{"id":187392,"date":"2018-02-11T00:42:34","date_gmt":"2018-02-10T19:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=187392"},"modified":"2018-02-13T14:15:47","modified_gmt":"2018-02-13T08:45:47","slug":"why-one-has-to-be-a-contortionist-to-vote-in-sri-lankan-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/why-one-has-to-be-a-contortionist-to-vote-in-sri-lankan-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Why One Has To Be A Contortionist To Vote In Sri Lankan Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Emil van der Poorten<\/a>\u00a0\u2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Emil van der Poorten<\/p><\/div>\n

Written on the cusp of an election that is supposed to provide Sri Lankans with a clear idea of where this land is going in the next little while, the title of this piece does, I hope, clearly indicate the dilemma that faced most of us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let me expand.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the 10<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> of February, we would have lined up at polling stations. (At least I hope there would have been enough of us to form lines). This is when the need for a contortionist\u2019s skills would have been most urgently required to perform the single most important duty\/exercise-of-citizenship facing anyone residing in an allegedly democratic country.<\/span><\/p>\n

One would have needed a contortionist\u2019s skill because it is not easy for the average person to hold his\/her nose while placing an \u201cX\u201d on a piece of paper that threatens to blow away at any moment, that\u2019s why.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next question posed could well be \u201cWhy did you have to prevent your olfactory powers from operating while performing such a simple task?<\/span><\/p>\n

The answer to that is that the choices were so odious that one ran the risk of asphyxiation if you had accidentally breathed in while, in any way, invoking the presence of any of the protagonists.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Lotus Bud gang hardly need description of any kind.\u00a0 <\/span>Simply viewing their track record of murder, mayhem and embezzlement on a national scale should suffice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then there were the surviving elements of that briar-smoking, Greyhound breeding three-piece-suiter, the \u201cSWRD\u201d of Sri Lanka who, with his \u201cSinhala-Only\u201d policy condemned several generations of his compatriots to one of the technologically most awkward languages spoken only by fifteen million<\/b> of a world population of goodness knows how many billion<\/b>. Of course, setting the standard for such things, that product of the Oxford Union ensured that his own progeny suffered under no such constraints.\u00a0 <\/span>Coming events casting their shadows in the matter of creating for one\u2019s own circle, a milieu in which they would start ahead of their fellow citizens and put even more distance between themselves and the great unwashed as the years went by (and their bank balances grew). I think it was the Yugoslav Communist Milovan Djilas who coined the term \u201cNew Class\u201d and that is what we are talking about here.<\/span><\/p>\n

That the foundation on which Bandaranaike built his edifice grew stronger as the years went by is very obvious by what we have as our \u201cSri Lankan Reality\u201d today. <\/span><\/p>\n

Of course \u201cYankee Dick\u201d Jayewardene\u2019s contribution towards expanding the ranks of the Sri Lankan social dalits<\/i> must not be missed.\u00a0 <\/span>That worthy ensured that amorality achieved complete respectability <\/b>in the practice of government. Simply put, you could do anything under his watch and while within his ranks as long as you did not get caught.<\/span><\/p>\n

While all of that might provide some weird and wonderful justification for our current predicament in the matter of governance of what was once considered the epitome of democratic practice in South Asia, it still did not make the task of anyone going into a polling station on February 10<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> any easier.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have sufficient belief in the essential decency of human beings to think that those having to vote in the coming local government elections have one of the most unenviable tasks that we\u2019ve ever been faced with.<\/span><\/p>\n

At least in recent times, until the change of government in 2015, we didn\u2019t have proof positive that the opponents of the Mahinda Rajapaksa horde were but a small step behind that lot in the matter of corrupt practice.<\/span><\/p>\n

What makes it even more aggravating is the insult that is proffered to the thinking public by this lot when they mouth platitudes about erasing corruption from the face of Sri Lanka.\u00a0 <\/span>Some of these people have a documented track record<\/b> of sucking up to the Rajapaksa lot until Mahinda Rajapaksa was defeated by the current President. In fact, there is continuing proof of these same butter-wouldn\u2019t-melt-in-their-mouths \u201cpatriots\u201d continuing to cozy up to those who operated the most violent and corrupt regime in our seventy-year history as an independent country.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact that Mr. Sirisena, by virtue of the fact that his very life and that of his immediate family were under threat at the time he had the temerity to contest Mahinda Rajapaksa, would be less likely to encourage a return of that retinue is cold comfort in the context of whom he has surrounded himself with from the rump of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) or the coalition which it led. If the behaviour of any of that band is subject to even cursory scrutiny, the danger of puking is a very real one.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is one left with? Voting for \u201cThe lesser of two evils?\u201d But how do you even begin to measure that \u201cevil?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It would seem that, no matter what one\u2019s choice has been, the only practical way to have performed one\u2019s civic duty without requiring a cleaning crew behind you in the polling station, would have been to hold one\u2019s nose with one hand while trying to place your \u201cX\u201d on that piece of paper with the other. Talk about Hobson\u2019s Choice! <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":157872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy One Has To Be A Contortionist To Vote In Sri Lankan Elections - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/why-one-has-to-be-a-contortionist-to-vote-in-sri-lankan-elections\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why One Has To Be A Contortionist To Vote In Sri Lankan Elections - 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