The OPA and good governance

Ravi PERERA

On the heels of the acrimonious scrap at the once regarded Centre for Ethnic Studies comes the news of the raw broil at the Organization of Professional Associations, another strident voice professing sanity in this country.

The combatants at the OPA did not even try to conceal their ugly talons with the powder and make-up of pretentious intellectualism as the Kynsey Road Wallahs wont to do. Character assassination and mud slinging being the preferred weapons, these so called professionals went to town slandering their antagonists to all and sundry.

The issue simply was whether certain elected officials retained the confidence of the Association any longer. Whatever the hair splitting arguments of either side, in a democratic culture it is impossible to challenge the validity of obtaining an endorsement from the membership. No holder of public office can deny those who voted him in, the right to remove him.

It is said that the unceremoniously dumped president of the OPA is now well past the biblical life expectancy of three score and ten. Prior his election as President, he has unsuccessfully contested this post several times.

Apparently the professional who he defeated at the last Annual General Meeting is even older. Going by the CVs of the two contestants, this organization seems to be catering to the needs of those very much in the evening of their lives. The OPA however is not the only organisation in this country determined to become a Dads’ Army.

The veteran trade unionist Bala Tampoe is a harsh critic of anything and every thing that does not fall in line with his ideological framework. His combativeness perhaps is the secret of his incredibly lengthy stay at the helm of the Ceylon Mercantile Union. In fact he has been its Secretary from the 1950’s.

A person born in the year that Tampoe became Secretary of the CMU would be more than fifty years old now. It will be an understatement to say that in this half a century the world has changed much. But what ever the developments and changes in the outside world Bala Tampoe remains the entrenched leader of the CMU.

This phenomenon of harsh old men demanding deference in shrill tones is not an uncommon occurrence in this country. Nauseating, as it may seem to those from more dynamic and egalitarian cultures, here there is obviously a much larger acceptance of elderly persons continuing in office indefinitely.

One of the more progressive features of the JR Jayewardene Constitution of 1978 was the limit it placed on a presidential career by restricting it to two terms.

But predictably, JR himself attempted to violate the spirit of his own Constitution when he contemplated a third term. The argument then was that he was un-elected to his first term.

At the time of considering a third term, JR was 83 years old. Later, a much younger Chandrika Kumaratunga also entertained ambitions of a third term and there were several so-called professionals who opined that it was a constitutional possibility.

This kind of unprincipled sophistry is surely what undermines good governance while diminishing systems and institutions. In such matters more than the rules it is the spirit given expression in those rules that count. Learning to play Cricket is one thing but to appreciate the spirit of that game is another. When we look at the goings on at our Cricket Board there is very little evidence of this much spoken of sporting spirit.

Amazingly, even in small and relatively obscure sporting bodies in this country the office bearers fight for office in the most viciousness manner. According to the Sports Act in such a body a person can hold important office such as the presidency only two consecutive terms.

Some of these office-hogging wanna-be sports administrators overcome this legal impediment by sitting out for just one year, only to resurface in the same office after the short pause.

In most of these sports we are nowhere near international standards making their grab for office look like mere ego trips if not worse.

According to the deposed president of our organisation of professionals, opposition to him was engendered by the inability of the committee to resolve an issue concerning their kitchen operator.

If this is true, when it comes to real life administration, these preachers on good governance are not only clueless about the spirit of voluntary organizations but are also as hopeless as a gaggle of squabbling grandmothers.

In this controversy where scriptures are quoted in such facile plentitude it maybe appropriate for us to remind ourselves of that famous saying from the Bible “ Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brothers eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye”