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| Sunday, 4 April 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Good lessons for Bush & Blair Light Refractions by Lucien Rajakarunanayake The April Fool's hoax by "The Island" about George W. Bush and Tony Blair coming here to observe our elections has more than just a joke about it. It recalls the observation that a joke is indeed a very serious thing. The best thing that both Bush and Blair could have done, given the political dump they are jointly in, was to have come and observed our election, not just on polling day, but through the entire campaign period. There was so much the two of them could have learnt to take back home for their own political survival. In fact a Sri Lankan general election could be accurately described as The Survival Kit for the Political Leaders. Of broken promises there is abundance. In fact both main players seem to compete with each other to achieve the title and recognition of being the person who broke the most promises given to the people. This extends to political parties too. They too have an open contest in vying for recognition among the electorate for being the party that can boast of the most number of broken promises. No doubt both Bush and Blair will begin to wonder what went wrong with them, when they broke the promise they gave to their own people of definitely finding Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction. How come they have to answer to the people for not having found all those WMDs, and as it now comes but, both ignored and doctored with intelligence reports on the subject, when in this experienced democracy, political leaders don't have to answer to the voters for such things at all. Indeed they would both have taken in by the utter sangfroid of our political leaders about not delivering the goods promised. It's special quality that marks out a Sri Lankan political leader from any other. They can look at the public in the eye, not just through TV camera, but having direct eye-to-eye contact with the people, and say "Yes, we did break promises, so what about it?" What a pity it is for Bush and Blair that the voters in the US and the UK are lacking in the sense of humour of the Sri Lankan voters as to take all political promises as big jokes, only intended to be broken. Gathered in such large numbers at public rallies they seem to give stimulation to political leaders to give promises they will never be able to keep, and cheer them on as they make them. Give a public platform to a Sri Lankan political leader, and he or she is immediately mesmerized into making promises that are never intended to be kept. Some begin by saying that they have changed from old habits and will not make promises that cannot be fulfilled. But it does not take long for them to join the competition all over again. Soon the very same leaders begins to offer the most unreal of promises, be it about providing new jobs for youth, building houses for those without shelter or giving public handouts to the needy, in what is now fashionably called poverty alleviation. There is little doubt that both Bush and Blair, the war mongers they are known to be, especially about a so-called "War on Terror", would have been actually surprised about our interest in peace. How on earth is it possible for a country where the two main leaders are having such a great battle of words about peace, be seriously interested in peace? Of offers to achieve a real and lasting peace there is a surfeit. With such a determination to bring about peace, why is it so difficult for these two leaders to bury the hatchet as it were and come to a political embrace over peace? All one can say is that it's not so simple in the Sri Lankan context. The rivalry over attainability of the peace promises of both political leaders will be so intense, as to forget the subject matter of peace itself. Of monitors and monitoring there is much to learn for both Bush and Blair. Of course they must never make the mistake of asking how the money sent to polls monitors from their respective countries are being put into use. Such questions are not raised in decent democracies. But they will see an abundance of statistics of election related violence, which might make them wonder whether this is in fact a democratic election or an actual battlefield of savage brutality. A good escort will tell them it is a combination of both. There are local monitors and foreign monitors and observers too. Most of them are blind to the actual violations of good practice in a democratic election, as long as they can make up their respective files of statistics of election related violence, to the exclusion of all the aberrations in campaigning and direct intimidation of both candidates and voters that take place in another part of the same democratic country. The figures must be helping them as research for doctoral thesis on "Elections in South Asia" or "Democracy in practice - the Sri Lankan Example." Bloody battles are fought on the level playing field of democracy. It is the side that has more money and access to more weapons and foot soldiers that fare better. But that is only the battle side of things. Few voters are indeed scared by such battles. They are prepared to turn their eyes away from what seems a bloody sideshow, and go ahead with doing their democratic duty of casting their vote. The biggest shock for B & B will be when the tally is taken, there will be nearly 80 per cent or more who have gone and cast their vote. George W. Bush, in particular, will find it most interesting to learn of the many ways polls fixing carried on here. If there is a lack of sophistication, compared to what he is used to, it is only because we still have manual voting, with that old fashioned cross against your party or candidate. There's news of poll fixing having already begun in the State of Florida, with the removal from registers of all felons, whether in the category that lose their franchise or not. Most felons in Florida are black people who generally vote Democratic. No doubt Mr. Bush will recall all those "butterflies" and "pregnant notches" that could not be counted at the great Florida Franchise Fraud. But he must take heart, this is a country where the main rival of a former president had his vote impersonated in the first ever Presidential Election that we had, it was the President who promised to usher in a five-star Democracy to Sri Lanka. We'll still be happy if we can get back to our former status of being a Lone Star Democracy. We have now developed our skills in impersonation so well that the Elections Commissioner had laid out special guidelines, on how ghost voters, the dead who come to cast their votes, could prevented from getting a ballot paper. Both if both of you want to get a real feel of how elections are rigged and fixed in a democracy, just tell the Elections Commissioner and he will arrange for you to be flown to Jaffna and its environs. Don't blame us if you get the feeling that you are bin Laden territory. You should have come here earlier to get that real feeling of intimidation of voters. How rival candidates are not allowed to campaign, and occasionally how even candidates and their supporters are bumped off by pistol toting gangs. It happens in the East too, If you are lucky you may be able to meet one candidate who has dared raise his voice against what makes Tammany Hall terror seem child's play, and carried out his entire campaign from the confines of his own home, because he was the threatened not to step outside. You can't miss the mastery of the absurd by monitors and observers of a democratic election, insisting the election would not be proper if the voters of the Vanni did not get a chance to vote. The Vanni is where the leader of the Tamil Tigers, that organization banned by both of youth countries as an International Terrorist Organization, has his bunker. He does not permit candidates other than those handpicked by him to come into the Vanni for campaigning. The voters know nothing of the others in the fray or their policies. The polling cannot be held in the Vanni, because the Tamil Tigers don't allow the Sri Lankan Police or Security Forces in there. But the foreign and local observers and monitors who want a free and fair election insist the voters of the Vanni be given a chance to vote. Just to prove our democratic credentials, especially to these foreign observers, we have arranged for the Busing of Voters. A fleet of buses to transport these Vanni voters to areas just outside the Tiger controlled areas and cast their votes. There is no way of identifying them. This is where we are told the dead will vote many a time, and there will also be the best practice in the recycling of voters, totally unchallenged. How's that for a commitment to democracy? And finally, considering the problem that both of you have in providing some evidence of those hateful WMDs, if you make some inquiries you will both learn that the Tiger leader has with him a whole stockpile of WMDs of the human kind. You still have the chance to shift that focus of attention from Iraq. But are you really serious about your "War against Terror"? |
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