THE BIG PICTURE
LAW OF THE JUNGLE “Look at your MPs – MPs like this can even be found in the jungle,” the deputy speaker lashed out in parliament in late August, addressing the leader of the opposition before suspending sittings for a reported 10 minutes.
And as a report in the Sunday Times notes, “it is not just opposition MPs who have behaved in this manner. There have been enough examples of serious acts of misbehaviour by government MPs as well.”
It notes that as many as 60 ministers have been named in a report by the parliamentary committee, following the despicable behaviour the nation witnessed in disbelief during the constitutional crisis in late 2018 – not one of them however, has been reprimanded to date.
It is in this environment that we, the people, are being asked to abide by the laws of the land by the very men and women who by all accounts fail to do the same – they seem to think that enacting the law is their sole duty!
And with an election year ahead of us, one wonders whether the people will continue to vote for miscreants, rogues and thugs as a majority have done over the decades – in rotation, it would seem!
Sri Lanka may be crawling out of the self-inflicted economic crisis but it is at risk of crawling back into the hellhole – unless the powers that be who lead the parties that we will be asked to vote for act now – by sacking their charges who have shamed a precious nation.
The ideal scenario of course, would be the entry of a new party or coalition comprising high calibre candidates with clean track records for whom the people can vote with confidence – but that is nowhere on the horizon at this juncture.
In a heated parliamentary session, the deputy speaker criticized MPs, likening their behavior to that of the jungle. Both opposition and government MPs were admonished for misconduct, revealing a dire need for accountability. Sri Lanka’s electoral future hangs in the balance.