To kill a manape

By T. E., Kotte

The election circus is now on. The President was reluctant to bypass the Parliament and go to a referendum to obtain a public endorsement for his amendments. His patience was overextended in exercising “yahapalanaya”, obstructed by all Parliamentarians.

Daily commentaries in all media are only on Parliamentarians jockeying for position to secure their own positions bereft of any material or public objectives.

Judging by the public response to this ongoing self-serving tirade, virtually all public responses, noticeably increasing in frequency, all unequivocally cite all politicians as having no interest in serving the country or the public and making every covert attempt to thwart or dilute the amendments, patently paying only lip service by way of agreement. 

Are politicians deaf? Were the amendments presented in the wrong order?! Should the President have introduced the contents of the 20th Amendment in the 19th Amendment and seen it through before relinquishing his powers via a 20th?

Number of seats

The mainstream parties using the excuse of being fair by the minor parties vis-à-vis the number of Parliamentary seats is a sham. Both sides were using it as a ready means to abort provisions they do not wish to implement. When otherwise were they ever so generous about the minor parties? Amazingly 47 of them! In Sri Lanka? Didn’t know we had 47 minorities!

What is the problem? The first is the Houdini trick of 80 odd ministers being reduced to 25 (30?). The ship in a bottle or the old lady who lived in a shoe with more children than she knew what to do with!

No doubt the erstwhile ruler would be only too happy to install 100 ministerial types to maintain the palace guard. To hell with the people. They don’t count.

The public want all the original provisions of the 19th and 20th Amendment enacted and implemented. This includes the ban on crossovers of elected members and the installation of all the relevant commissions as promised.

Preferential vote

The second equally important issue is the now putrid preferential vote.

All indications are that all parties are evading this issue on the grounds that it can only be implemented at the next election in 2020. The people want to be rid of it now!

The public can kill the manape vote now! How? By very simply not using it!

The public are unaware that the casting of a preferential vote is not mandatory. Their vote can be used to vote people in or keep people out. All they have to do is vote for the party of their choice and choose only one candidate from their constituency. 

Leave the other two manapes blank. This would automatically put the onus of selecting proper, honest representatives squarely on the party leaders. No individual undesirable can claim the right to a seat if the preferential votes have not been cast. 

The party leaders cannot shirk this responsibility and will be under public pressure to make the right choices or incur the wrath of the public! While this may not completely eliminate the possibility of any thick-skinned party leader shamelessly appointing his/her favourites on some concocted pretext, it will make any suspect decision patently obvious.

All civil society organisations now actively involved in educating the public on the choice of suitable candidates are the best available ambassadors to impress upon the people that the best way to kill the manape system is to ignore it! The people must be apprised in no uncertain terms that ignoring the manape does not invalidate their vote, that not using the manape is the power the people have to kill it now.

It may be too much to expect the average voter to refuse the bribes and inducements offered by all the known manipulators. So what? Let them take the bribes. Just don’t vote the two extra manapes.

It cannot be impressed enough upon the people that not using the preferential vote is as powerful as using their primary vote. The people have the power to make the politicians do what the people want. They just don’t know it. They need to realise and remember this. They can do it at every election.

So, hark all you worthy civic organisations out there. You are the public conscience. You have all been doing a wonderful job in the last three months. Keep up the good work. Show the people how to kill the manape. They are ready for it.