Colombo - the promise of political puppetry
 

Light Refractinos Lucien Rajakarunanayake

The decision of Colombo's voters will be known by now. As the battle between the UPFA and the rogue elephant that wore spectacles for the fight reached the final stages, one saw the UNP make desperate moves to remain in a fight, for which it has not been picked. Its thinking went from the absurd to beyond the ludicrous.

The tactics of the UNP, clinging to a pair of spectacles to get keep them from drowning, like the proverbial straw, also reminded one of the Sinhala aphorism about showing the intended groom the younger sister and giving him the elder one in marriage. Look at the spectacles and marry the elephant.

When the JVP won a substantial number of seats at the last Provincial Council polls, it said they had enough seats to get this done by remote control.

The UNP did better than that when it was becoming increasingly clear that a win for the spectacle group will not help get it the seats of office in the CMC. Karu Jayasuriya himself was reported saying that UNP's support for the spectacle group was to see that it wins, so that the UNP could control the CMC through them. That was going far beyond the politics of the remote control. It was saying that the spectacle people were mere puppets controlled by a string in the hands of the UNP.

They spoke of an agreement between the UNP and the kannadi kuttama to manage the affairs of the CMC through this puppetry. There were voices from the kannadi group saying they had no agreement with the UNP and will not give up their seats to help the jumbos, in case they won. The UNP's clumsy manoeuvres over the CMC polls, showed the sheer lack of respect even for their alleged allies. It told the UNP voters of Colombo that the spectacle group was peopled by the spineless, easily be manipulated in any way the UNP wanted to.

This politics of manipulation brought to mind that other instance of massive manipulation in the history of the UNP; when J. R. Jayewardene, the uncle of its ever losing leader, obtained undated letters of resignation from all MPs of the UNP, bar one, to manipulate them the way he wished.

With the entire political skulduggery the UNP was involved in, it never bothered to tell the voters of Colombo, what policies it would implement through those wearing spectacles of differing colours. Was it the plan of the UNP to keep piling up garbage in Colombo, through its new found political friends? Or, was it to make the CMC stink even more of the corruption it has been reeking of through the 50 years it has been under direct UNP control?

The whole can of worms was exposed when the Commissioner General of Elections virtually said the UNP was living in a fool's paradise if it thought it would be able to gain control of the CMC, through the resignation of the spectacle people if they did get a majority. That was when former Mayor Karu Jayasuriya, said how they intended implementing their policies through kannadi kattiya.

What struck one even more than the UNP's naive and dirty politics was the total silence of many organisations of civil society that shout themselves hoarse about corruption, bad governance and lack of transparency when it comes to the central government, over the UNP's electoral charade in Colombo. None of them said the UNP had steered Colombo to a Failed City. When I asked Vinivida Transparent why they were not protesting this callous disregard for elections laws by a party that did not know how to fill its nomination papers, I was told there was little foreign interest in the politics of Colombo, and that their mandate did not include corruption in local government and municipal elections. No funding, no probing.

The Triple G or Good Governance Group said urban politics be in it Colombo or Gampaha, was not a matter of concern for them. "It is the big fish that we want caught and exposed", said Parisuddha Paalana, the leader of the Triple G.

"But don't you think that corruption in politics and governance begins at the local level, and at local elections, such as this, before it rises to the higher levels of government?"

"That may be true. But we'd rather wait till the tree of corruption grows and then begin to cut off its branches, rather than nip it in the CMC bud," he said.

The Centre for Permanent Alternatives, maintained what seemed a crooked silence, through the entire campaign. It did not even do a small sample survey to assess voter trends, or even cook up some figures to show the jumbo winning, because to its dismay it was scratched out of the race before the start.

Professionals in their various organisations, who are very vocal about the need for good administration in every aspect of public life, were also sickeningly dumb when it came to the large scale fooling of the people with plans to pack the seats in local bodies with proxies for those ruled out of the race.

Isn't it strange to see all these gurus of good governance and transparency, who live and do most of their professional work in Colombo, become Towers of Silence about good governance at City Hall?