No winners, all losers

Friday 22nd March, 2024

The government was cock-a-hoop yesterday evening, having defeated the Opposition’s motion of no confidence against Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena. There were 75 votes for the motion and 117 votes against it. The SLPP has retained a parliamentary majority by engineering crossovers from the Opposition, despite its growing unpopularity in the country, and therefore when the no-faith motion was put to the vote, nobody expected the ayes to have it. In fact, as for yesterday’s vote, there are no winners; both the government and the Opposition are losers, for the public estimation of Parliament has dipped further.

The Opposition succeeded in bringing its allegations against Speaker Abeywardena into public focus. It is the people’s opinion that matters more than that of the government politicians’. Whether the government’s successful defence of the Speaker has gone down well with the public will be seen at the next general election. It may be recalled that the UNP-led Yahapalana government (2015-2019) also retained a majority and won votes in Parliament continuously, but all its constituents suffered huge electoral setbacks at the 2020 general election.

The outcome of yesterday’s vote in the House can be thought to have vindicated the Opposition’s claim that the Speaker is partial to the government, for only the government MPs and others who are openly supportive of the SLPP backed the Speaker. Parliament is now in the same predicament as the COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises), whose Opposition members have refused to accept SLPP MP Rohitha Abeygunawardena as their chairman.

The incumbent Parliament cannot be put right by vilifying and/or ousting individuals such as ministers or even the Speaker himself. Its biggest problem is lack legitimacy, for the government is without a mandate. The UNP, which was rejected by the people at the last general election, is governing the country, and the SLPP, which 6.9 million people voted into office, buying into its claim that it will be different from the UNP-led UNF government, is now backing UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, having made him President. Never has the will of the people been trifled with in this manner!

Ironically, the MPs who hurl allegations of corruption at one another, and are seeking the ouster of the Speaker for violating the Constitution, among other things, want the current Parliament to domineer vital state institutions, deprive them of their independence and reduce them to mere appendages of the legislature, which is in the clutches of kleptocrats. One may recall that in 2018, during a stormy parliamentary session, the then UNP MPs burst into a noisy protest with the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe himself asking, “Kauda hora (who is the thief)?” and others chanting in chorus, “Mahinda hora (Mahinda is the thief)”. Not to be outdone, the dissident UPFA MPs belonging to what was called the Joint Opposition invaded the Well of the House, with one of them asking, “Kauda hora?”, and the other Rajapaksa loyalists shouting, “Ranil hora.” (Videos of these protests are available on the Internet.) Today, Ranil and Mahinda are savouring power, together, and their acolytes who endorsed and benefited from what they did are currently in the government and the Opposition.

Basil Rajapaksa, the de facto leader of the SLPP, has drawn fire for rhetorically asking whether the blame for what, the critics of the government say, has befallen the country shouldn’t be apportioned to the people as well. But his line of reasoning is logical in this instance. There is no way the people can absolve themselves of responsibility for what their elected representatives do.

The government you elect is said to be the government you deserve. Hence the people must be made to carry out the task of righting the wrong they have done to the country by cleaning the Augean stables that Parliament is. The best way to set about it is to dissolve Parliament and let the people get rid of the MPs who have failed to live up to their expectations and/or ruined the economy and inflicted untold suffering on them.