Sudath Gunasekara

11.1.2018.

Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage”.  H L MENCKEN”

(Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the “Sage of Baltimore”, he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. He commented widely).

‎In the above heading the Monkey Cage” he refers to” is the Parliament. He also has called the proceedings of the House to a circus.

Looking at yesterday’s stupid brawl in Parliament one is surprised as to how wonderfully MENCKEN has foreseen the Sri Lankan Parliament. In this context one wonders whether we can call it the supreme legislative body of the nation any more.

The whole rumpus is attributed by many to the fault of the Speaker who deviated from the main agenda of the day. Firstly by not tabling the CB Commission Report as agreed upon at the Heads of Parties in the previous day and secondly by allowing the Prime Minister to make an ad hock silly statement where he was talking on a subject completely outside the agenda fixed for the day. You don’t need to be a parliamentarian with 47 year experience to understand that this is wrong and it clearly violates the Parliamentary procedure. Finally the way he danced on the floor of this august assembly ‘shouting Kavuda Hora, Kavuda Hora and Kavuda Hora’ has reduced him to a third grade clown on the Maradana pavement. Behold! This is the Prime minister of this country!

Now you see the appropriateness of what Mencken said years ago about the Parliament and its members?

I am sure millions of voters who have taken the pain to stand on long queues for hours to elect these people to Parliament expect much more from them.

I am lost to understand as to why we pay millions and billions to maintain a set of clowns like this. If this is how the National Parliament discharges its functions one can imagine how things happen in Provincial councils, MCC, UCC and Preadesiya Sabhas all over the country at the lower levels, packed with men and women with even lesser attainments and more notorious records. Also think of the 4000 odd additional members elected this time to the Local Government bodies. I remember the President once saying that he doesn’t like this100% increase. If so why did he not object it in the Cabinet? Mr President You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time (Dec 11, 2013 Abram Lincoln) I hope you will realize this at the forthcoming Local bodies Elections.

Any way we can watch how 351 Monkey cages at National, Provincial, Town and Village levels (1Parliament 9 Provincial Councils and 341 local authorities (MCC, UCC and Pradesiya Sabhas) in the periphery) with 225 (1 P), nearly 450 (9 PCC) and 8,293 (341 LGC) members will display their Karate antics in the near future inside these monkey cages, at the expense of the tax payers money with no service to people or the country, within the framework of a new genre of democracy which I would like to define as Government by the politicians, for the politician and of the politicians” and may be termed Sri Lanka democracy. This they will of cause call yahapalanaya