File me a petition!

Saturday, 22 June 2013 06:45 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Perpetually on Sundays I wake up with Anarkali! Alright, alright! I may not be the only one. She is omnipresent on Sundays; check Swarnavahini if you don’t believe. So when she called to say that she missed me couple of Fridays I was gathering wool. Fridays? Then she explained. No conspiracies two weeks on a trot left a few concerned readers and calls to the Dept. of White Vans. So here’s the thing. I caught a bug. A very bad one that munificently messed my head. I was inflicted with a harrowing dream that chimed night after night. I dreamed that I was a provincial councillor, a thought so brutal it made me sick to my bones.

It has not been a good time for provincial councils and councillors. Asudden I realised Anarkalli was one too and petitioned her to watch her step. Councillors are going cuckoo en masse. From obscurity to headlines is just one mad moment away as many councillors have found out. Wondered why India is so agog with the 13th alteration! “It’s a masterstroke etched in history and will ensure that brat of a country doesn’t turn into a big fish in the Indian Ocean. It keeps the Lankan Government trapped between the devil and the deep blue,” Indian Premier Manmohan Singh responded to a scathing letter from India’s Minister of Sri Lanka’s Affairs Jayalalitha Jayaram. “So we will do all that’s within our powers and beyond to keep it alive,” he reiterated. Provincial councils devolve powers to a bunch of absolute bozos who plunder their country’s wealth while turning decentralised governance into a theatre of antics. There’s widespread corruption, misconduct and dissention; three things that members of the Police Dept. and armed forces are barred from, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa thought to himself while addressing the security top-brass in Colombo this week. Sure, we want peace and prosperity, from Point Pedro to Dondra Head. We want freedom and honour for all. But we are just about to butcher the very thing we want, fighting over an ignominious number: 13! Let’s hope the Government can find a number that’s lucky for the Pres, the TNA and all of us. Meanwhile, we can sit back and watch the comedy of protests or join the bandwagon. If petitioning was a profession, you’d never hear of unemployment. Islanders are born with an uncanny ability to find a way to complain just about anything. The rampaging art of petitioning was immortalised by the comedian extraordinaire Freddie Silva with his hit song: Gahapalla bola pethsam (petition men petition). And petitions we hammer out in their thousands. When petitions are jettisoned it takes out with tit all the fun. What do we have; protests that turn loathsome or boffo. The island is hurtling into one big circus of protests. This mere statement is proof of a vibrant democracy at work. But images of student bikkhus and kindergarten kids, villagers barricading roads, all over something they just didn’t like, want or a ghastly injustice were however a sad sight and an ominous sign of where we are heading . The world loves the Sri Lankan summer; not a spring! iPhone, iMac, iReport; the world is abuzz with the i-thing. Nothing idiosyncratic about any of it though. But how about i-petitions? It does exist and it claims to be the world’s largest free online petition portal. You can, according to i-petitions.com, start collecting signatures for your petition in three simple steps. So like Freddie Silva spurred us on, why wait, go ahead and start a petition! Unique and creative ideas for a petition may receive an honourable mention by the Conspiracy Desk. I think I’ll get busy! (Dinesh Watawana is a former foreign correspondent and military analyst. He is a brand consultant and heads The 7th Frontier, an integrated communications agency which masterminded the globally-acclaimed eco tourism hotspot KumbukRiver. Email him at [email protected].)