Sri Lanka It's Happening

July 4, 2004

It's easy to blame the politians for all that ails this country. That's not where the blame lies, the blame lies with the people who elected a bunch of crooks and thugs to office in the first place.

Just before Sri Lanka won her independence from British Rule, the then Sri Lankan leaders had argued against universal franchise. That may sound like a high handed, authoritarian act but with the benefit of hindsight, it does not seem such a bad idea after all. Many Sri Lankans who lean towards the left would say it was an attempt by the so called aristocrats to disenfranchise the poor.

Fortunately or unfortunately we gained our independence with out much of a struggle and along with independence came the right to vote. The unwashed or uneducated masses won that right just like everyone else. Nearly sixty years later, this teeming mass of humanity has voted against democracy.

They have achieved this by allocating the biggest share of the votes to the UPFA. The major constituent of the UPFA is the JVP, a party with a violent past, a party that attempted to overthrow past governments by force, not just once but twice. It is the UPFA that promised to do away with the constitution even with out the required 2/3 majority. They recieved only 45% of the votes cast and thankfully have only a similar percentage of seats in the parliament but that hasn't stopped them from trying.

The other threat to democracy comes from a group of buddhist monks. They want to take away your right to choose a religion. Fortunately they have only a very small number of seats in parliament but the UPFA has hijacked their platform (just as the monks hijacked the UPFA's platfrom before the election) and plan to go ahead with an anti conversion bill.

If that bill is passed taking away one of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution; the right to choose your own religion. Should that happen the monks will throw in their lot with the UPFA which in turn will allow them to go ahead with their constituent assembly process.

The constituent assembly is a term coined by the UPFA spin doctors. It means the same thing as 'we will do away with democracy'

Posted by raditha at July 4, 2004 11:11 AM