JO putting politics before country
The Joint Opposition (JO) is all but flogging a dead horse calling for Provincial elections in the midst of so many other outstanding issues in the country – knowing only too well that the chances of these elections taking place are as unlikely as ‘a snowball’s chance in hell’.
They ought to know, if they don’t already, that a bigger election is scheduled any time after January 8 next year, but not later than January 2020 and therefore, given the bitter lesson this Government received from the electorate at the recent Local Government elections, it is not going to chance another defeat so close to the impending Presidential and/or Parliamentary poll.
A new legal theory has also sprouted this week that the populist former President Mahinda Rajapaksa can contest another Presidential election adding to the worries of the incumbents in office. Whether this interpretation will stand the scrutiny of a Constitutional Court, if ever tested, is another matter.
The entire thrust of the JO’s latest campaign overdrive for Provincial Council elections is a short-sighted selfish approach to a national issue – which is whether the Provincial Councils system is in fact, the best form of devolution for the country seeing how it has worked for 30 years on the trot. The JO merely wants a stepping stone to propel its wider campaign for an electoral victory at the larger national polls to follow. In short, a better footing to return to power; politics before country.
The entire exercise of the JO therefore revolves around elections – which the Government is trying to avoid by hook or by crook so that it could avert embarrassing itself in the face of a national election. Neither side seems to care two hoots whether Provincial Councils serve man or beast in the country.
The Northern PC, for which the Provincial Council system was originally introduced in 1987 amidst virulent opposition from those now clamouring for elections to it, is in total disarray. The Chief Minister has sacked his Ministers who have got stay orders from Court; the Governor says they have more Ministers than they could have under the law; and the party (TNA) that runs the Council is willing to postpone elections to the Council to get rid of the Chief Minister.
In the Western PC, they are purchasing a chair for councillors to sit on costing Rs, 650,000 each. In other PCs “study tours” abroad are the first thing undertaken by all the parties except the JVP. All they seem to do is duplicate the work of the Central Government, overlap with the work of Local Government councils, and merely pass resolutions which mean nothing to the people. Next week, Parliament is to debate the report of the Delimitation Committee that has carved out electorates within the PCs, so the emphasis is still on elections rather than on geographic prudence. It should not be an exercise for merely having elections and for political parties to flex their muscle and show off their voter base.
It is now time for the Central Government to undo the mistake of 1987 and rethink devolution of power in a Sri Lankan context; rethink re-introducing District Councils, or something that is genuinely in the best interest of the people, not something we have to live with merely because it was forced down the nation’s throat.