Casting the vote in Trincomalee courtesy getty images
David Cameron promises to- Shame overpaid civil servants, with a "people's right to know" scheme
- publish all items of public spending over £25,000 on a website
- publish all public sector salaries over £150,000
Whatever may be said about Western conspiracies and underhanded government and well-organized 'crime' dsguised in socially presentable front operations (like banking policy, begger thy neighbor trade policies, international interventionism etc.) their daily operational politics are decidedly less bloody than ours.
A lot of people getting seats in the provincial councils this time around are known criminals. Rape, murder, drugs, coercion, robbery it's all in a days work for them. As a matter of fact, it is almost hard for you to get anywhere close to politically successful in Colombo if you do not have substantial amounts of gangsta clout. Same goes for any other parts of the country.
So why do we sit and take this shit? Every single time over and over again, we see the same types of openly corrupt people enter into what should be one of the most sacred institutions of our nation, the government. Safe to say we are a nation governed by crooks then and yes you can stop laughing now, i am aware of the absurdity of calling something as sacriligious as the SL government 'sacred'.
People's attitudes play a big role. There is a general consensus that corruption 'cannot be stopped' and therefore the people don't mind leaders who are corrupt as long as they contribute 'at least as much as they steal' to the economy's development. I find this lax attitude to dishonesty rather distubing actually. By accepting corruption as 'normal' we are deeming it acceptable.
This should tell us a thing or two about the people's morals. Maybe we are more or less a whole nation of crooks then, always looking for a sly way to make a buck. Maybe we can't really blame fate for the type of leaders we get.
4 Comments:
very true. maybe we put the 'dirty' in politics by accepting 'dirty' as the norm. plus what to me is evident by the WPC results is that ppl don't seem to be voting based on policies and actual practical resolutions but rather on rhetoric and popular appeal. i was surprised that rosy topped the UNP votes in colombo and that shiral and sujeewa senasinghe didn't even make it to the three. i mean those guys, from the little i watched and read of them had actual, realistic policies and plans. it's disappointing really. we live in strange times. reminds me of these lines in Yeats's poem Second Coming "The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. "
We are a nation of sheep, with little if any real sense of values or principles. Oh yes, we are quick to talk of our 2000yrs of cultural heritage, our religions, blare sermons across the city through loud speakers, but ultimately its all rally a facade isn't it? In reality we kneel to the idol of material wealth and consider that anyone who acquires it has got to be the right sort, to look up to marry into or to elect to office - choosing to ignore how and where that wealth originated from. And If I am not making any sense its cos I am saddened that inspite of all that has happened, the masses, those with the numbers still choose to believe in the razzle and dazzle than the content...
Just to let you know, I have taken my Lankan blogroll completely off due to some incidents. My blog is being revamped. But this is a blog I love and I have added this to my Google reader. Rest assured, you have one ardent reader the moment you post something :-)
Lol @ the everyone is corrupt, so no one takes that into account at all bit- welcome to India!
A few years ago, a bill called the Right to Information act was passed in India, which has really empowered us as a people, since all organisations have to answer the RTI in a specified time, or they get hauled up in court, and they muct answer it convincingly and truthfull enough, or they get hauled up in court :D
This time, there are several campaigns running here asking ppl to go and vote, and the emphasis of many of them is to make sure we don't vote in criminals... let's see how it works out- I vote on the 7th of may!
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