Bicycaley, bicycaley …”

 

2022/01/29

 

Are we moving to the Bicycle Age in Sri Lanka?

Well, isn’t it even a little faster than the Bullock Cart Age?

Don’t we remember a former President and PM riding a bicycle towards Parliament in a protest ride, not so long ago?

That was in the Yahapalana or grab your power age in Sri Lankan governance. We are now in the Pickpocket Era.

Come on, this is in fact a Pick Millions Era, when a personal secretary can take millions of public funds away from a prime ministerial pocket, through several years, when the PM himself has not felt his pocket getting lighter.

Just keep riding your bicycle, with the whole family on it, as cartoonist Jeffrey has shown in The Island yesterday. Try to keep your eyes away from the many luxury cars –  BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Tesla, Porsche, Lexus, Volvo, Lamborghini, Ferrari, and Land Rover – that will be passing you, with pocket-full politicos, moving with pleasure to their so-called work places, homes and racket centres.

This is not the time to worry about the spread of the Omicron variant, which has infected so many Members of Parliament. They are the stuff of resistance, whether to a catchy virus or the increasingly hungry people.

As the country moves on from the disastrous Maha season in rice cultivation to the Yala season, which may be even more disastrous, just keep your bicycle safe. It could be the mode of escape from the politicos who may come with even bigger promises than two years ago.

With the call for greater bicycle use by the people, will you ever see a whole stretch of, even luxury bicycles, lining up at the entrance to “Temple Trees” or the President’s Office for a Cabinet meeting?  What nonsense. It will be a line of luxury cars that is the proper display of people-friendly and self-serving politicians.

The new bicycle-politics is the stuff of Gotabaya Governance. With the new session of parliament, after two years of waste and corruption in governance, we will be moving to the coming three years of non-people rule in the country.

The new constitution that President Gotabaya has promised will certainly be minus whatever was in the 19th Amendment, which were removed by the 20th A, and even more powers to the riders of political luxury in the stuff of governance. It could well have provisions for the strengthening of Police Corruption, which is rapidly expanding today, and even more means of limiting the already reduced independence of the Judiciary.

The bicycle ride, in the coming weeks and months, will show you the rising failure of the Commission on Bribery and Corruption and other such bodies, as these will be established with strength as the stuff and substance of crooked governance – catching up with Saubhagye Dekma.

If you ride past the Office of the Attorney General, and peep through some windows, you are likely to see the flow of Gotabaya laws and bylaws, which will be pushing away the high standards of the legal process, built through more than a century, to the dictates of corrupt politicians.

How far can this bicycle ride take you in this Gotabaya – Mahinda – Chamal – Namal – spread of Rajavasala command?

Certainly not very far, as this command of corruption is fast building its own bends and curves on any ideas of Good Governance, that the Maithri – Ranil pack hugely boasted about during Yahapalanaya. Your mind could well recall the sad thoughts of Ven. Maduluwawe Sobitha Thera.

The luxury cars of today’s politics and governance are racing away from any targets or goals of Clean and Good Governance. They are racing to the dirty fields of dishonest and scandalous politics of which they are wholly unshameed

Those who are calling us to take to the bicycle, and also try to keep working in the coming powerless darkness, are the riders of  crooked governance.

The editorial of The Island this Thursday was headlined, “When hopes fade”, focusing on the Easter Sunday carnage and the failures for proper action to find the brains behind it, and not act on those recommended for action by the Presidential Commission. The bicycle riders who will soon be seen much more on the roads, will certainly ride with a resounding loss of hope in decent and people-centered governance. The people are certainly far away!

Just try to recall and keep singing ‘Bicycaley, Bicycaley – duppath apage, Bicycaley” that was the popular song of decades ago!