Cat'S eye

Pyjama party in Parliament

This fat cat felt feline disgust on seeing how our parliamentarians behaved on Monday, April 20. Their behaviour is generally wanting; their language appalling and their sense of decorum and responsibility rock bottom.

It was reported some months ago that attendance was very poor at parliamentary sessions and that even those who would have to answer questions absented themselves. All this in spite of having 5-star food, a good salary plus perks and a pension to boot after shouting or even keeping mum while warming a comfortable seat in the House by the Diyawanne for five years. We ordinary public servants slave away for at least 20 years before we could claim a pension. Not those fat cats - oops sorry! They are not my kind, neither my arch enemy's kind of the canine sort. Are they bovine then? Of course this feline is quick to assert there are still gentlemen among the rabble, but few.

There are good, efficient, decent MPs and Ministers of State who know how to debate, how to speak, how to respect the law, how best to serve the nation. But alack, they are too few in number.

Fisticuffs too

There have been instances of parliamentarians descending to use filth and even coming to blows. Once a strong man, short of stature though, using his cell phone, grievously struck another in a delicate spot.

Many are the persons who have commented that schoolchildren who go to watch our legislators legislating with teachers hoping they imbibe history, political science and rudiments of law, have been reduced to scared tears at the tactics they witness below the gallery they are seated.

Now here is a new gimmick. Parliamentarians copying the Rathupaswela folk and the numerous chappies and girlies who shout in front of the Fort railway station or seated on highways, chant slogans.

Seated next to the youngest MP draped in his kurakkan satakaya in the pictures splashed in Tuesday's newspapers which Menika perused carefully to recognise the protesting faithfuls to the ex-Prez, was the father of all protestors - W. Weerawansa.

Maybe we have to ascribe the honours for this entire brave, commendable, daring, adventurous endeavour to him, so practiced is he in protesting at embassy gates and the UN Office in Colombo.

And why the so named 'continuous fast'? Unto what? Death? Or till morning breaks? It was "demanding that the government immediately puts an end to" what the protestors called "a political witch hunt against Opposition politicians including former President Mahinda Rajapaksa" by the CAIBOC.

Did they drag His ex-Excellency from his office while he was peacefully seated and working after winning the war for us Sri Lankans like they did to the General soon after the 2009 presidential elections?

Is Mahinda Rajapaksa sacrosanct? Is he infallible as only God Almighty is? Menika learnt long ago in Scripture classes in the missionary school she attended, (before C.W.W. Kannangara forbade children learning a religion other than theirs) that his Holiness the Pope too is infallible while being omniscient. She is sure the present Pope will shy away from such extravagant, yea impossible placement on a pedestal alongside God, modest and pragmatic man that he is.

Pontification by the master ponitificator

The plot gets thicker. Now this is the height of imagination. "Addressing the media, NFF Leader Wimal Weerawansa said that former President Rajapaksa and ex-defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa were being hounded by the government to please the international community and the pro LTTE groups."

He sums up philosophically: "The hunters are the ones who opposed war and criticized the security forces. The hunted are the ones who waged a war and defeated terrorism." Shouldn't some erudite person turn that into a theory to be accepted universally like the Theory of Gravity or Pavlov's summation on the salivating rats?

To which group does Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka fall in - the hunting or the hunted? You can protest about the Ex Prez being questioned but do not drag in the international community into this domestic issue as it is so childish and puerile. Wonder what he is saying (I have not listened as I use my remote the moment the Weera Wansa appears on the box) about the taking into remand of Brother Basil on Wednesday night.

Equal before the lady with the scale

And now Menika boldly asks why anyone in this island cannot be questioned by an authority which needs facts, figures, statistics with so many accusations being accepted by the CAIBOC.

Once a president of Sri Lanka is stripped of his or her presidential powers isn't she or he an ordinary citizen bound by laws of the country? If one shies away from answering questions, according to Menika's feline philosophy, it points to matters needing concealment.

Menika also boldly says that this entire fracas is so childish. Note the term used is childish, not childlike where childlike has a pleasant, innocent connotation while childish immediately brings on the image of bed wetting and nappy use. Sri Lanka has a couple of good firsts and many rotten ones, like suicide bombers. Here's another first to be ashamed of: indulging in a sit-in protest in Parliament. We saw this on Tuesday's 9 pm news.

By Tuesday the protestors dispersed from the sit down protest and sat in their rightful seats to cause havoc and have the presentation of the 19th Amendment postponed to a later date.

Poor Sri Lanka. A country with an ancient culture near ruined by those who cannot play and lose; who are anti-democratic; thugs in short.

Menika