‘We are not in the business of issuing character
certificates to those who cross,’ JVP Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake said. The past few weeks have seen a lot of
politicians crossing party lines. These
moves have been received with jeers and cheers, depending on whether the person
left or arrived, respectively.
Interestingly, if you took names of the ‘movers’ and the names of those
who either praised or vilified the move out, it would be as though people are
using the same script.
If rhetoric and self-righteous chest beating is all that these
crossovers are about, it would be silly to take them too seriously. They do matter, however. They keep contenders and campaigns in the
news. They are used to portray ‘sway’
even if they don’t exactly translate into the numbers that movers and backers
toss around. On the other hand if people do get swayed by
those who are up for sale what does it say about the voter? Not much, unfortunately.
It is in this context that Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s wry
observation has to be viewed. Our
political culture was never really great, what with rogues, murderers, drug
traffickers and common thugs seeking office and getting elected and re-elected,
even when they switch loyalties. It seems to have hit rock bottom if the
somersaults, pole-vaults and other gymnastic moves by people of all hues are
considered. If anything is worse than
the rubbish uttered at post-crossing press conferences it is the wild cheers of
the fans who believe the candidate they support have gained. Even as they argue that theirs is the moral
choice, they refuse to see the immorality of eleventh-hour ‘jumps’. There’s a question that’s not being asked:
‘were these people sleeping all these years?’
In all this, there’s a character being taken for a big time
ride by politicians. The voter. That’s you.
That’s all of us. What happened
to ‘Good vs. Evil’? What happened to
‘Honesty vs. Dishonesty’? What happens
to notions such as law and order, good governance, the need to eradicate
corruption, when you get the evil, the dishonest, the lawless and disorderly,
wreckers of good governance and the corrupt on both sides of the principal
political divide? What does it say about
the political maturity of a country when all that matters is liking or
disliking someone in the particular political camp? It is as though people have already decided
(for whatever reason) and then say whatever is necessary to justify decision.
When this is the political culture that governs important
elections, one cannot blame the JVP for keeping out of it, except of course
that party arguably has not-so-noble reasons such as not wanting to be
embarrassed by having their true support base revealed. One has to keep in mind, also, that the JVP
is playing a ‘For-Maithripla’ game where the thahanam vachanaya (taboo word/name) is ‘Maithripala’.
So if it’s about principles (which it is not for the vast
majority, obviously and unfortunately), then the voter is fixed in mid-air, he/she
is floating or has to support one of the many no-chance-in-hell
candidates. At best, people have to tell
themselves (if they are honest, and the jury is out on that too!) ‘lesser
evil,’ although it is tough to pick, considering all the riff-raff that the
front-runners have surrounded themselves with.
Right now, though, the entire election is nothing more than a charade,
where the vast majority of the country is happily engaged in a monumental
exercise of self-delusion.
Perhaps that’s consolation and the best we can come up with
right now. Sadly.
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