EDITORIAL

Evil Vs. Impotence

Since the election of the Speaker on April 22, events in the nation's political firmament have been in turmoil as seldom before. Each day's newspapers publish news that, had it been in some other country, would precipitate the immediate downfall of the government. But Sri Lanka is a country so inured to upheaval that even the most earth-shattering news is received with blas‚ nonchalance by many.

In last week's edition of The Sunday Leader, we told the bizarre tale of a government conspiracy to blackmail Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) Leader, Rauf Hakeem, with the President herself having lured to her official residence a female acquaintance of Hakeem's and offered her all manner of inducement to implicate him in a matrimonial scandal. Proving us true, within hours of our issue hitting the streets, state television was showing a videotaped interview with the lady, making damning allegations against Hakeem. What the government has failed to do up to now however, is to explain how it was (unless the intent was indeed blackmail) that the interview was filmed on April 14 and kept a top secret until The Sunday Leader revelations on May 16, a full 32 days later.

It is important to recognise that what matters here is not whether the allegations made by the lady (later fully retracted by her in a television interview given to Sirasa and News First), were true or false. If there is no public interest element, it does not in our book become worthy of placing in the public domain. They relate to Hakeem's private life, and in any event pale into insignificance against the former Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake's conduct, not to mention the Chief Justice and scores of other former PA ministers who are serving in the present cabinet as well.

The most abominable aspect of this sordid saga is not Hakeem's alleged conduct (which in any case is a private matter), but that of President Kumaratunga, who lured the lady to President's House and went on to dictate to her what she should say and what she should write in order to embarrass not just Hakeem, but the opposition in general with a bribe offer of travel to the USA thrown in for good measure. Is this the conduct of a head of state, indeed a woman and a mother, to boot?

But then again, since Kumaratunga herself has admitted that she is in the habit of discussing with her ministers the assassination of "an editor or two," one is hardly surprised at the moral benchmark being set by our nation's Leader. It also brings into question the yardstick the state media use to decide what is in the "public interest" and therefore fit for publication. If the private lives of opposition politicians are open to exposure in the media, perhaps it is time also that the public learned why it was that Kumaratunga fell out with and was for many years estranged from her sister or for that matter why her one time blue eyed Media Adviser Sanath Gunatilleke was shown the Presidential door. Though a wealth of information on these matters is in our possession, we never chose to go public since they were considered not to be in the 'public interest' but given the standard set by the state media, we are more than willing to make available all the information if they dare to publish and be damned.

Judged by her notoriously low standards, it is hardly fair to fault Kumaratunga. Having never found it possible to hold down a job of any other description (one wonders whether any of the offspring of Solomon and Sirimavo Bandaranaike has ever had an EPF account - that fundamental symbol of employability), Kumaratunga is desperate for a parliamentary majority in order to amend the constitution and thereby perpetuate her political career. To that end, there are no depths to which she will not stoop, blackmail included. She has been thwarted for the nonce, her plans awry: but down as she may be, she is not out. The plotting goes on.

Sadly for the President, her bed is not an easy one on which to lie. Her party, the SLFP, has been reduced to a third-rate power in parliament, commanding just 57 seats, after the UNP's 69 and the JVP's 39. Nothing there to write home about. She is now at the mercy of the JVP, who had the audacity last Tuesday to admonish in the most unsavory terms Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse and Tourism Minister Anura Bandaranaike.

She is now their captive, and knows that the JVP needs her only until the provincial council elections. The red brethren have made their demands for seats in the councils, and the SLFP has no choice but to accede: without the JVP, they would be routed. The JVP toys with Kumaratunga as if she were a gaffed fish, now dipping it in the water and giving it hope, and now yanking it out again with every prospect of imminent death. It sure ain't all roses being Kumaratunga.

The bright side of the President's existence however, is the opposition. Never in her dreams could she have wished for a more slothful, apathetic and impotent opposition. The SLMC on the one side is deeply divided and last week had to face the shame of one of its national-list members, hand-picked by none less than Rauf Hakeem, defecting to the government. The CWC continues to flirt with the government as if only to prove the point that the Tamil political parties are not, after all, united, but just as hungry for spolia politica as the rest of them. On its part, the JHU has seen scandal enough in its short existence proving to everyone's satisfaction that not every monk is holier than the rest of us mortal sinners.

And that brings us to the UNP, a party that is at considerable pains to prove to all of us that it is as laid-back and effete in opposition as it was in government. Even as the leader of its largest coalition partner, the SLMC, has fallen victim to government-inspired blackmail, there has not been so much as a whimper from the slumbering elephant. No defiant statements of support, no press conferences, no media briefings: just pathetic indifference. Hakeem apart, the UNP has not made the slightest effort to bring the President to book for her misdeeds. Indeed, it is past surprising that the party has not disintegrated entirely. Yet.

While the UNP's leadership must take primary responsibility for this pathetic state of affairs, one wonders about the sincerity of the so-called young rebels who are so highly critical of the inertia of the leadership. Where are they hiding? There has not been a whimper out of them. A country may well deserve the government it gets, but for goodness sake, when did a country deserve so miserably puerile and indolent an opposition as this? Where it can afford to take the moral high ground and rebuke an errant government in terms reminiscent of one of the sterner prophets of the Old Testament, it chooses instead to cut deals about who should be Deputy Speaker! This is not about Hakeem, but blackmail, abuse of power, breach of parliamentary privilege, extortion, bribery and corruption at the very heart of government.

And what of the much-heralded internal reforms of the UNP itself? Sweet nothing. Committee after committee has been appointed, and not a cat cares. The UNP is now rather like one of those slothful hippopotami one sees in the zoo, waiting motionless with its mouth open in the hope that someone will throw some food in. Like it did in 2001, it is a party ever in wait for government to fall into its lap. The question needs to be asked, does such a party deserve to win government? Many would say no.

What the opposition as a whole needs to do - indeed, they have a duty to do, given that we the taxpayers are paying them to do it - is ensure by such means as are necessary that the government delivers on the election promises it made to the people. They need to point out that the government was elected to develop the country, not to hatch dark plots in the portals of President's House and foot the hotel bills of would-be accomplices in such enterprises.

They also need to keep the government on its toes, bringing it to book whenever it errs. But we have seen nothing of such activism from any element of the opposition. Indeed, it seems that the only principled member in the entire opposition, and unified too, is the TNA. No treading on each other's toes to cut deals, no vying for party office: just doing what it was elected to do. At this rate, it won't be long before the  people start believing the country would be better off under the rule of Velupillai Pirapaharan.

Sri Lanka has indeed fallen on hard times, with a government that will let nothing stand in the way of perpetuating itself and an opposition in which one is hard put to find anyone warm and breathing. A case indeed, of evil versus impotence.