In the olden day, the families of noblemen raised ordinary boys with their blue-blooded progeny for whipping them for the latter’s misdeeds. Sri Lankan politicians seem to have borrowed a leaf out of the archaic nobility’s book. Speaker W. J. M. Lokubandara has blamed the decline in parliamentary standards on the people who, he has said, make wrong choices. We are reminded of a minister of the Kumaratunga government who held the people responsible for high prices of rice as, he argued, Sri Lankans ate too much of rice! The millions of hungry mouths must have felt like making a meal of that asinine politico! Politicians are never at fault. It is the ‘swinish multitude’ who they blame for everything.

However, what the good Speaker has said is not totally false. Sometimes people make wrong choices.

Narcotics dealers, cattle thieves, pickpockets, murderers, rapists, child abusers, contract killers, bootleggers, frauds and in short the scum of the earth have got elected by the popular vote. The people tend to turn a blind eye to the criminal track record of an unsavoury politician if he happens to be a strongman of the party of their choice. Therefore, we have criminal elements at all levels of the political system rubbing shoulders with university dons and others of eminence who have strayed into politics due to their bad karma. It is only natural that the standards of Parliament, Provincial Councils and the local government institutions have declined steeply.

But, the same fallible masses also make wise decisions. They reject certain elements at elections. Our friend Mervyn Silva is a case in point. He came almost last on the UPFA list at the last general election with a little over 2,000 preferential votes. The people deserve plaudits for their informed decision. But, he is today in Parliament as a minister! So, how can the people be blamed for his unruly behaviour? Former President Chandrika Kumaratunga brought him to Parliament through the backdoor (read the National List) and the present President Mahinda Rajapaksa made him a minister.

In this country, some of the elected don’t need electors’ support. Remember the now infamous Wayamba election, where candidates had the ballot boxes stuffed and ordered the police and the elections officers to look the other way at gun point. Can the people be blamed for the ‘election’ of the PA candidates to the North Western Provincial Council in 1999? The UNP vehemently protested against election violence and rigging but to no avail. The results were sanctioned and the political thugs ran the council for six years!

In 1982, the UNP replaced a general election with a referendum which was rigged to the core. The people had a little say in that electoral exercise. The UNP politicians and goons didn’t allow the public to vote. They stuffed the boxes and ‘won’. The JVP that moved the judiciary against that farcical referendum was later proscribed on a false pretext and the ground prepared for the second insurrection in the South. The UNP retained its five-sixths majority in Parliament and abused it to its heart’s content. It also used that steam roller majority, among other things, to introduce the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

The Presidential Election and the General Election held amidst widespread violence in the late 1980s could hardly be called democratic. But, let no issue be made out of those polls because undemocratic as they were, paradoxically they stood democracy in good stead. For, in protecting democracy at times of crises, it has to be granted that some election is better than no election at all. That’s why the forthcoming mini polls in the Eastern Province should be endorsed by one and all. It is a supreme irony that the UNP, which held elections at the height of the JVP terrorism in the South, is objecting to the polls in the East due to the presence of the Pillaiyan group!

It is not only the misconduct of the lesser politicians that we should be concerned about. What about the conduct of the so-called enlightened politicians? COPE Chairman and dissident UPFA MP Wijedasa Rajapaksha, PC is a knight on a mission to slay the dragon of bribery and corruption. Having issued a report naming and shaming many politicians, he is campaigning to have them punished. This newspaper has backed him to the hilt and will continue to do so as regards the COPE report. But, he has done something that erodes his credibility badly.

Among the special invitees at Rajapaksha’s book launch at Waters Edge on Wednesday was former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who is implicated in the COPE report! He presented copies of his works to her. True, it is President Kumaratunga who appointed him to Parliament via the National List—it was a good decision—and made him a President’s Counsel and therefore he may have wanted to show his gratitude to his former political boss.

But, in battling bribery and corruption, there cannot be friends and grey areas. It is unbecoming of him to host anyone named in his report. What he did on Wednesday could be likened to a police inspector inviting a suspect he has investigated and named in a report to a private function. His action, we reckon, has left a very bad taste in the public mouth, to say the least!

As for the deteriorating parliamentary standards, what have the party leaders being doing? A leader who cannot make his flock fall in line is not worth his or her salt. It is mostly in their presence that their members misbehave in Parliament or outside. The party leaders must own up to their failure and pull their socks up or step down.

The Speaker also cannot absolve himself of the responsibility for the sorry state of affairs in Parliament, which he himself laments. He is the boss in the House and there cannot be political pots stronger than his Mace! He ought to put his foot down and say enough is enough. We suggest that he and all the party leaders read the Panditharathna Report, which examines the factors that led to the UNP’s defeat at the 2004 election but has relevance to all the parties.

The people may be faulted for returning some unsavoury elements to represent them but at an election they are without much of a choice. In voting governments out of power in a bid to get rid of one set of bad politicians, they only ‘swap ginger for chillies’.

If the people really want to elect decent politicians, then they will never be able to exercise their franchise. Like Diogenes of Sinope in the popular apocryphal story, they will have to wander around the country with lamps in broad daylight searching for their dream representatives—till kingdom come!