Editorial

Editorial

A lack of will

The Elections Commissioner, poor man, certainly has his hands full. He barely had time to catch his breath after the last election a year ago before he was asked to get ready for the referendum which turned out to be a non-event. And now there’s another election with Mr. Dissanayake being informed by those hoping that this contest will be fairer than the last one that he’s clothed with the full powers of the Elections Commission that was to be, but is not.

The way things are going, it is unlikely that the courts are going to rule on these matters before December 5. The UNP has filed several fundamental rights actions which the courts have neither allowed nor thrown out. They seem willing to give their judicial minds to the questions that have been raised but that is not going to happen before the poll. That will make the results purely academic, with perhaps some benefit for the future. An activist court could have tried to rule on these cases that are all directly election-related before the election day deadline. But the signs are that this will not happen.

It’s all a matter of will. Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar who, unlike President Kumaratunga, does not seize every media opportunity to bash the UNP and its allies, said on television last week that the main reason why the peace process was stalled was that there was a lack of "political will". His remarks obviously applied to both sides of the divide because he referred to the government’s grand plan of getting both the PA and the UNP to make a joint appeal to the LTTE for talks if the PA and UNP could have agreed on a national government.

Predictably, the ethnic conflict, national issue or terrorist problem - call it what you will, and the resultant north-east war has become the principal issue of the election campaign. The PA - JVP combine has alleged an ali- koti-nari havula and is thumping that tub like nobody’s business. There is not just a perception but a fear within government ranks that if the UNP is going to win this election, the minorities are going to play a major role in that victory as they have done in greener days of the past. So nobody need be surprised by the effort to smear the UNP with an LTTE brush.

The fact is that there will be no end to this war without somebody talking to the LTTE. Rhetoric aside, whoever wins the election must do that. The very fact that the Norwegians were enlisted two years ago by the government to facilitate this process was a clear indication of its desire to get the talks going. But the LTTE imposed a last minute demand that Colombo must lift the proscription on the Tigers if negotiations were to begin. Given the British ban that has just been slapped down on them, they obviously saw the advantage of getting Sri Lanka to back down because that would naturally have drawn off a lot of the Western heat. But September 11 has changed all that with Canada joining the US and Britain in turning the screws on terrorist fund raising.

Given the campaign tack, it is natural for an NGO like the National Peace Council to argue as it did in a statement last week that the peace process envisaged engagement and relationship-building between the government and the LTTE. "Therefore ruling party politicians should not deny the same opportunity to opposition politicians who seek to form the government by contesting the election," it said. While the logic is irrefutable, given the way that politics is played in this island of ours, anybody’s pious hopes for a political straight bat will never be. While the president spouts eloquently abroad about her willingness to negotiate with the Tigers, her candidates sing another song on campaign platforms.

Misuse of state resources for the election campaign is also an area where the Elections Commissioner is believed empowered to intervene. But whether he can and would is another matter. Politicians in office have routinely used state resources for campaigning purposes and such abuse has become more and more blatant with each passing election. Those of our readers who saw Friday’s report of Ceylon Petroleum Corporation Chairman’s denial of CPC facilities being misused must surely have smiled. Can the chairman, cross his heart and say that corporation vehicles are not being used for this election and weren’t the last time round? He didn’t bother to deny well documented allegations on this score last year. And despite it’s billions of rupees of losses, CPC takes a full-page newspaper ad yesterday to offer its "tribute to a leader of peace." Over half that space is occupied by a flattering portrait of you-know-who.

Such abuse will not stop unless the people assert themselves. While there are those who will leak a story to the press that the former chairman of a corporation who resigned to contest the election turned up and took over the official vehicle he used and another for good measure, will senior officials say ‘No’ to such impropriety? And even if they do, but have to cave into not just superior muscle power but even fire-power given the armed goons who back-up many of our politicos, will they take the necessary next step of reporting robbery - because that’s what it is - to the police? And will the police act? Questions, questions, questions to which the answers are most likely negative. It’s all a matter of will that is sadly lacking everywhere.

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