High time to shed the overt attention to politicians

By Bernard Fernando

The COVID-19 pandemic in its wake has already succeeded in rationalising our lifestyles while injecting a sense of discipline, law and order to our day-to-day activities.

Above all, our populace which is generally more inclined towards religious and cultural observances compared to other countries in the region, made the supreme sacrifice of compromising their democracy and human rights by confining themselves to their homes during their most revered festivals. 

Chronologically, the Christians didn’t attend their most sacred Easter services and several weekly Sunday masses; the Sinhala and Tamil people refrained from engaging in their new year rituals, such as visiting parents, close relatives and engaging in games, etc.; the Muslims didn’t observe their compulsory religious observances during Ramadan Festival; the Buddhists representing the main religion of the country, sacrificed their most revered homage to Lord Buddha and age-old religious practices and rituals during both Vesak and Poson. 

Thus, all the aforesaid devotees compromised their mandatory practices and found solace by being at home, listening to sermons and watching appropriate programs delivered by the mass media. They even sacrificed their fundamental human rights when paying due respects to their departed kith and kin and complied with the Government regulations, such as compulsory cremation within 24 hours and limited attendance, etc., at the funerals.

The question now arises as to why our small coterie of politicians numbering less than 5,000 hide behind the shields of democracy and ‘free and fair elections’ and insist on the pound of flesh in terms of having public political meetings and house-to-house campaigns which undoubtedly are positive catalysts of ‘COVID community transmission’ during the upcoming General Elections. 

These so-called ‘lawmakers’ have already set the norm and exhibited their aggression and penchant to disobey and break all the laws nonchalantly during the funeral of late Minister Thondaman.

As we know, the information technology revolution now allows any information to be brought to the doorstep of any rural household with the availability of ubiquitous smart phones, TV, and FM radio. Thanks to COVID-19, ‘working from home’ and video conferencing are fast becoming the order of the day with improved productivity and numerous attendant benefits. 

Thus, the present day voter can easily make up his mind, provided the mass media feeds them with the ‘party election manifestos’ and the profiles of the election candidates. The mouth-to-mouth communication is quite sufficient to build up on this written literature, which of course should be made available in simple language. It is no secret that for many voters, the voting option is a foregone conclusion.

In this background, we, as country-loving citizens, urge the authorities to agree and adopt the following beneficial measures during the upcoming election campaign.

1) Ban all public political meetings and house-to-house campaigns. Instead, provide free, limited mileage to candidates and or party heads on the radio and electronic media in an unbiased manner. This measure will save the time, money and energy of all monitors as well as of the public.

2) Provide free postal services to all head offices of contesting parties/alliances to distribute their manifestoes and profiles of their candidates under the category of printed matter.

3) All media institutions should cooperate with the Election Commission to provide a balanced coverage for the contesting parties with frank dissemination of the profiles of their candidates to ensure a ‘free and fair’ election.

4) All public poster campaigns should be banned. The benefits to the country and public are enormous and easily outweigh the drawbacks.

All the above ‘across the board’ measures shall be subject to the guidelines of the Election Commission, which will monitor the entire process. They surely are gracious blessings in disguise that will herald a ‘New Normal’ to Sri Lankan politics!

Finally, we exhort all the media institutions to rationalise their media coverage for politicians and continue the patriotic and exemplary approach that they adopted during the Easter Sunday massacre and the COVID-19 break out as their ‘New Normal’.