The other side of this sun

LIBERTY: Taken in vain? – Pic by Lahiru Harshana

Don’t look now, but there’s a shadow across the noonday sun. It’s not big or dark enough for bright eyes filled with the beauty of the world to see it on this of all days. But if you stop being businesslike for oh so long enough, you just might discern it. Sorry to dim your enthusiasm but there’s a – well, bug – over your brilliant corona.

Virus 

Firstly, it’s not that virus. Although that in itself would be spoiler enough under ordinary circumstances for any people celebrating 72 years of life and liberty. There is, however, a longer standing germ that’s been doing the rounds for far longer and to greater detriment. 

And again, no, it’s not dengue either. How is it that in a milieu where a middle income country like ours has eradicated polio and malaria, the political culture prevails like a bacterium that wreaks havoc on the whole system time and again, and won’t go away?  

Today 

This being Independence Day, no doubt you and those unsmiling mandarins on the dais would wish that I’d much rather wax eloquent on all things bright and beautiful. I would, should there be no one else to fly the flag of freedom and all that guff because you know I could had I half a mind to falsify my fervour for the fun and games afoot. But there are plenty of takers to sing the praises of the powers that be and this wonderland we’re living in. So against my better judgment or sunnier nature when not under duress, I’ll cease and desist just for today.

Where’s the beef, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. First, what it’s not. Then what it is. And finally, why it matters. If only you would mind it as much as the relative non-issues that seem to be causing the twitterati so much angst these days.

Issue 

It’s not why there’s a two-hour drive from that airport to the military sanatorium. Or who’s singing what in which language and where else in secular societies national anthems are in a minority’s tongue. Nor how much extra fuel and short fuses we’re burning by being seated in traffic a tad bit longer than in the usual gridlock. 

Not being jobless, pointless or spoilt – in order of above – I’m focusing on the freedoms we’d be freer to have, and hold, if not for the bacterial ‘1%’ that has held our captive nation’s progress at gunpoint since that first dawn of emancipation from the coloniser’s canon and cannon. 

Not since SWRD queered the pitch with his blessed Sinhala-only (and he merely stole a march on the already nationalistic UNP) have we been a truly bipartisan polity where any semblance of democracy unfettered by ethnicity or religiosity has existed. 

Not that anyone since MR first hamstrung the political opposition by those crippling crossovers cares that their representatives are emancipated from their principles and can hold a nation hostage to a family’s whims or a few oligarchs’ fancies. Not that there’s any difference between the two anymore. 

Cycle

It’s the reason why policies castigated on the campaign trail at election time are, in due course or even shorter order than is decent in ‘the art of the possible’, lovingly embraced while still newly ensconced in power. 

It’s the real reason why promises of justice and threats of investigation are never seen through, or a single industrial-level merchant of corruption or titan of crime brought to book by the representatives we voted in, in precisely that forlorn hope. 

It’s the rationale for never-ending cycle of cronyism, nepotism and nest-feathering on a systemic scale. It’s the raison d’etre of national crooks who – as recent aviation industry revelations prove – are hand in glove with the less than straight-arrow global power players in business and commerce. 

So if you’re celebrating something today, let it be the emancipation of the islander who considers his or her birthplace the special demesne of a once enlightened being. We are not known for our insight into the integrity of the individuals we elect to represent us in executive or legislature; nor for our foresight in playing one party-political platform against another in the best national and/or civic interest. 

The best that the body politic of which you and I are a part – whether carping civil-society activist or sycophantic captain of industry with vested interests – is that we are a pragmatic race… At worst, we only know how and when to vote out murderous tyrants, heroes turned zeroes, or humbugs whose hypocrisy shows in how well they govern their party leave alone the polity. You know whom I mean. 

Times

But this is not the day to shout “Carpe diem!” There is no opportunity to seize – at least, not yet; although a salutary one draws nigh… 

If only a party would avail itself of pampers against internecine faecal matter (let the discerning reader interpret and understand) as much as a nation must mask itself behind facial protection. Helping a friend or family member recognise their duty, right and privilege as a critically engaged citizen may be of a higher order of citizenship today than petty politicking on Facebook or over the neighbourhood gossip’s fence.

And while there is no traditional greeting associated with ‘liberty, independence, freedom, emancipation’ – that’s literally ‘l.i.f.e.’ – may we leave you with a blessing. That you would live in interesting times! Where to be aware and alert – and critically engaged with your servants the people we elected – is better than to be naïve or idealistic alike; or cowed down before monolithic parties or no mean personages. Ask, as you hoist that flag, where the winds are blowing ill or good… 

Sub 6:

Why has meritocracy fallen by the way and key appointments redounded to the usual suspects? What measures will be taken in reality to collar the culprits as clearly exposed by that incriminating forensic audit? Where have the hyenas who cried foul against the previous administration’s egregious shortcomings gone now that their government is proving in the short term at least a no different regime to the former when it comes to foreign policy and key infrastructure developments? 

What genuine reforms have taken place to the disciplinary levels in legislature as much as law enforcement, prior to foisting decency on a populace as much cowed down before security strictures and political status as before? Who benefits from the accumulation and centralisation of power as present trends indicate? Is immunity from prosecution the old impunity for the ruling class that the once and future political elite always held over their electorates?  

(Journalist | Editor-at-Large of LMD | Writer | Son of a small island. Scion of a larger destiny)