Horse-trading options in the East

It was bound to happen, given ethnic composition, a tendency for voters to be communal minded and unabashed communalism on the part of vote-seekers.  The East got split with no single party obtaining a clear majority. 

Drought, poor governance, inflation, education crises and other factors that were predicted to impact outcome, appear to have been non-factors.  The North Central and Sabaragamuwa Provincial, as expected by most, went to the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA).  In Sabaragamuwa, the ruling party has improved on its slice of the vote, but marginally.  The United National Party has polled more votes than it did in 2008 and secured 3 extra seats, which is a positive development.  The big loser here was the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which was unable to hold its single seat and losing some 8000 votes.  In the North Central Province, the UPFA’s share dropped from 20 seats to 19.  The UNP also lost a seat.  The JVP retained its solitary seat but polled more votes than it did in 2008.  No major surprises there.

Back to the East.  The UPFA (14 seats) emerged overall winner but sans a clear majority.  The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which kept away in 2008, as expected wrested some seats from both the UPFA and UNP (down to 4 from 15), the latter suffering from the political divorce from the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), which secured 7 seats this time.  The TNA ended with 11 seats.  The JVP lost its solitary seat in Trincomalee to its break-away rival, National Freedom Front, led by Wimal Weerawansa.  The SLFP-led UPFA snubbed the NFF at nomination time, and the result shows that it cost the ruling party, which had to concede first place in Trincomalee to the TNA.  Anyway, it is now open season for bartering.

Given that the SLMC is a constituent member of the ruling party, it is logical that a UPFA-SLMC combine would rule the East.  True, the SLMC leaders were berating the Government during the campaign, but sadly all that comes under ‘necessity of the moment’ and consequently have no bearing on post-election trading.  The SLMC would probably have to leave the ruling coalition, if it was to align with the TNA (and perhaps the UNP). 

A TNA-SLMC tie-up is theoretically possible.  The implications for communal polarization of course would be drastic.  The UNP, given that it is in the opposition and given a woeful track record in communicating justification for decisions taken, would not dare deal with the TNA.  The TNA believes that since it got the biggest slice among the opposition (and because the ruling party didn't get an outright majority), it should get the first refusal in selecting Chief Minister.  That's of course bunkum, because the opposition did not contest together. 

And yet, the unlikely, but perhaps best option for healing wounds and moving forward in a post-conflict scenario, would be for the UFPA to be magnanimous and go with the TNA, offering the latter the Chief Minister’s post. 

It would be the right signal to all communities, all citizens and the rest of the world, including those sections of the international community and pro-Tamil Eelam expatriate Tamils.  It would say, ‘The past is done away with; this is the foundation for a New Sri Lanka of trust, co-existence, harmony and prosperity’.  

The TNA, for all its pussyfooting while the LTTE was around, remains a democratic party albeit not averse to playing the communal card.  But that is not something other parties are innocent of either, including the constituents of the UPFA, including the major shareholder, the SLFP, from time to time.  

It is time for Sri Lanka’s political parties to grow up and the citizens to follow suit.  Politicians are not known for magnanimity or humility.  Let them surprise us all and bring back ‘hope’ into the overall political equation.

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Watch that politician!

‘Api okkoma rajavaru!’(we are all kinds) the lovely claim in Victor Ratnayake’s popular song doesn’t really materialize fully on the ground.  There are times when people fill bigger than they are but life has a way of deflating ego, downsizing imagination and cutting down to real size.  We are kings (and queens), all of us citizens, come election time.  We are treated like royalty and are even referred to in such terms, but all that ends the moment the polls close.

Thereafter those who've barely stopped themselves from using the ‘Your Majesty’ on all and sundry focus on whether or not they got enough preferential votes from us kings and queens.  Then the party leaders enter the ring.  Horse trading is the name of the game.  A president, chief minister or chairman of a local government authority is crowned and we go back to our ordinary lives of royalty-serving and suffering royal dictates.  

The entreating is done and we are not part of the caravan.  That’s the bottom line. 

So where do we the people go from here?  Many can and will go on bended knee to the elected.   

That’s part of the story.  What of the next election though?  Do we want it to be yet another circus of wide-grinned crowning and saluting all the way to the polling booth and a hot-potato drop thereafter?  Do we have a choice? 

There is democracy and democracy. There are the frills and the substance, or rather the lack of substance.  Elections are exercises where we go to the polling stations periodically, spend some seconds before a ballot box and mark a cross against the name of preferred candidate.  Who is the ‘preferred candidate’?  More often than not, a crook or a thug or both.  We pick individuals who have invested bucks to obtain political office and who for this reason will have to recover investment and hopefully obtain a surplus before the next election comes around. 

We do elect decent people, now and then, but they are a rarity.  We leave aside these considerations and take refuge in things such as caste, party loyalty, ethnic identity or religion.  People, after all, need to feel good even when they do meaningless things. 

Should we not vote, then?  No, we should.  The problem is perhaps that we believe electoral politics begin when parliaments or councils are dissolved and end with the announcement of results.  The true work of the responsible and politically inclined citizen ought to happen in the long period on either side of these two political moments. 

First, vigilance.  We can’t elect and then forget about the elected until the next election.  We have to keep notes. We have to make the notes public.  We have to keep them on their toes.  We are citizens and voters and by virtue of these we are also consumers of services the elected facilitate.  If they don’t deliver, we have to call them out.  If they dish out rubbish, we must complain. Loudly. 

We must blackball, individually and collectively, those who step out of line.  If we look the other way because the incompetent or rule-twister is a party man or relative, or because he/she has ‘compensated’ by personal favor or repaired a road, then we are complicit in the larger politics of politician besting citizen.  We lose the right to complain. 

It all boils down to our sense of dignity and what kind of self-respect we have.  If there comes a day when each and every elected official has to spend 24/7 watched by the citizens, we would get better governance, I submit.  Sure, we have better things to do or at least more important things to do.  That’s why it has to be a collective effort.  Like neighborhood crime watch exercises. 

The question is, do we really want our politicians to be clean, or are we happy with soiled representatives?  

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Arrest illegal imprisonment!

‘Prisoners are also human beings’ is the large-lettered legend that decorates the wall of the Welikada Prison.  The Sri Lankan prison system recognizes the fact and has space for many programs that affirm it.  Prisoners, especially those serving long sentences, learn new trades, prepare for and sit examinations, put together all manner of cultural events, participate in meditation programs and through these and other measures obtain meaning for their otherwise monotonous lives. 

Of course, those entering prison find themselves in some half-way house to enlightenment, heaven or blissful state of being of course.  A lot of seedy things happen in prison.  Hardcore criminals are known to direct criminal activity from their cells.  Some prison officers are said to work hand-in-glove with these criminals. 

And yet, prisoners are human beings and when the term ‘Prisoners’ Rights’ is brought up, what is conjured is the notion that even while serving sentences there are non-negotiable privileges that they have the right to enjoy and therefore need to have access to.  Forgotten in this is the most fundamental of all rights guaranteed to citizens who for whatever reason is made part of legal processes.  Justice. 

Justice is the most fundamental of prisoner-rights.  Wrongful arrest is not new. Conviction on thin or false evidence is also not uncommon.  All kinds of injustices are wrought by special laws, such as Emergency Regulations and the Prevention of Terrorism Act.  The law is silent in times of war, they say.  That’s hard to swallow for the law abiding citizen and the champion of democracy, but what is most unpalatable is the screw ups that have nothing to do with extraordinary circumstances, the injustices in routine legal processes and the immense violence done to human beings consequently. 

The case of Loku Vithanage Ratnapala, Prisoner No. P7834 in the Mahara Prison is one of many where justice has slipped, most of which have been examined thoroughly by rights advocate Kalyananda Thiranagama and his team of civil conscious citizens. 

Ratnapala is now 61 years old, has spent 29 years in prison and is to complete his sentence(s) on March 31, 1953 at which time he would be 102.  His family has abandoned him.  His wife last visited in 1992 and his son in 2003, which was his first and last visit.  He does not get any letters from anyone.  He was sentenced to 84 years rigorous imprisonment in 3 cases by the Morawaka Magistrate’s Court in 1988.  He had already being service sentences imposed in other cases and did not have legal representation. He pleaded guilty.  The charges: a) causing simple hurt by assaulting with hand and robbery of a repeated gun, b) unlawful assembly, house breaking and retention of stolen property, and c) unlawful assembly, house breaking, robbery of goods worth Rs. 4,900 and retention of stolen property. 

Thiranagama contends that the sentences of 15 years and two of 34.5 years each are illegal, exceeding the powers and jurisdiction of the Magistrates’ Courts.  He cites the proviso to S 16 of the Code of Criminal Procedures Act according to which a Magistrate’s Court can impose a sentence exceeding two years only where a person is convicted of several trials at one trial.  A person with previous convictions can be sentenced to two additional years, under the provisions of the Prevention of Crimes Ordinance, with the condition that the fact must be stated.  The maximum that Ratnapala could have been given is 12 and not 84 years as per the upper limits of jurisdiction.  Add the other convictions and Ratnapala ought to be serving 40 years. 

When one considers that prisoners serving long sentence are required to serve only two-thirds of the term, Ratnapala should have been released in May 2012, not counting in other term-reductions usually dispensed on special occasions. 

‘Any sentence of imprisonment exceeding 4 years imposed by a Magistrate’s Court is illegal, incompetent and lacking in validity.  A prisoner is not bound to serve such an illegal sentence and prison authorities are not legally obliged to enforce such manifestly illegal jail sentences.’

Thiranagama, above, faults the Magistrates’ Courts of imposing many other such illegal sentences and dubs them as flagrant violations of law and gross infringement of fundamental rights of prisoners. 

The question is, what is the Attorney General, the higher judicial authorities and the Human Rights Commissions doing about it? 

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The end of woo and the beginning of rape

Sunday is when I post my editorial and other articles I may have written for 'The Nation'.  Today, though, I want to post something I wrote more than 10 years ago.  That too, on a day following an election.  The 2001 General Election, like elections before and elections since, followed hard campaigning, genuflection before voters, mutual vilification and violence.  Yesterday elections were held to the North Central, Sabaragamuwa and Eastern Provincial Councils.  Less violence than usual, but there was little lack in the rest of the ingredients.  The votes have been counted and the apportionment of seats done.  Chief Ministers are yet to be appointed.  The season of solicitation has ended.  It looks like nothing has changed in 11 years.  

We have had our day in the sun. For the past two months, we have had countless politicians and their help-karayas hounding us with love letters, their ugly mug shots adorned with silly grins beseeching us from newspapers, TV channels and posters. They have wooed us no end, serenaded us with song and dance and cajoled us with terms of endearment. That intense, frenetic and all too brief courtship is over. Today, now that December 5th is history, it is once again time to say bye-bye. Those who called us sahodaraya, sohodari, amme, thaththe, akke, ayye, malliye, nangiye, will now move on to look after their real families and lovers. So long, farewell, auf wiedersen, goodbye....we all know that sweet song from the film Sound of Music. 

We, the perennial suckers who are called voters, can now take a rest for we are not going to be part of the caravan. Of that we can be sure.

It is never easy to say definitive things, to "conclude", to draw hard lines around concepts, to connect event and metaphor with metal clamps, and to capture the social all in a flurry of interconnected double-directional, steel-tipped arrows. All I can say at this point about this election with any degree of certainty is that the time of entreating is over.

Once the votes are counted and the victors announced, promises are stripped of their finery, the flesh of election manifestos starts decomposing, and the complicating and ambiguous sinews of proclamaitions dry up, what is left is the skeletal remains of political reality: expediency and profit-making. And we all know that "politics" and politicians thrive by chewing on such bones.

Reflecting on the lie that is party politics, the falsehood of elections and electoral victories, I was reminded of some lines from a Turkish song. This is what Fikret Kizilok has to say:

It’s a lie, always a lie

the galaxies and the nights, always a lie.

Two fear flowers bloom in your eyes,

But that look,

why, a lie!

The evening comes and

you become damp, frosty.

If I reach out my hand, it’s also a lie.

Night envelops me

It doesn’t understand this mood of mine.

I become suspicious of my pillow.

That also is a lie, a lie.

Like a thief I fall in love,

in secrecy, in my dreams.

I hold on to myself

that’s also a lie.

One thing that I do know, is who I still love.

A rooster crows and my inside becomes silent.

It’s morning for you and midnight for me.

I forgot...it was a lie.

It is only you who knows, and I

if I tell this to others,

that is also a lie.

My dreams and your dreams, our nightmares, the alleyways of our conscience, the coarse sand that comes in between the clasping of hands, the smoke that wafts into the air and disappears, the conversations that attracted heat, simple words softly tossed from heart to heart, silent journeys and soliloquies, the singing of birds, and even the untrammeled flow of tears at the funerals of all those sacrificed on the altar of power politics, all this, all this, in the final analysis, is a lie.

There are countless people among us who believe that elections are harbingers of wonderful social transformations. In reality, nothing radical happens and if at all things change only in directions that are harmful. In this context, all we can do (in the before, while and after of an election) is to live a responsible life in terms of the truths we believe in. Among them, the following might prove to be useful in terms of checking arrogance and self-importance: impermanence, sorrow, and illusion.

If the only trace that is left of the bouquets left on our doorsteps by thieves and murders who commit these crimes in our name is despair, then in that vast reservoir of individual and collective disillusionment, everything I’ve said here and everything unsaid too, naturally, must dissolve and disappear. I am not willing to concede such defeat if only because there are vast and fertile regions outside the narrow and violent cage called parliamentary politics. If we are capable of feeling deeply injustice, of giving freely of time and energy to anyone who so desires these things and of taking the time to reflect on the eternal verities of life, then we would be intellectually and politically equipped to dissect the lie. It is only in this necessary undressing of the superficial, that regeneration can be imagined.

The whole charade of promising undying love now and forever is over. Thinking about the nuisance of repulsive suitors refusing to leave us alone, I was reminded of something that one-time heart-throb of impressionable teenage girls, Leonardo di Caprio said. He was also talking about this kind of relentless pursuit, not by politicians, but the paparazzi. "We actually started to follow the paparazzi after a while. It’s an actual science. If you follow them, they get paranoid. You flip the script on them."

Just imagine, paranoid candidates and their henchmen running away from an alert public. What beautiful poetry would ensue, how much more humility would be scripted into this thing called the political process! We could go further. Just think of Edouard Munch’s famous painting titled "The Scream". Now imagine a horde of MPs, Prime Minister-hopefuls, pradeshiya sabhikas, provincial councillors, the PSD, MSD and other gangsters enjoying state patronage, with their faces adorned with that same look of terror running away from ordinary citizens who are roaring with laughter and chasing them. I am willing to wager that all the hidden transcripts of political and ideological pretension will out immediately.

We have to realise that the label "voter" signifies only a fragment of our identity, and that this indentification sliver "bothers" the politician only once in a while. It is only when we refuse to cultivate and strengthen the other political facets of our identity that voter-lovers are able woo us during elections and rape us afterwards. Politicians plan for the next election. Let us plan for the next generation.

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On post-freelance lancing and freedom

A year ago, when I was a freelance writer, contributing 11 articles to 6 newspapers, life was different.  Now, I write the editorial for the Sunday paper, a political commentary or two every month, a book/film review occasionally and, when pushed, a ‘filler’ here and there.  In addition, as part of a trial exercise with a view to put out a daily version of ‘The Nation’, I write dummy editorials every day and have also resumed my ‘Morning Inspection’.   

A year ago in my column for the Daily News I wrote a piece titled “On the ‘free’ and ‘lance’of freelance’”.  I think it should have been called ‘On being lanced by the free of freelancing’.  I wrote about an admonishment from my little daughter, then 8, who had figured out why I don’t have any time:

‘You don’t need a lot of time for your work; you need time for other people’s work,’ she said, and elaborated, ‘I have heard you speaking on the phone.  You are always telling people “hari, hari, karala dennam (ok, ok, I’ll do it)”.’

Back then, the problem was that ‘freelance’ gave the impression that I had loads of time which made it easy for people to tell me ‘machang, podi uddawak…’ (a ‘small favour, friend..’), even though the ‘small’ is but a sweetener and (typically) the favour needed to be done ‘right now’.   So I had to say “hari, hari, karala dennam” often and for ‘free’ (the other convenient mis-read of ‘freelance’), for one does not charge friends and one is reluctant to charge for things that are good for many. 

I explained, back then, thus:

And then there is the other meaning of ‘free’.  Things done in the national interest are done free.  When I am thanked, I tell people to thank C.W.W. Kannangara for giving me the opportunity to benefit from free education.  There are debts I owe that I can never repay.  ‘No charge’ for friends. ‘No charge’ for deserving causes.  As for the rest, un-corporated and ignorant of market rates, I generally brush aside price query with ‘whatever you think is ok’.  Some are actually apologetic and say ‘this is worth much more, but this is what I can afford’. 

Some exploit, and when I cotton on to the exploitation, I duly avoid.  In most cases though ignorance, stupidity and an awareness of the impermanence of things makes it possible for me to say that I am an unemployed graduate or else an under-employed one.  

As my sister once said, ‘it is not that you are sacrificing anything or being generous; this is a conscious choice you’ve made’.  Yes, I can’t make a virtue out of it.  Not complaining.  Just saying.

I am no longer freelancing, but I am not less free.  And no more burdened either.  The ‘unfree’ of a regular job makes people more apologetic when asking for favours that are more often than not granted.  Whereas earlier I could write in ‘one go’, now I am busted by the official, the have-to-do things of office: signing documents, attending meetings and dealing with the this-that of any place where a dozen or more people work. 

The difference is that my daughter doesn’t get to see me answer the phone very often.  It will get better, I tell myself.  Someone reminded me a couple of days ago: ‘you said you’ll be able to go home early once things get streamlined’.  Things were getting streamlined, but habits were also acquired, especially late hours in office; things fill the hours, after all.  Then things got steamrolled when the ‘Daily’ business was mooted. 

As things stand, I am writing more than I used to when I was freelancing, and that’s something to be happy about, I suppose.  Something to be worried about too, because ‘groove’ kills creativity. 

It’s about time management, right?  Right.

Almost twenty years ago, I got into a bus, a small bus, filled with people.  I wanted to take a No 6 Route bus to Kurunegala, but had to settle for one taking the longer, No 5 Route.  I had to stand and it was tough because the bus had a low roof.  It was tougher for my friend Champika Ranawaka, who is probably a good 6 inches taller.  We were going to spend the night at my late grandmother’s place and sell newspapers of our small but vocal organization, Janatha Mithuro (Friends of the People), Asipatha (The Sword).  Champika taught me about time management that night.  Even in that small bus, this voracious reader, didn’t stop ‘working’.  He spread out a newspaper, held it against the roof of the bus and read and read and read, all the way to Kurunegala. 

‘Twenty four hours is more than enough, Malinda,’ he said.  ‘The more you read, your eye becomes trained to move to the most important line and the more you read the better and quicker you become in drawing inference, extrapolation and so on,’ he elaborated. 

‘Office’ puts a lot of things on you plate that you can’t plan for, though.  It will get better, I tell myself.  And until it does, I do what I can do; I feel blessed that I spend a couple of hours with my family every morning, pick the girls from school now and then, visit my father and cuddle the little one most of the night, most nights.  

Back then I was lanced, in a way, by the ‘free’.  Now, I am lanced in different ways.  ‘Things in this world change very slowly if they ever change at all’, I remember that line from the Eagles’ song ‘Sad Café’.  

There’s no reason to complain, just reason enough to record the ‘is’ in relation to the ‘was’. 

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Let us take a collective bow!

UB 40, a band formed in Birmingham, England in 1978, took its name from a form that the unemployed had to fill during the Thatcher years: Unemployment Benefits Form 40.  Their song, ‘One in ten’ referred to the proportion of the British workforce that was unemployed at the time.  The song had the following line: ‘I’m the child that never learns to read, ’cause no one spared the time’.  Six years ago I had opportunity to refer to it.  There was a child whose time came, not for reading, but for death.

Asvini was two and a half years old.  She was the daughter of a domestic worker.  August 8, 2006 was a happy day for her.  Her grandfather, Rasiah, an employee in a restaurant had bought her a pair of shoes. She wanted to try them out. She walked towards a bus halt on Dickman’s Road, Bambalapitiya, after kissing her grandpa by way of thanks.  That was it.  She was a bystander, ‘Tamil’ if such identity-tags matter for one so young.  A car bomb set up by the LTTE targeting a rival Tamil politician (and here ‘Tamil’ counted for both killer and intended victim) ensured that Asvini would never walk, that she would never learn.  She died right there.

Maybe it is a lesson that we, as a species, will never learn.

On March 2, 1991 the Minister of National Security of the then Government, Ranjan Wijeratne, was assassinated by the LTTE using a remote controlled car bomb. A total of 19 people died in the blast, including five of his bodyguards and 13 civilian bystanders. Dozens were injured. Few would know that this day was significant to a man called Raman Varathan Kumar.

Raman Varathan Kumar was not rich. He was as poor as his Sinhala or Muslim counterpart living in one of the 500 plus shanty communities in and around Colombo.  On that day Varathan was about to go to hospital. He was 26 at the time. He had married his childhood sweetheart, Rajamani, five months before. She was pregnant and had spent most of the previous night vomiting. Varathan at the time was in the business of making and selling sweets, along with his brother-in-law. He had hired a taxi. The taxi driver had dillydallied at the Highlevel Hotel at Thunmulla, close to where they lived, Mailvaganam Watta. He had been chit-chatting with the mudalali over a cigarette. Varathan, anxious about his wife’s health condition, had to drag the driver, his friend David, from conversation and cigarette. His world exploded right then.

He was unconscious for three weeks.  His left collarbone was broken. He lost part of his leg.  He had surgery done on arm, leg and stomach.  He survived.  For three months he did not know what had happened to his beloved Rajamani. Rajamani had died instantly. She was carrying twins. Varathan is a Tamil and he is conscious of that fact, even though it is less pronounced that his consciousness about his humanity. 

On September 4, 2012, in the name of ‘Tamil brethren’ thought to be suffering untold depravations in Sri Lanka, ‘Tamil’ mobs gave vent to what some Tamil Nadu politicians call ‘righteous anger’ by attacking with stones and sticks 5 buses carrying Sri Lankan pilgrims on their way to the Trichy Airport.  They were Tamils and ironically some of them consider Tamil Nadu ‘motherland’ (a politically significant self-identification that warrants further commentary). 

Neelan Thiruchelvam was a Tamil, assassinated by Tamils fighting for a ‘Tamil State’.  So were Appapillai Amirthalingam, the former Jaffna Mayors Alfred Duriappa and Mrs. Sarojini Yogeswaran and countless politicians, academics, religious leaders, community leaders and ordinary people. 

In 1971 and in the late eighties tens of thousands of Sinhala Buddhist youth were killed by Sinhala Buddhist soldiers.  Indians kill Kashmiri ‘Indians’.  The ‘India’ commonality is forgotten when Indian Hindus massacre Indian Muslims, or when ‘Indian’ soldiers re-enacted a British Colonial massacre of Sikhs at the Golden Temple, Amritsar.

Politics, then, rises above community, identity, religious faith etc.   On the face of it, that looks like a good thing.  But if you were to ask Rasiah or Varathan or Mercy Fernandez (who was in one of the buses attacked a few days ago in Tamil Nadu), they would tell you stories to make you wonder if you should be cheering. 

The former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Muthuvel Karunanidhi blames current Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram.  I want to say ‘Take a bow, both!’ but won’t because I think they wouldn’t get the sarcasm.

More importantly, we could all take a collective bow for what we do to one another and thereby to ourselves.  I don’t think the sarcasm would be lost on anyone.   

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