Aney, please don’t ‘represent’ me!

Elections are essentially processes which allow people to select representatives. The would-be representative, therefore, spends a lot of time, energy and money, trying to convince the voter that he/she would be the better representative, would air their concerns at relevant forums and do everything possible to redress grievance. What happens thereafter we really don’t have to talk about, do we? But that’s not my concern.

The recent spate of provincial-level elections got me thinking about this business of representation. Who is representing me, I asked myself. As a resident of Colombo, I am (supposed to be) represented in the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC). So too in the Western Provincial Council (WPC). I am represented, it follows, in Parliament by Colombo District members. And by the President.

In addition to all these electioneering types, there are those who believe they represent that conveniently undefined and undifferentiated thing called ‘civil society’.

These cats really go to town with this ‘representation’ business, posing off as the ‘Voice of Reason’, the ‘Ethical’, the ‘Good’, the ones with ‘conscience’ and ‘social responsibility’. They are quite thick with self-congratulation and it is positively sickening. Most of them are motivated by elitist visions for Sri Lanka and by narrow political preferences. They ‘represent’ me (locally and internationally) without my permission and worse without even my vote. The politician, in comparison, is pretty transparent and I would pick him/her any day over the civil-society-rep.

Then there is the media, speaking on my behalf, looking after ‘the public interest’. Sure, they play an important role, but one is often mortified by the arrogance that assumes knowledge of the most intimate concerns of the public; an arrogance which is of course framed in humanistic and politically-correct language that does little to hide the political motive that underlines such sentiments.

The truth is I am not even a name or a face to most of my ‘representatives’. If you ask me, I would not be able to name anyone in the CMC and I can’t really call anyone in the WPC ‘friend’ or even acquaintance.

Haven’t seen, haven’t talked. Never asked me who I was, never said ‘hello’, they just do in my name whatever they like whether or not it helps me.

I do know the names of some Colombo District Parliamentarians and have had occasion to meet one or two of them, but they are all busy looking after, they say, ‘the national interest’ and can hardly be expected to do anything about the kudu karayas who jump into my parents’ garden to steal flowers or pinch whatever that’s lying around. ‘Law and order’ is the business of the police, right?

I am sure some voters, especially those who contribute handsomely to campaign coffers have an inside track to their representatives’ ears, and can and do get things done. Of course whether their ‘concerns’ are about mal-horu or something else, I have no way of knowing. Maybe I don’t try hard enough. Actually I don’t mind my representatives not attending to problems that are specific to me; as long as they do things that benefit the larger collective of voters. I don’t see much of that happening either. The ‘I did this’ boards are, we all know, several times ‘larger’ (metaphorically speaking) than what he/she actually ‘did’.

I’ve come to think that I’d rather have no representative than have hundreds who really don’t give a damn about me except during that brief period when they are up for re-election.

Sri Lanka, I believe, has far too many representatives than is good for the country’s general health. There is so much overlap that it makes not only for squabbles over securing credit (for whatever is done) and an enormous waste of money and other resources. I am sure that very few if any representative is aware of the lines that demarcate his/her jurisdiction when it comes to ‘doing’. There is a lot of trespassing, some of it due to good-hearted ignorance and a lot because territory is everything to the politician given his/her political ambitions.

This is true from the first-term pradeshiya sabhika to the seasoned and regularly elected Cabinet Minister.

To put up your name board, you have to have ‘work’. Well, to make bucks, you have to have ‘projects’, but that’s another article altogether. Representatives are falling over each other and biting into each other’s behinds to get ‘work’, this we know. In the absence of a streamlined system of responsibilities and an enforcing mechanism to keep predatory representatives from encroaching on someone else’s turf, all this, unfortunately, is ‘all natural’. And this, mind you, is without factoring in the inevitable exacerbation of election-related violence and vandalism.

We see all this all the time, before and after elections and during election campaigns.

Before J.R. Jayewardene brought in the proportional representation system the word ‘manaapaya’ referred to preference.

Today it is a cuss-word. Murmur the word manaapaya and ask someone give a one-word response and nine out of 10 would no doubt respond ‘poraya’.

At the end of the day, the whole system seems to be an excellent validation of the dictum ‘too many cooks spoil the soup’. The wastage, mis-representation and even non-representation that the excessive number of representatives produces, the inefficiency and the mindless swagger it yields, it seems imperative that radical reform is necessary in the entire electoral system.

We are all aware that an Electoral Reform Commission was set up under the chairmanship of Dinesh Gunawardena, Urban Development and Sacred Area Development Minister. Much was expected. Now it seems that petty politicking might sink the whole exercise. The recommendations would clearly serve to mitigate the violence and insufferable lunacy that the manaapa poraya produces. They fall short, however, of addressing the fundamental deficiencies related to ‘representation’, the situation where we are represented by so many that we are not represented at all.

It is quite depressing, actually. At the end of the day, I want to say, ‘please, please, don’t represent me; I am fine, really’. Makes me want to say, ‘udau epa; wadath epa’ (I don’t need any help, just don’t harass me)!