Voting with no confidence

We the voters fail to understand that we are only getting cheated 

– Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

Twenty-two million Sri Lankans are expected to have another leader for the nation after the national election on 21 September. It is interesting that the Election Commissioner is still expressing the potential leaders concern on rahu times! I wrote on voting without much confidence (https://www.ft.lk/columns/My-vote-goes-to-Voting-without-much-confidence/4-688684) just ahead of the last election as I felt the manifestos really did not offer credible and scientifically sound steps to alleviate national issues and also the fact that simple motherhood statements lack coherence with the candidate – the credibility gap! 

My take was for over 70+ years we have just squandered opportunities and created crises of different proportions only. The candidates were basically promising a lot but it was obvious that they lacked depth of understanding. Perhaps little did we realise what was in store for us in the three to four years post-election! The country was exposed to a global pandemic, had to declare economic bankruptcy, and faced unprecedented terrorist activity which marred achieving a 10-year run without such violence since 2009. 

The country becoming classified as the best tourist destination – not just once but for two years in a row – among these mayhems was almost surreal. Well, the tourist arrivals did not match the call and it was not difficult to understand why. The year 2024 has dawned and there is much fanfare over another election and certainly one with a difference. Having removed first past the post scenario and having embraced that all should have a fair share of their representation we are having 39 aspiring candidates, who appear to have answers to all issues but with the same lack of scientific substance. 

A seriously frustrated voter

The issue with democracy is that voting is a central part of the process of exercising choice and preference. Now this choice had to be made with utmost care, awareness, and knowledge and whether all can understand is indeed pertinent. Yet all will have equal weightage but made with a significantly different understanding. To exercise choice with knowledge and awareness, the basket of choices too should be of quality and there we always hit a snag. Have we ever had quality represented in the basket? The economic debacle had left a strong impression on the minds of the voters, the young and the old alike, and this has led perhaps to a situation of a seriously frustrated voter. 

I believe almost all have a clear understanding that corruption did play a major role in leading to the economic debacle and that aspect is receiving the least attention in moving forward. The burden of corruption had been shared among all and that is felt. It is important that we do not seek revenge or justice just for that issue alone when looking at the election. It is this aspect that makes me sway as I see different shades of colour through which at times old spots are becoming visible. Winning the trust, I am afraid has not yet happened with me. Therefore, the no-confidence still prevails and the day is approaching whereas some say that I must walk in and decide on a candidate. I just cannot fathom how I should fulfil a duty to uphold the democracy that pushes me to vote when I cannot simply vote with my conscience! Mother of all parliaments certainly has not brought up her children well and we spent way too much money on institutions of less value – money which we can ill afford to spend on non-productive assets or assets to be managed in a nonproductive manner.

Democracy at crunch time is all about counting the votes and those who have one vote each, are the most important actors in this crucial time. Capturing the hearts and minds in one’s direction is all that the candidates have to do and a multitude of ways and means are quite visible. The arsenal of options in persuading has grown with advances in technologies such as communication technologies, social media in particular, and artificial intelligence becoming accessible at all levels. A comment passed through my mind made by Geoffrey Hinton who is considered the father of AI – “Between 5 and 20 years from now there’s a probability of about a half that we would have to confront the problem of AI trying to take over”. What I can get as a ST&I policy summary when I place the PDFs of the candidates to an AI tool is indeed interesting. We have no comment over such scenarios as five years are definitely political periods.

Scientific substance

The country is in such a situation where the issues of substance, scientific substance in particular always escape attention. The fact that we along with other countries on this planet, are facing an existential threat is not a point to address. Candidates, but not their representatives appearing on stage together and engaging in a policy discussion is absent in Sri Lanka. We spend more time and energy in ensuring keeping them apart than trying to bring them together. The occasional call for a debate we all know is empty rhetoric! We the voters fail to understand that we are only getting cheated.

Can we influence – and I repeat – the candidates to deliver what perhaps is right and more important than what is popular? The concept of right and the popular are at loggerheads. We know that what is right is not popular and what is popular is not right – almost but not always. One can think of a contrarian question – What important truth do only a few people agree with you on? This question has its relevance in today’s climate. We know what is important, yet appear to select quite differently citing many a reason!

Listening to what is going to be delivered is making me dizzy as common sense tells me that lots of promises are quite difficult if not improbable. However, if the country is to be set on a course of growth based on concerted action rather than on a basket of promises and a long list of subsidies and grants, maybe I would be quite interested to hear the following as policy proposals. Thereby my vote goes to whoever dares to buck the trend. The question at present is I am not hearing much of these – in a few situations, I must admit yes! 

My singular grouse is the consistent absence of deployment of science, technology, and innovation (ST&I) as the means for the nation to make progress. We never point out the fact that our media is completely irresponsible and an estate with much less value to the nation. Do we have any manifesto really stressing an ST&I policy (actually Sri Lanka has an S&T policy, STI strategy, and an Innovation and an Entrepreneurship Strategy), and what is lacking is the policy of using the policies and strategies!

There is also no comment on the media which really should be a strong change agent in this regard? Media should be empowering the masses. How much emphasis we have given to informal education and the complete revamping of the education system with STEAM at the centre stage? A passing remark will not do! It is equally important that while ST&I comes in, national ethical frameworks are equally upgraded. Addressing existential danger of Artificial Intelligence to society, rampant mind manipulation through social media, etc. could only be countered only by having strong ethical frameworks and not through technology blacklisting. 

IT literacy

The average person may be losing the ability to differentiate between facts and fiction and that could be well exploited and perhaps getting exploited right now. I recently heard a well-articulating Gen Z member declaring his belonging and indicating that I will not read what you have written. Perhaps for them, the entire magazine had to be sliced into a series of TikTok messages. The TikTok mindset is worrying and I am sure my worry for the future of our society is not a worry to him! Anyway, he may say that the future that I am worried about is not mine. With the average citizen in Sri Lanka having poor ST&I literacy, poor IT literacy, and a lackadaisical approach to the future, the multiple existential threats that do exist today will never be seen or understood. 

Almost all election discourses will demonstrate that money is in the pocket, food on the plate, and gas on the burner to dominate discussions and decisions. While politicians discuss restoring normalcy during the mass queues, the stellar role of the QR code as a service innovation scarcely gets mentioned. Taking the QR code out of the equation from that time, I am not sure we could have seen sanity returned. 

Some of the other decisions were simple science – ensuring agriculture back with fertiliser (an assurance of 2-3% GDP if the rains are present) and allowing glyphosate back to tea bringing back growth in yields, etc. What these developments indicate, are the simple fact of the folly of removing the science in decision making. Sri Lanka contributed to some pretty interesting case studies in unscientific governance in those 3-4 years. With all that evidence, in 2024 we continue to ignore science and all its pathways.

I would like to list out many more promises with a nation in mind that could be made but not done, which would get my attention and allow me to have confidence. Life is a compromise and the space is limited and for this time around I rest with my options and await to cast my vote, if I hear any, even at this eleventh hour and with so much rich evidence from the immediate past…