There has been, over the years, a progressive decline in the integrity of the elections for Sri Lankans to choose their desired representatives to govern them. The completion of a successful fair and free parliamentary election in the past was a pride of the Sri Lankan public service of all ranks which progressively dissipated a long while ago. The calibre of elections commissioners like Arudpragasam and Dias Abeyasinghe is a thing of the past.
This trend was broken in 1981 under President JR Jayewardene attempting to rig the Development Council (his magnum opus for the solution to the national question), elections in the Jaffna district with numerous tailors, carpenters, artisans and other criminal elements who had no notion of an election transported by special trains from the Sinhala areas to “conduct” the elections in Jaffna under the supervision of the then elections commissioner specially taken from Colombo to do the dirty deed replacing the public servants already assigned to their specific duties. Jayewardene wanted to prove that his proposed solution was endorsed by the Tamils in the Jaffna district, but failed. Incidentally, this was within two days of the burning of the Jaffna library done under the direction of three of his senior cabinet ministers.
Elections in Sri Lanka have become redundant and irrelevant to the Tamil people as much as their results are predictable.
The current Sri Lankan constitution made in 1978 with little or no public debate is an amalgam in parts of the Gaullist, American and the Westminster political systems from the west, tailor made to suit the child hood whims and fantasies of a megalomaniac JR Jayewardene, who later announced to the world that he belonged to the lineage of Sri Lankan rulers being the one hundred and twenty first Head of the Sri Lankan State. At a media interview he stated that he could at any time tear up the electoral map of Sri Lanka meaning that the parliamentary election was of no consequence to him.
Parliamentary election in Sri Lanka is a window dressing for its make believe “democracy” and the other, being the lip service paid to it. The Sri Lankan Constitution being the product of an hybrid imitation of western systems is now obsolete in the light of the quest for a homemade system of governance to be also called a democracy with Mahinda Rajapaksa as its Head who may declare himself president for life or even king. The effect is all the same. This is not without precedence in other parts of the world. There are Presidents who made themselves presidents for life like Burnham of Guyana, Pinochet of Chile, Idi Amin of Uganda, Azad of Syria, Kabila of Congo, Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Mubarak of Egypt, Gaddafi of Libya and numerous others in Africa forming a major part of the Non Aligned Movement.
In the true tradition of Dutu Gemunu, the Sinhala polity will be able relate to Rajapaksa better in his image as king having defeated the Tamils perceived as the descendents of foreign invaders, and restoring the independence and the sovereignty of the Sinhala State though for different reasons and under different circumstances. The propaganda machine of the Rajapaksa family and his sycophants keeping up this momentum have already projected him as king in preparation for this, making him appear as the God given gift to the Buddhist Sinhala nation. It is very likely that his party would get a two thirds majority. We are saying this because, the more oppressive the policies of a political party are towards the minorities the more popular it becomes in the Sinhala constituency with the notion of a misplaced majoritarianism lined with strong undertones of racism. Take the case of the NSSP led by Vickremabahu that has reached rock bottom because of their stand on equality for the minorities.
Currently nearly 100, 000 IDPs, facing collective punishment for being Tamils, are indefinitely waiting to be re-settled, the delay blamed on the canard that their own homes have to be de-mined, originally said to have been undertaken by India and now China, more than 10,000 persons taken out of the camps and killed by the armed forces, thousands made to disappear in recent months and many women abused and raped enhancing the popularity of the party of the government. Just before the presidential election we were told that the resettlement of the IDPs was in sight but now we are told that a definite deadline could not be given. The IDPs with an uncertain future are a spectacle of a living monument of the testimony of the oppression and subjugation of Tamils for the benefit of the nationalist elements to look upon and rejoice on Rajapaksa’s triumph over the Tamils.
Like King Charles I of England in 1649, Rajapaksa, not being coy, declares that he is above the law implying that he also enjoys impunity over the war crimes and the crimes against humanity. In other words, King Rajapaksa can do no wrong. This is an open declaration that he is an absolute ruler unchallenged, while being the executive Head of the Sri Lankan State, and perhaps believes, that he has been endowed with the divine right to rule over the Sri Lankan peoples believing his own propaganda.
Unlike other dictators for life, Rajapaksa will be insulated by his closest relatives who will also make up the core of his cabinet holding the second most important positions, a strategy exploiting the terms of the Sri Lankan Constitution making him the Head of the royal family of his dynasty. Rajapaksa justifies his family bandyism and his blatant nepotism by drawing far-fetched analogies of the cases of the family of Gandhi (Mahatma or Rajiv?), Kennedy and George Bush. In a lighter vein, the story of Senior Bush telling his son Bush Jr, Dubya, comes to mind: “Son, you should have pulled out of Iraq before it was too late, I made the same mistake with your mother”. Humanity thus missed being saved of a gigantic disaster!
The members of this ruling clique will control a major part of the budgeted expenditure if not all. In Rumania the president’s twin brother was the prime minister. In Sri Lanka, the prime minister may no longer be the errand boy of the President but kept busy scrutinizing the various international and local contracts. The north and the east will be controlled by the military with the façade of elected puppets as show pieces, and any dissent or free speech will be a thing of the past.
The rule of the Rajapaksa dynasty will be re-enforced by the fear psychosis generated by the exaggerated notions of sovereignty and its likely erosion, the return of the spectre of the Tamil “menace” of militancy a product not of the Tamils but of the Sri Lankan State and the urgent need for development. If Rajapaksa’s political party get a two thirds majority it would be used to make an home brewed Constitution native to the Sri Lankan Sinhala Buddhist ethnocentric aspirations with the president’s position made more autocratic and his power more absolute akin to that of an ancient despotic king so as not to disappoint the Sinhala masses with their built up frenzies clamouring to reward the triumphal Rajapaksa a de jure king from being a de facto king to enjoy an imagined freedom of a primeval past. Either way, Mahinda Rajapaksa and his family will have the last laugh. The government may have to commission the compiling of another Mahavamsa and there we go again.
[Editorial, Eelam Nation]
This trend was broken in 1981 under President JR Jayewardene attempting to rig the Development Council (his magnum opus for the solution to the national question), elections in the Jaffna district with numerous tailors, carpenters, artisans and other criminal elements who had no notion of an election transported by special trains from the Sinhala areas to “conduct” the elections in Jaffna under the supervision of the then elections commissioner specially taken from Colombo to do the dirty deed replacing the public servants already assigned to their specific duties. Jayewardene wanted to prove that his proposed solution was endorsed by the Tamils in the Jaffna district, but failed. Incidentally, this was within two days of the burning of the Jaffna library done under the direction of three of his senior cabinet ministers.
Elections in Sri Lanka have become redundant and irrelevant to the Tamil people as much as their results are predictable.
The current Sri Lankan constitution made in 1978 with little or no public debate is an amalgam in parts of the Gaullist, American and the Westminster political systems from the west, tailor made to suit the child hood whims and fantasies of a megalomaniac JR Jayewardene, who later announced to the world that he belonged to the lineage of Sri Lankan rulers being the one hundred and twenty first Head of the Sri Lankan State. At a media interview he stated that he could at any time tear up the electoral map of Sri Lanka meaning that the parliamentary election was of no consequence to him.
Parliamentary election in Sri Lanka is a window dressing for its make believe “democracy” and the other, being the lip service paid to it. The Sri Lankan Constitution being the product of an hybrid imitation of western systems is now obsolete in the light of the quest for a homemade system of governance to be also called a democracy with Mahinda Rajapaksa as its Head who may declare himself president for life or even king. The effect is all the same. This is not without precedence in other parts of the world. There are Presidents who made themselves presidents for life like Burnham of Guyana, Pinochet of Chile, Idi Amin of Uganda, Azad of Syria, Kabila of Congo, Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Mubarak of Egypt, Gaddafi of Libya and numerous others in Africa forming a major part of the Non Aligned Movement.
In the true tradition of Dutu Gemunu, the Sinhala polity will be able relate to Rajapaksa better in his image as king having defeated the Tamils perceived as the descendents of foreign invaders, and restoring the independence and the sovereignty of the Sinhala State though for different reasons and under different circumstances. The propaganda machine of the Rajapaksa family and his sycophants keeping up this momentum have already projected him as king in preparation for this, making him appear as the God given gift to the Buddhist Sinhala nation. It is very likely that his party would get a two thirds majority. We are saying this because, the more oppressive the policies of a political party are towards the minorities the more popular it becomes in the Sinhala constituency with the notion of a misplaced majoritarianism lined with strong undertones of racism. Take the case of the NSSP led by Vickremabahu that has reached rock bottom because of their stand on equality for the minorities.
Currently nearly 100, 000 IDPs, facing collective punishment for being Tamils, are indefinitely waiting to be re-settled, the delay blamed on the canard that their own homes have to be de-mined, originally said to have been undertaken by India and now China, more than 10,000 persons taken out of the camps and killed by the armed forces, thousands made to disappear in recent months and many women abused and raped enhancing the popularity of the party of the government. Just before the presidential election we were told that the resettlement of the IDPs was in sight but now we are told that a definite deadline could not be given. The IDPs with an uncertain future are a spectacle of a living monument of the testimony of the oppression and subjugation of Tamils for the benefit of the nationalist elements to look upon and rejoice on Rajapaksa’s triumph over the Tamils.
Like King Charles I of England in 1649, Rajapaksa, not being coy, declares that he is above the law implying that he also enjoys impunity over the war crimes and the crimes against humanity. In other words, King Rajapaksa can do no wrong. This is an open declaration that he is an absolute ruler unchallenged, while being the executive Head of the Sri Lankan State, and perhaps believes, that he has been endowed with the divine right to rule over the Sri Lankan peoples believing his own propaganda.
Unlike other dictators for life, Rajapaksa will be insulated by his closest relatives who will also make up the core of his cabinet holding the second most important positions, a strategy exploiting the terms of the Sri Lankan Constitution making him the Head of the royal family of his dynasty. Rajapaksa justifies his family bandyism and his blatant nepotism by drawing far-fetched analogies of the cases of the family of Gandhi (Mahatma or Rajiv?), Kennedy and George Bush. In a lighter vein, the story of Senior Bush telling his son Bush Jr, Dubya, comes to mind: “Son, you should have pulled out of Iraq before it was too late, I made the same mistake with your mother”. Humanity thus missed being saved of a gigantic disaster!
The members of this ruling clique will control a major part of the budgeted expenditure if not all. In Rumania the president’s twin brother was the prime minister. In Sri Lanka, the prime minister may no longer be the errand boy of the President but kept busy scrutinizing the various international and local contracts. The north and the east will be controlled by the military with the façade of elected puppets as show pieces, and any dissent or free speech will be a thing of the past.
The rule of the Rajapaksa dynasty will be re-enforced by the fear psychosis generated by the exaggerated notions of sovereignty and its likely erosion, the return of the spectre of the Tamil “menace” of militancy a product not of the Tamils but of the Sri Lankan State and the urgent need for development. If Rajapaksa’s political party get a two thirds majority it would be used to make an home brewed Constitution native to the Sri Lankan Sinhala Buddhist ethnocentric aspirations with the president’s position made more autocratic and his power more absolute akin to that of an ancient despotic king so as not to disappoint the Sinhala masses with their built up frenzies clamouring to reward the triumphal Rajapaksa a de jure king from being a de facto king to enjoy an imagined freedom of a primeval past. Either way, Mahinda Rajapaksa and his family will have the last laugh. The government may have to commission the compiling of another Mahavamsa and there we go again.
[Editorial, Eelam Nation]