Who gets to say what?
So many experts and so little to decide on. Sri Lanka is blest with so many political experts and all rushing to the media to provide their expertise on the future that is unfolding. A few weeks more and the result will be out and then the work begins to sort out who knew and who didn’t. Many experts are already saying what will happen and why it must, should or will.
Change the party that has had the main hand in the Presidency for almost two decades or, or keep the same man in office. A clear choice for any ballot paper despite the multitude of small-scale candidates that together is not likely to poll one percent of the vote. So what is there to talk about? Plenty!
Oh, ye playboys and playgirls
Ain’t a-gonna run my world
Ain’t a-gonna run my world
Ain’t a-gonna run my world
Ye playboys and playgirls
Ain’t a-gonna run my world
Not now or no other time.[1]
What is at stake in this election and for whom depends, as it always does; who we are referring to and what we are referring them to. It might be nice for some people to contemplate about a time and a possibility of changing the head of state without a great deal of heaving and grumbling, flexing of power and demonstrating eloquence and as well as its dark cousin, raving lunacy. That is surely a program of work for the future and that future may not catch up to our fast moving intellectual class.
If we want everything to remain as it is then everything needs to change, says Trancredi, the young representative of the aristocracy in decline in the Sicilian tale “The Leopard”. That was an interesting story, considering the time it referred to, on the formation of the modern Italian state. For the Aristocracy of Sicily this was a traumatic change that the red shirts and Garibaldi was ushering. Meanwhile most people who lived there at that time endured grinding and terrible poverty. Sri Lanka is not in that situation. But we have a group of people who seem to wish that the clock could turn time backward, that the bell can be rung drinking up the chimes. The arrow of time meanwhile goes forward.
And the playboys and playgirls of Sri Lanka, and there are those who are so, they too have come forward to make their contribution to convince the fence watchers and the back-seaters, and those who are already seated and comfortable to either remain seated or to get up and change their seats.
Historical, momentous, definitive, say many of the specialist and experts, will be the presidential election to be held on the 8th of January. Leave things be say some, keep the incumbent in the office. Time for change say some others, enough of this. And seated with the change agents is a former president who knows what it is to be in that seat. She too is saying enough is enough.
And who decides? Well the people decide but money will continue to play an important part. How much is all of this worth to you and to me? The Presidency? Some say it is not worth a soiled Rs. 10 note and has to be changed, most ills and almost everything that is wrong in this country is because of it they say. Beyond price, say some. Maybe so and for them the decision will not be based on money then. Yes? Maybe.
Who walks away from a Rs. 5,000 note on the roadside? Who walks away leaving it for the next person who comes upon it to take it? How much is too little to stoop and pick up what is there right before you? What’s your worth? Will a little more money make us flexible at the waist? I think all of us will have to think of this carefully and we have four weeks to reflect on it.
I don’t think there will be wads of notes strewn around for the lucky ones to pick up. But there will be stuff to collect, prizes galore, free meals. And you know there is no such thing as a free meal, someone has to pay for it. But, the payment proper may be pushed to the future, and not even for you, some others who are not even born!
“After that it will be different, but worse. We were the Leopards, the Lions; and those who’ll take our place will be the little jackals and hyenas; and the whole lot of us, Leopards, jackals and sheep, we’ll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth.” [2]
And the playboys and the playgirls, suited up and talking and explaining why what ought to be ought to be, or why what is ought not to be. For many of them, the train has left the station and they are not on it. And that is good in a way, but we all need the entertainment, especially if it can make us laugh. And that for some of the playboys and playgirls is not easy, for that is not their strength. They want to be intellectuals, compete with the great minds of history and geography. And because of this, hard rains will fall, and fall on them we hope and not on us.
[1] Bob Dylan. 1963. Playboys and Playgirls. Broadside recording session, Live duet with Pete Seeger at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival.
[2] Di Lampedusa, Giuseppe. 1991. The Leopard. P. 214. Random House, Inc. USA.