The Island Editorial

Virus, franchise and ghost election

Poland has recently had a ghost election owing to a political tug of war between the government and the Opposition. A presidential election was held, on Sunday, but nobody voted due the coronavirus pandemic. There have been about 16,000 Covid-19 cases and 800 deaths from the disease, in that country, and it is only natural people did not want to vote. One may want to know why on earth that election was ever held. The answer is that Poland is in the same predicament as Sri Lanka thanks to a bunch of politicians who have anything but the national interest at heart.

The ruling party and the Opposition, in Poland, had locked horns, with the latter accusing the former of exposing the public to Covid-19 by conducting an election; they had not cared to put their heads together and decide when to hold the election. The Polish Electoral Commission (EC) had been all at sea, and, as a result, Sunday’s election had been neither cancelled nor postponed. It has been reported that the voter turnout was zero. The EC has finally declared that the onus is on the Speaker of Parliament to announce, within 14 days, a new date for the election. Its decision is said to have put an end to the debate over when the presidential election should be held. But the question is whether he will be able to do so, as required by the law, because nobody knows when the coronavirus threat will be over.

A Polish political commentator has been quoted as saying, "We are in a fog of legal absurdity." A similar fate has befallen Sri Lankans, and now the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court has been invoked to clear the legal fog troubling them. But the miasma of political uncertainty, here, won’t go away unless the polluted constitutional swamp, from which it emanates, is drained, once and for all.

South Korea, which went to the polls, recently, braving as it did the coronavirus pandemic, has detected new clusters of infections. No sooner had the Korean election been concluded than the Rajapaksa government asked why Sri Lanka could not do likewise. The Opposition protested, urging it not to endanger people’s lives. The Election Commission has made its contribution to the legal mess by scheduling the general election for 20 June. It is now facing several fundamental rights cases.

Interestingly, Sri Lankans have a history of saving democracy by risking their lives to vote. Some of them have even died, defending franchise. In the late 1980s, the JVP unleashed barbaric violence in a bid to sabotage the provincial council, presidential and parliamentary elections, and, in fact, killed dozens of people who dared vote in defiance of its orders. UNP goons also went all out to prevent their political rivals from voting so that they could stuff the ballot boxes. People voted and put paid to the attempts to strangulate democracy. JVP violence and the low voter turnout, however, stood the UNP in good stead.

So, it may be argued that the people would vote even if parliamentary polls were to be held before the Covid-19 threat is neutralised fully. But this does not mean they should be made to run the risk of being exposed to the germ in the name of an election.

We must not lose sight of the situation in other countries while lockdowns are being eased here. Some new clusters of coronavirus infections have been found in Wuhan. This shows how elusive the virus is and that we must not lower our guard. There should be no room for complacency.