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| Friday, 12 March 2004 |
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by the Monitor Four men in rural Western Kenya are reported to have made a citizens' arrest for the strangest of reasons. A Reuter report filed from Nairobi describes the incident in this way: "A Kenyan villager who had not bathed in 10 years was stripped and scrubbed down by neighbours sickened by the stench. Four neighbours swooped down on the 52-year old man, tying him up with a rope before washing him in public. It took four hours to clean the man, whose body was also scoured with sand to remove a thick layer of filth. The man, a bachelor, has promised to wash once a day and hopes to find a wife." I couldn't help wishing that our citizenry were endowed with similar commitment to civic responsibility, even in these days of drought and water cuts. For the task I have in mind, they would need water of a very different composition than those used by the Kenyans above. I am thinking of our parliament. I am thinking of our political culture in general. We have a parliament that is 56 years old. It has never been washed and some may even argue that this is partly because whoever birthed the grotesque creature failed to cut clean the umbilical cord, spank its bottom and wash off all the gooey stuff that it comes out with. This is perhaps why the various parties that have taken up residence in this ill-begotten body have demonstrated much womb-yearning, running at the drop of a hat to the parents that connived to conceive the creature. There is nothing to say that misbegotten beings cannot redeem the vile designs of their parents. Our parliament and our political process can come good even after 56 miserable years. If a first step were necessary then it wouldn't hurt to learn from the Kenyans. Let us admit that there is a huge stench emanating from the Diyawanna and it is attracting the most unsavoury creatures. Decades have passed, effluents have been pumped into the body politic with scant regard for environmental concerns and the entire place is caked with filth. No wonder a decent human being like Dallas Alahapperuma and Imthiaz Bakeer Markar have taken to their heels. Some tying up and cleaning is clearly in order. The question is, who is going to do the cleaning? It is a delicate job and not something that can be accomplished using a bucket of water and a few fistfuls of sand. It takes more than the proverbial "a few good men" to clean things up. If that were the case, we would have taken the dragon out of this frightening creature a long time ago. This does not mean that a few good men and women have no role whatsoever to play in reforming that place in the Diyawanna and the processes related with power and power-seeking associated with it. Let us start with the house, sitting so pretty on the lovely Diyawanna Oya. A long time ago, when the Japanese built for us this splendid edifice purportedly symbolising fairy-tale notions such as democracy and sovereignty, my father told me, "son, whenever things lose their true value, they are made prettier, bigger and more awe-inspiring". If I remember right, this was the time when democracy was shoved down the toilet courtesy rigged elections, intimidation of opposition, destroying trade unions etc., etc. This is how 1988-89 happened. Our society was made to snowball into the fires of the bheeshanya, pardon the awkward mixing of metaphors. My father was right. That was the time when we got currency notes straight out of a pre-school work book; flowers, birds, animals, archaeological artifacts all, so pretty to look at but pretty sad when it came to what they could purchase. Since then, things have only got worse. If there is one thing that gives us the right to hope that the house can be cleaned, it is that strange piece of legislation presented by the JVP a few weeks before the 2001 election, the 17th Amendment. Today Dayananda Dissanayake, our reluctant Elections Commissioner, has some teeth. The police feel safe enough from political victimisation thanks to the Police Commission. They are doing their best to enforce election laws. And we don't get to see the ugly mugs of the many ugly people who under normal circumstances would be dying and killing to get into that ugly place called the parliament. I don't know if I have a right to be hopeful. We have a set of young people in whom idealism is yet to die, one would hope. They promise to clean up politics. They very well may. We have a set of Buddhist monks who are most certainly the best communicators around, promising to set up structures that will attract the best to parliament because there would be few loopholes for the worst to come through and few secret passages to the treasury for them to see elections as a means to pilfer. There may be just enough to make up that critical mass necessary to clean up that filthy place. Cleaning up will involve making sure that rogues and traitors cannot engage in constitutional tinkering. It will involve transparency and accountability. Such things should not depend on the given politician's good heartedness. We don't have to be so naive. No, we need democratic and democratising structures. These alone will clean up the baby. Before all this can happen, the voter has to exercise his/her discretion. If we vote for crooks we will not only have fraud, we will most likely be robbed. If we elect murderers, we open our children to the possibility of being murdered. If we prefer traitors, we can accept treachery. We will lose our culture, heritage and nation. At the end of the day, we would have lost the right to object. And even if we didn't, we would be too late. If, on the other hand, we want things to be cleaned up, we have to make sure that we elect only those who can stand the stench, rise above it, and more than all this, employ the appropriate cleaning agent and scrub. People who will do the bucket of water and scrub act day in and day out. Eternal vigilance is the only guarantor of democracy. That 52-year old Kenyan promised to wash everyday. Something to think about, I think. |
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