Hail Sri Lanka’s parliamentary democracy: Hail its parliamentarians

History tells us that in ancient times Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burnt.

History sometimes could be misleading. My understanding is that there were no fiddles in Nero’s time. He was playing a lyre and not a fiddle.

It is a word; Sri Lankans are less interested in the musical instrument than changing its spelling from lyre to liar to reflect the country’s growing political environment and those who are an integral part of it have successfully performed.

Anyway, does it matter a damn what he was playing? The end result was that Rome burnt, perhaps not entirely.

Well, it matters little in this Resplendent Isle, as history tends to show, unless, of course, it is to submit a claim for a burnt-out abode which was hardly a palace unless it was a virtually abandoned one in Malwana.

The story of the legendary Nero and his musical capabilities came to mind as one was intrigued by some of what was said—and some things that should have been said but were not—in the course of last week’s debate on the No-Confidence Motion (NCM) against the distinguished Speaker of Sri Lanka’s august assembly last week.

They were not only about the Hon. Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena but also about others who parade before the masses as the faithful representatives of the people who elected them, a tragic error of judgment on a mass scale as many have increasingly come to accept.

The charge against Speaker Abeywardena was that during the time he served in that office, he had been partial in his conduct when he should have been just the opposite, presenting a demeanour of unimpeachable integrity and impartiality.

As the saying goes, justice must not only be done but seen to be done.

The same should be said of any Speaker of a functioning parliamentary democracy and that should surely go for Sri Lanka, which claims to be a genuine one, dating far back to make it the first such democracy in Asia.

And how our leaders and misleaders and their obsequious acolytes gloat about before foreign and local audiences as though they are responsible for the fame the country has gained from a more distinguished past than from the contribution made by the recent lot.

What did intrigue me at the end of the three-day talkathon was that parliament staff failed to get their arithmetic right—I mean, if they adhered to recent tradition carefully crafted by some of those who occupy seats in parliament today in an effort to hoodwink what they thought was a dumb public.

Had they done so, the end result would have been far more favourable to the “nay” sayers than was finally announced.

According to the announced results, those in support of the motion were 75, and those opposed to it were 117. So what happened to the rest of the 225 which the 2022 aragalaya wanted ousted from their temporary but highly lucrative abode at Diyawanna Oya?

Well, wherever they were— on a retreat in Sri Lanka or on a quick visit to California, which Ranil Wickremesingheinclined Harsha de Silva SJB MP wants to turn Sri Lanka into, perhaps after that unsteady dance at the recent Royal-Thomian with US Ambassador Julie Chung, who is like no American ambassador I have ever known in Sri

Lanka or elsewhere where I have served in the last 50 years or more. And some of them have been close friends, and very senior diplomats later rose to be members of Congress, holding high office in the state, or as academics in prestigious institutions.

So what happened to the other 32, excluding Speaker Abeywardena? It will be noted that they are deemed to have abstained. So why did not the senior parliamentary staff add these 32 abstentions to the “nay” votes? This has been Sri Lanka’s recent practice after voting at the UNHRC, and as now stated by the opposition by the Speaker himself, which is one of the claims against him following the counting of votes at the Constitutional Council on the selection of an IGP who had already been found by the Supreme Court to have violated human rights, including the torture of a person in police custody.

If parliament had done just that, why Speaker Abeywardena could have claimed a resounding victory and even thought of re-contesting his seat in the South, though what voters there would have thought of such an outrageous move is not known, though people would surely speculate.

It might be recalled that Speaker Abeywardena, when acquainted with the news that an NCM had been contemplated against him, told the media that if the no-faith motion was passed, he would resign in two minutes.

At that time, I asked why it would take him two minutes to pack up and leave when he might be able to do so in half the time.

A reader came to me to say that it would take much longer if he were to round up all his family holding office in parliament if he had to quit.

Those interested in the Sri Lankan theory of relativity as improved on the original one by Einstein to suit the local culture might find an answer if they peruse NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s speech, which contains the names and positions of the Abeywardena presence in Diyawanna Oya.

The answer, as we anticipated, was that he knew the NCM would not be carried, what with the backing of the Pohottuwa party, which he is part of, and installed him in this seat, which is considered exalted in other truly functioning parliamentary democracies and no apologies for one.

Whether the parliamentary election will be held before the presidential poll does not matter, except for those who want most of the present lot ousted from scrounging on public money.

Even the Parliament oversight committees that President Wickremesinghe pushed for with much flourish are on the verge of collapse. One Pohottuwa chairman of COPE fell by the wayside along with his hand signals, only to be replaced by another Pohottuwa chappie whose appointment had led to a mass exodus of opposition members who should rightly be holding that office.

Those who await the voters’ verdict to see the backs of many of them warming seats in parliament are willing to wait for a few more months, but not for long, for the wrath of the people seems to be growing as the economy begins to bite deeper. There are already stories circulating of those preparing to withdraw from the contest, which include some ministers.

Perhaps they already hear “the curfew toll the knell of passing day/ The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea” and for some of them never to return the next day.

Those interested in the Sri Lankan theory of relativity as improved on the original one by Einstein to suit the local culture might find an answer if they peruse NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s speech

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later, he was Deputy Chief-ofMission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)