21 November 2018 12:00 am
The country has been fast drifting towards further turmoil days ago due to irresponsible and power hungry politicians. It is not clear whether the situation has changed despite Monday’s Parliament sitting ending without riots.
The last week’s ugly scenes in the Parliament could be a precursor to an unfortunate situation to come. Not a single leader seems to be regretting the rowdy behaviour of their members who unflinchingly turned the august assembly where the sovereignty of more than 20 million people is said to lie into a battleground, while the whole country was watching.
The members who, very well knowing that the cameras had been turned towards them behaved unruly and vandalized the chamber of the Parliament are still scot-free. And it is not sure that they would be penalized either at least for the vandalism which occurred under the very eyes of the tax payer who had already paid for the items destroyed by their representatives and who have to pay again for the reparation of them.
It is President Maithripala Sirisena who has to take responsibility for this confusion and the political impasse. His dislike to run the government with Ranil Wickremesinghe who he removed from the Prime Minister post on October 26 is comprehensible. There was a cold-war between them during the last two years, beginning from the President’s allegations that the UNP was standing on his way to take to task those who committed acts of high profile corruption during the Rajapaksa regime. However, the remedy to his woes should not have landed the country in this political impasse.
His choice to replace Ranil Wickremesinghe with his adversary Mahinda Rajapaksa could not have been challenged had he made the calculations properly, and ensured that his nominee commanded the confidence of the Parliament, without depending on brokers who were politically nowhere. Despite the controversy over the legality over the passage of the two no-confidence motions against Premier Rajapaksa, the legality of his appointment in the eyes of the general public and the international community is in question, in the light of the number of signatures the motions carried in them.
Now, the issue has become one of prestige and ego on the part of the four main stakeholders, the President, Prime Minister, Speaker and the former Prime Minister, for which the country has been forced to pay a price. All four have to prove that they are correct not by muscle power of their subordinates, but by legal and ethical means.
The President must prove that he removed Wickremesinghe from the premier post and appointed Rajapaksa in his place legally. He can’t leave it to the Parliament alone. Rajapaksa also must prove his majority without hiding behind legal technicalities. Wickremesinghe must take the same responsibility without portraying the opposition to Rajapaksa’s appointment among the members of Parliament as an endorsement of him as the Prime Minister. If they cannot do so they must withdraw from the fray respectfully as gentlemen, without leading to a further unfortunate situation in the country.
Unfortunately the issue is not only one concerning prestige or ego on the part of the leaders; rather the highly politicized masses also have taken it as an ego issue on their part. They do not like to be on the losing side irrespective of where the law and the ethics stand. Therefore, like the sword of Damocles there is always a danger of spilling over of the rowdy behaviour of the politicians which we witnessed last week in the Parliament to the people in the villages and towns. It would be dangerous and would tarnish the image of the country which had already eroded by the underworld-like behaviour of the politicians in the Parliament last week.
Respecting the law without resorting to underhand manoeuvring while respectfully preparing to compromise without inciting their party supporters by the leaders is the only way out. Yes, this demands a lot of courage and moral strength.