Parliament is made of members representing various parties
elected by the people. People come,
people go. Some stay for years like the
present Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Others are here today gone tomorrow or else one this side now and later
on that, courtesy one Chief Justice called Sarath N Silva. Parliament is made of voices but parliament has no voice, except in a parallel universe. Here's that voice, heard and recorded for the first time.
My father who once gave shelter to representatives and was
later made to cover wheeler dealers knows all this. In his time when people moved they were
prompted by a thing called conscience.
Even when they did crossed party lines they didn’t stop representing the
people who voted for them.
It’s all different now.
People are not as patient as they were before. If you ask them they’ll say ‘the opposition
has an important role to play in a democracy,’ but they all act as though ‘The
Opposition’ is a cesspit they’ve been dumped in. They crawl out and are duly embraced by ‘The
Government’ without any thought to the gooey stuff staining the well starched
national dress of the embracer.
I don’t know. I am
over 35 years old and I thought I had seen it all. I saw Ronnie De Mel. He gave ‘jump’ an entirely new meaning. Today Ronnie is old hat. He’s been bested. Today it’s quite a blur. People move so fast that it is hard to keep
track of who is who, who is where, and where for how long.
Still, there was one thing clear. After the jump, embrace, cheer and jeer, when
the Speaker restores order there are two sides.
Government and Opposition. But
look what’s happened now!
The Leader of the Opposition belongs to the largest
parliamentary group. The Prime Minister
is from a party that has less than half the number of MPs the Opposition boasts
of. The President appoints/selects both
Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition.
Then there’s another group made of single-member reps from various
parties who don’t want the Leader of the Opposition even as they embrace the
program that the newly elected President got a mandate from the people to
implement. The Speaker is the brother of
the recently dethroned President who is almost saying he is thrilled that his
brother lost. Mind you, the dethroners’
clarion call was to oust not just the President
but his entire family.
Everyone supports the President and his program, either as
individuals or as members of political parties that have endorsed the key
elements of his election manifesto.
Everyone believes he/she is part of the Government, even the Leader of
the Opposition.
I am tired. I can’t
figure it out. I overheard someone
saying that TV debates have become dead boring because everyone agrees with
everyone else. Ironically it is called වාද පිටිය
(vaada pitiya, translatable as
debating ground). No sharp exchanges. No point and counterpoint. No debate.
In any other situation (e.g. a group of friends on a camping
trip or a team of archaeologists delving into early human settlements) this
would be ideal. The problem here is that
we are not talking of a group of saints.
There are crooks, wheeler dealers, those accused of plunder, arson and
even murder, and barefaced liars. If
these people are in AGREEMENT and they happen to be representing the people of
this country, I can only come to one conclusion. I am obsolete.
So I say DISSOLVE ME.
No, not in the traditional way of turning MPs into former MPs overnight,
I am saying ‘burn me up, let me sink into the Diyavanna Oya, I don’t care how
you do it, but put me out of this misery.
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