Voters beware: Don’t reward indisciplined, corrupt politicians with your vote

Sri Lankan politicians are known mostly for making news for the wrong reasons. Be it indiscipline in Parliament, thuggery, breaking traffic rules, etc., a politician’s name somehow crops up. On Thursday, State Minister and SLPP Gampaha District MP Prasanna Ranaweera was in the news for threatening security personnel on duty at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) as well as slapping a porter.

Ranaweera who had come to the airport to see off his wife, had first threatened security personnel on duty and attempted to enter the airport with his armed security personnel. Later Ranaweera had turned his ire on a porter who was handling his wife’s luggage due to a dispute over the porter’s payment.

Ranaweera had no qualms about admitting that he had lost his temper and slapped the porter but then why should he be worried about admitting to such behaviour? Afterall, voters in the Gampaha District rewarded him with over 80,000 preferential votes in the 2020 parliamentary elections even after his infamous behaviour in Parliament in 2018 when he brought chilli powder mixed with water into the Chamber and threw it at police personnel on duty, slapped a policeman and damaged property. While he, along with others errant MPs involved in the Parliament brawl got off with no punishment, most of them were re-elected in 2020, some with even bigger majorities than they previously had.

There has been no investigation into the incidents at the airport and expecting a fair inquiry from a highly compromised police department is a fallacy. Instead it is likely that the security personnel and the porter involved will get punished and not the law-breaking politician.

This raises the important question of voter education in the country. How aware are voters of the great power they hold in their hands in deciding the future course of this country? Will they continue to follow the past pattern of voting for candidates due to personal loyalties to a party or a particular politician? Will voters continue to be swayed by inducements that come their way during the time of an election? Will the divisions that politics tend to sow to win over voters prove successful?

Universal franchise was extended to all Ceylonese people in 1931, at the first election to the State Council of Ceylon to elect 50 members to the legislature. Since then, the country’s political system has undergone many changes. With the introduction of the Proportional Representation (PR) system in 1978, voters were given the chance to pick individual candidates from their respective districts to represent them in the House. While it gave voters the opportunity to zero in on individuals who they want elected, the system has led to infighting among politicians, even among those from the same party as they battled to make it to Parliament by getting the required number of preferential votes.

It is in this background that the likes of Ranaweera have got elected to Parliament along with many others who are facing serious allegations ranging from murder to corruption. But sadly, for the country, such persons have managed to convince voters that they are suited to sit in Parliament and make important decisions on their behalf.

With elections expected in the second half of this year, once again it’ll be the time of reckoning for politicians who will pull out all stops to ensure they make it to Parliament. For this they need a sizable number of voters to back them. Hence the real power lies with the voter to decide who they want as their representative in the House. It’ll be for the voters to decide if they want the likes of Ranaweera in the next Parliament as well or if they want their future lawmakers to be ones who understand the magnitude of the responsibility that the public place on their shoulders when they vote them into office.