A successful politician once pointed to a bag full of Rupee notes and said, ‘these are my election posters’. At the time he was pointing to ten rupee notes, but campaigns have now escalated into millions upon millions.

Often millions of dollars. Where can a candidate get bags of ready cash? Who does this political system empower?

Big business, wealthy citizens, yes, but more than anything, this system of cash for votes empowers bookies, drug dealers and the underworld. The underworld has always been involved in everything from Sri Lankan politics to cricket, but the age of flash money reached its nadir with the entry of Thilanga Sumathipala and Duminda Silva into politics.

That Provincial Council election saw some of the highest spending in recent memory, and they were just getting warmed up. Both are now MPs, but the one who spent the most (and got the most votes) is in hospital with multiple bullets in his brain. This was John Gotti if he decided to go into politics. The one who flashed too much, hopefully, marked the decline of the whole rotten mess.

Neither man has been implicated in anything worse than procuring a fake passport for an underworld leader (Sumathipala) or the abduction and rape of a 13 year old girl (Silva). As you can see, the younger striver was more brutish and brash. Let us focus on him.

While Duminda Silva was never directly connected to the drug trade, the man who died in the shoot out – Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra – had called him a drug dealer. Indeed, the young man had flashed ludicrous amounts of money around Bharatha Lakshman’s home electorate. If a house burnt down, Duminda rebuilt it. If elders needed wheelchairs, his staff would physically pick them up and place them in the wheelchairs. Where, however, did the money come from?

No one will say and there is no proof from any direction. Let us therefore return to generalities.
Sri Lanka as a whole and Colombo specifically has a serious drug and alcohol problem. Heroin use is rampant, especially in the slums, and illicit alcohol destroys countless homes. The government, however, generally ignores the heroin problem and enacts higher taxes on beer and legal alcohol to give the impression that Sri Lanka is getting sober. The latter may be posturing, but the former is probably much worse.

It is almost common knowledge that high level Sri Lankan politicians are involved in the drug trade, either directly or indirectly by enabling it. Due to simple economics, many more have to get involved with the underworld because they need huge amounts of cash to contest elections and nobody else has so much ready lucre. What this results in, however, is that politicians become beholden to drug dealers or, worse, politicians are drug dealers themselves.

Part of the problem is the current electoral system which has candidates contesting huge areas rather than manageable wards. There is no reason for a Provincial or Municipal Councillor to blanket national TV and radio; they should be able to walk around most of their electorate and still have a fair chance of winning. Under the current system, this is impossible.

Another part of the problem is electoral law, and the elections commission. This toothless department cannot take down a poster let alone a drug lord, so the absurdity continues. Rather than make pointless complaints about the abuse of state media, these organs should be given over almost wholly during election time, to all candidates. State resources should be used for elections, by everybody.

This means public financing of elections (as much as possible), equitable use of public resources, and, yes, higher spending from the higher coffers. It is hard to imagine a documented outlay from the state that could eclipse the undocumented corruption that goes on under the current system.
Also, the middle classes need to begin voting. Many complain at great length, but would rather take a long weekend than vote. Many consider themselves above the process of even registering, but not above calling for the overthrow of the entire state apparatus or its prosecution in international courts. This is arrogance and folly. Until the middle classes suck up their disdain and vote, they really have no right to complain.

Finally, the poor have got to vote smarter. They do vote for people that help them directly, but they have got to begin voting for educated and decent human beings rather than whatever thug the party appoints.  For all of his detractors, Duminda Silva is loved by many – those he gave food, medicine or time to. While there are structural reasons for this, part of it lies in the corruption within our own society.

When parents have to beg an MP to get a child into school, when that child learns to lie about where he lives or what his father does, that is where corruption begins. Now we can all see where this corruption ends – a bullet in the head, an early grave or a life of hurting others. It is a literally a dead end.

It is not enough to blame politicians or the voters, and it is absolutely wrong to stop voting or give up. What we must demand, instead, is more sensible elections based on wards. Then we must begin donating to decent candidates, as a start, and pushing for more public financing of elections. It is only then that we can begin to wrest back control of our government from drug dealers, thugs and hoodlums, because we will have paid for it.