The endangered elephant!

During the colonial occupation of this country, 'elephant shooting' was the leisure activity of the British officials. As the elephant is a large beast that wouldn't just succumb to a shot or two, the encounter with an elephant is both an adventure and a measure of one's valour for the colonials

'Elephant shooting' of the white man caused the elephant population in Ceylon to dwindle from an estimated 35,000 to about 1,500 at present making the elephant a 'protected species' and the tusker an 'endangered species'.

However, since D S Senanayake adopted the elephant as the symbol of his party in 1946, the people of Ceylon started to associate the beast with the political significance it so richly deserved as the symbol of the first and the most successful national political party in the country. The sad position today however is after having experience the political vicissitudes of a young democracy for 60 years, this party with the elephant as its symbol is again being listed as 'politically endangered' under the leadership of Ranil Wickremesinghe, a man who again saw no future for this country, ironically, beyond the colonials designs.

However, something that is so intriguing about party politics in Sri Lanka is that every party in the political arena has a set of followers who are prepared to stand by the party, not come rain or shine, but come even death or annihilation. This characteristic cannot be explained mere as loyalty of party supporter to its political philosophy because it is something that goes beyond that and to an irrational extreme.

Political power

Political parties are essentially formed to gain political power of the State and for that they have to depict sound social and economic policies coupled with administrative disciplines. Thus though different parties could propound different policies, the boundary line should be that they all should be meant for the well-being of the country and its people they aspire to govern.

The irony in the Sri Lankan scenario is that we have often witnessed prominent national parties advocating extremely questionable strategies at crucial stages in this country and the party loyalist too blindly supporting such strategies with no compunction whatsoever. The stand taken by the UNP leadership during the country's recent fight against terrorism is the most glaring case in point. Security is the most basic need of the man because even the primitive man looked for a cave to protect himself from the dangers of the jungle before he thought of his food.

Subsequently the villages were formed and with that collective security came into being enabling man to engage himself in agriculture and other pursuits paving the way for civilization.

But the present leadership of the UNP advocated a policy of legitimizing the most ruthless terror organization in the world for the purpose of building the country's economy. Thus he entered into an agreement called the CFA to coexist with insecurity and was so moronic in not seeing the obvious that physical security is first before everything else.

The paradox however is not that the present UNP leader did that for political expediency and to assuage his international well wishers, but the fact that almost half the voters in this country voted for this man to become the President of the country in 2005, as if they too were oblivious of the dangers inherent in that infamous CFA. Does that mean 47.3 percent of the voters in this country are imbeciles who promote the party dogma at the expense of their country's physical existence? Does this mean that we are a zombie nation prone to be manoeuvred by political party leaders for their agendas over and above the nation's interest and security? Could we find an answer to this even in the history of party politics in this country?

Universal franchise

Eventhough the Universal franchise was introduced to this country with the Donoughmore Commission we had no political parties then and the voting was on personalities.

It as the Soulbury Commission that introduced the British style political parties to this country in 1948, in response to which the UNP, the LSSP, CP and the Tamil Congress were formed. These parties however were formed in September 1946 and thus people in this country became UNPers, LSSPers, Communists and Tamils even before they became Ceylonese.

Thus these parties, especially the UNP, has a voter segment that values the party before the country and this is the only way we could explain this moronic attachment to the party, come death or annihilation.

The present leader of the UNP is a man who always tried to cling to power by the strength of this 'irrational vote bank' in the party because before every election he would advice the contenders, 'We have a block vote so do not worry about that. What you have to do is to canvass the floaters'. It appeared easy but proved difficult due to the policies and utterances of the leader himself.

Hence after 16 years of his reign as the party block vote has come down to 27.5 percent from around 50 percent it had always been.

Ranil is a contrast to DS's agriculture, Dudley's humanity, JR's ingenuity and Premadasa's populism so how could his blind loyalists expect him to win elections? Now with the formation of an independent group within the UNP the party may even lose the post of the Leader of the Opposition.

But Ranil will not give up because he believes that there are those, though declining, who still love the elephant symbol.

Thus unless the elephant lovers come to terms with the reality at least now, the poor beast will soon belong to the political history of this country.

The President is doing an excellent job leading the country, so what he needs is a strong and able elephant and not a feeble and lame one.

thirdeye0910@yahoo.com