Are we voters or suckers?

In two weeks a lot of people will experience a moment of truth. There will be smiles for some, disappointment for others, candidates and voters both. Two weeks from now, i.e. on April 8, 2010, we will elect a new Parliament. We will keep some, throw some out and welcome some new faces. We will have a new Prime Minister, a smaller Cabinet, and a Government that is committed to ensuring transparency and accountability and correcting institutional flaws so that the best minds in the country can be harnessed to sort out all our social, economic and political problems.

Hold on, hold on...I am getting carried away here. Let’s keep things real. Let me try again. Here goes:

We will have a Government that is ‘new’ in that it would be freshly elected. There will be old faces and there will be new ones. It is unlikely that the PM will have the kinds of executive powers that Ranil Wickremesinghe in one of his daydreams assumed that Sarath Fonseka would confer upon that office in the event he (Fonseka) was elected. What else? Good governance: well, depends on the composition, right?

The ruling coalition is seeking a two-thirds majority and what they would do with it if they do get it is anyone’s guess. What anyone does is dependent on what they have in the first place. It all boils down to the kind of personnel you elected.

If it’s a bunch of thugs and thieves then we can’t hope for much. We could just point the finger at the people who made up the candidates’ lists and say ‘that’s what you wanted, dude, and that’s what you got’. Chances are the leaders will be comfortable. Would we be? Too early to say, but I will be conservative here and say ‘don’t hope for much’.

Just take a look at the lists of candidates. There are all kinds of candidates of course. Things like character and ability are not divorced from things like wealth, crassness, ability and willingness to unleash thuggery, being foul-mouthed and crookedness. Guess who decides! Yes, you. Me. Us. How do we choose? I’ve been thinking about posters and name-recognition lately. There are names we remember now but didn’t know about a few months ago, am I correct? What does it say when we recognize a name and a face but cannot really say anything about the person, other than repeating what he/she has told us about him/herself?

This is what I think. Those who have no substance, have to spend bucks on image-lift. Those who have substance would feel awkward and shy to talk about themselves.

Someone can say that even such people have to make their preference numbers known and I know enough about such practicalities to acknowledge that some kind of communication exercise is necessary. But there are bottom lines, aren’t there?

We are all aware that there are manaapa numbers that are loud and invasive. They don’t let us be. A person who has to scream in order to be heard has to be deficient in some way. Pirunu kale diya nosele. Some people don’t have the money to put up posters or to get people to blare out their numbers via loudspeakers. It is easy to make a virtue out of some kind of inability. Still, in most cases we can tell who needs to spend bucks and who doesn’t have to.

So look for posters. They will tell you who is rich, who has rich friends, who is willing to invade our private space and vandalize public space, who needs face-lift etc etc. They will or should alert you about other candidates you should be considering.

Posters tell us who has bucks. They tell us who is happy to have hundreds of trees felled in order to help them get elected (posters are made of paper and paper comes from trees). Spenders generally encourage me to look closely at non-spenders or people who spend very little on campaign material.

The bottom line is that when we pick X or Y candidate, we tell the world what kind of voters we are.

Do you want to be a voter who is taken in by pithy slogan and/or neat image? Do you go for substance or appearance? Do you have ears only for those who scream or do you listen out of your own free will? Do you match promise against performance? Do you take the trouble to check the manaapa ankaya of all candidates when you go to the polling booth or will you do the lazy thing of voting for the numbers that you remember?

Do you realize that if we are lazy we might very well diminish our chances of getting a better Parliament? Have you paused and asked yourself what kind of Parliament you want on April 9, 2010?

I have. I have crossed off the poster boys (and girls), crossed off the big spenders, crossed off the uncouth and loud, crossed off the thugs, crossed off those who crossed over and have not told me why, crossed off those who are good at talking but poor on delivery.

To be honest, I’ve whittled it down to two or three names. This time I am determined to be a voter and a sucker. How about you?

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