One of our readers/writers raises a very pertinent question in a letter on the opposite page: Why should Parliament dissipate funds on electronic devices to block mobile phone signals without making its members respect the rules and regulations and desist from using phones inside the House? Dr. Gamage goes on to point out how the Japanese obey their law and refrain from using mobile phones inside buses and trains. Self-discipline, he says, is the key to development. How true!

The Speaker beset with the problem of lawmakers using phones inside Parliament is behaving just like a parent who laments that his or her child watches TV too much, without doing anything about it. All TV sets are fitted with switches and all that a parent has to do is to press it hard so that the child has no alternative but to do something else. We don’t intend to teach the good Speaker how to do his job. He is a veteran politician who, so to speak, knows his onions. But, he must put his foot down. What ails this country is not lack of legal mechanisms but the non-implementation of the existing laws. Charity they say begins at home. So the lawmakers must get their act together in the House!

Why should politicians be equipped with communication devices at all? In the past, when this country didn’t have even a reliable telephone system—time was when we had to wait for hours on end to make a trunk call—Parliament served a useful purpose unlike today and lawmakers were far more efficient. Parliament was a decent place where one could enjoy intellectual thrust and parry instead of volleys of raw filth and fisticuffs. The economy was stable and the country did well. Today, MPs have all sorts of electronic gadgets, move about in luxury vehicles or, in short, they live like the pigs in the Animal Farm but the country has not gained anything from the colossal expenditure it incurs to maintain those parasitic elements.

Perhaps, the people are no better. We don’t need Darwin to tell us about evolution. We have, in our small way, proved that we descend from apes. We have a remarkable predilection and ability to monkey other nations. But, in so doing, we carefully leave out the traits of others that must be celebrated and emulated. We are mimicking the Japanese and other developed nations where the use of mobile phones is concerned. But, we don’t give a monkey’s about their work ethic which has enabled them to be in a position to afford unlimited use of mobile phones and a luxury life style. Most Sri Lankans will mistake the Five S’s, for which Japan has become famous, for someone’s GCE O/L results! We haven’t at least learnt from them how to use the mobile phone properly without making a nuisance of it. We oftentimes abuse it, as evident from the conduct of parliamentarians and some drivers who hold mobile phones in one hand and shift gears with the other with none on the wheel!

The Sri Lankan youth seem to think the more expensive the mobile phones they use and the lower their pants precariously hang below their exposed navels, the more important they become in society. They must be made to read an inspiring letter we are carrying today on Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the world.

Even if a herd of buffaloes were to be placed on a stage and the public requested to send in as many SMSs as possible to select the best Mee Haraka, many Sri Lankans would readily make asses of themselves and send millions of messages, while complaining about soaring cost of living. They may utter expletives when coconut prices increase by a few rupees—quite rightly so—but will not hesitate to squander hundreds of rupees on ‘texting’ on useless matters day in day out.

Using a mobile phone inside Parliament pales into insignificance where other serious offences by politicians are concerned. They use guns without permits and have yet to return the weapons they got during the JVP violence in the late 1980s. Most of them haven’t declared their assets in keeping with the law.

Strangely, it is only their minor offences that become issues. A few days ago, Leader of the UNP and the Opposition Ranil Wickremesinghe joined the UNP’s poster brigade to deface the city walls in protest against the government. Some of his detractors were prompt to inveigh against him as if he had done something criminal. True, pasting posters is against the law and that’s why printers make it a point to make mention of the fact that they are not meant for public display. Worse, posters contribute to visual pollution. But, what about the monstrous wayside cutouts, from which President Mahinda Rajapaksa beams from ear to ear? Two wrongs, however, do not make a right. Both the President and the Opposition Leader must be made to obey the law as the first step towards ridding the country of visual pollution. Onus in this regard, we reckon, is more on the Opposition as it is on a campaign to ‘restore law and order’. If the national legislature cannot accomplish a simple a task like restricting the use of mobile phones, how can curbs be put on waste, bribery and corruption that politicians disport themselves in? (No electronic devices will be of any use in that regard!) We are reminded of a method used by a king in an apocryphal story to test honesty of a group of aspirants to the high post of royal treasurer. Having invited them to a banquet, the king made them walk, one at a time, through a maze of corridors lined with open containers full of gold coins, to the banquet hall. After dinner, he invited them to dance. None dared dance except one among them. And he got the job. For, the others had stuffed their pockets with coins on the way and feared they would jingle. In this country, we believe, not even kings and queens will dare dance in public because of their bulging pockets lined with public funds! And that may explain why the national coffers are virtually empty.

What the mobile phone episode in Parliament signifies is the need for parliamentarians to live up to their epithet—lawmakers—without breaking the very laws they make. If they and their cohorts can be made to fall in line with the law of the land, everything else will fall into place.