freedom Front (NFF) led by Wimal Weerawansa could not be accepted as a separate party in Parliament as it was not gazetted as one that contested at the last general election.<\/p>\n

Fine.\u00a0 Now let\u2019s rewind to a moment in late 2015, i.e. just after the General Election.\u00a0 This was when a coalition government was formed.\u00a0 It was misnamed \u2018national government\u2019, a deliberate slip which we will revisit presently.\u00a0 It was a coalition made of which parties, does anyone remember.\u00a0 Pause for a moment.\u00a0 Remember the names of the parties?\u00a0 Write them down.\u00a0 Did you write \u2018SLFP and UNP (United National Party)?\u2019\u00a0 Are you sure?\u00a0 Yes?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s go back to the election.\u00a0 The UNP, which made a big do of a \u2018grand coalition\u2019 with other parties and political groups and called itself publicly \u2018United National Front for Good Governance\u2019\u00a0secured 106 seats.\u00a0 Another party secured 95 seats.\u00a0 Was it the SLFP?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 It was the UPFA (United People\u2019s Freedom Alliance).\u00a0 The SLFP did not contest!<\/p>\n

And yet, this government was formed (as per provisions in the 19th Amendment we were told) following an agreement signed between the UNP and the SLFP, and the latter, let us repeat, did not even contest the election.\u00a0 The Speaker, in delivering his decision on the NPP has said that he was not concerned over the internal agreements entered into among parties within those which officially contested and found representation in Parliament.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that trivial, folks.\u00a0 The point is that the numbers and composition are of utmost importance in parliamentary affair including composition of committees, representation in party leaders\u2019 meetings, time allocation in parliamentary debates etc.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a classic case of doing the convenient as per political preferences and quite unbecoming of the Speaker who happens to be a man noted to uphold principles in a manner uncommon among his contemporaries.<\/p>\n

Again, why should anyone be surprised?\u00a0 Well, the lack of comment from all those lovely people who would shout and scream at the slightest transgression on \u2018democratic practice\u2019 by the previous regime, is by now understandable.\u00a0 Forget them, few eyebrows were raised when the 19th came into effect.\u00a0 No one seemed to mind the vagueness deliberately scripted in with respect to the notion of a \u2018national government\u2019.\u00a0 Let\u2019s revisit.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Article 46 (5) defines \u2018National Government\u2019: “A Government formed by the recognized political party or the independent group which obtains the highest number of seats in Parliament together with the other recognized political parties or the independent groups”.<\/p>\n

It does not say \u2018any other\u2019, which would have made this Cabinet legitimate.\u00a0 Of course neither does it say \u2018all other\u2019 (which would have made this Cabinet illegitimate).\u00a0 The wording is vague and shows carelessness and incompetence.\u00a0 Well, we should actually use the word \u2018pernicious\u2019 here.<\/p>\n

So we have the UNP as the party obtaining the highest number of seats.\u00a0 Nothing wrong there.\u00a0 Then we have other recognized political parties.\u00a0 What\u2019s the \u2018recognized\u2019 political party in this national government, so-called?\u00a0 The SLFP?\u00a0 Well, the Speaker would say if he was asked politely that the SLFP did not contest the election and perforce he cannot recognize it.\u00a0 And yet, we have a UNP-SLFP \u2018national\u2019 government!<\/p>\n

Just so we know what this is all about, the \u2018national government\u2019 clause has little to do with nation.\u00a0 It\u2019s about ministerial posts and a neat method of subverting both election promise and the article relevant to the maximum number of portfolios.\u00a0 Thirty, they said.\u00a0 Thirty, they wrote into the constitution.\u00a0 But Article 46(4) allows Parliament to approve a number beyond the \u201930\u2019 legislated under 46(1)a and 46(1)b.\u00a0 \u2018Beyond\u2019 goes against the spirit of limitation because theoretically all those parliamentarians who are members of the political parties and independent groups that make the \u2018national government\u2019 can be appointed to the cabinet of ministers.\u00a0 Quite \u2018yaha\u2019 in the \u2018palana\u2019 sense, what!<\/p>\n

So, what should we take out of all this?\u00a0 We should first and foremost stop being shocked about what was done with the Central Bank bond issue, about the self-righteousness and subsequent silence on Port City and the Hambantota Port, about nepotism and corruption and other things that don\u2019t really sit well with the notion of \u2018good governance\u2019 (in word and deed).<\/p>\n

If this is yahapalanaya at the age of two years, it would be prudent to extrapolate to what the baby would have grow up to come 2020 or even earlier.\u00a0\u00a0 We have to conclude, \u2018politicians will be politicians\u2019.\u00a0 More importantly, we have to understand that their approvers and in fact all those who uttered notions such as good governance with sober faces and in grave tones during the Rajapaksas are essentially a bunch of hypocrites.<\/p>\n

As for parties and their recognition, it\u2019s probably best to go with the commonsense definition: a social gathering of invited guests, typically involving eating, drinking, and entertainment.<\/p>\n

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.\u00a0 Twitter: malindasene.\u00a0 Blog: www.malindawords.blogspot.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Malinda Seneviratne March 18, 2017, 5:53 pm Arjuna Mahendran, the former Governor of the Central Bank, is reported to have transferred out some 500 members of his staff.\u00a0 The Government is all set to demarcate specific areas for protests.\u00a0 The Government got some egg on its face with the appointment and removal of judges.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malinda-seneviratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}