Thursday Sep 19, 2024
Thursday Sep 19, 2024
Monday, 26 January 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Voters casting their ballot for change during the recent presidential election
Revolutions and transformative movements carry the risk of failure. Such movements are sustained by trust and reciprocity between leaders and masses. Agreed norms and the depth of civic engagement propel such initiatives forward.
What occurred on 8 January has its risks of failure. We cannot dictate the direction of the wind but we can adjust our sails to reach our agreed destination. 
Many who voted for change including this writer now live in the territory of hope. It borders the areas of doubt and disappointment. In the first ten days of the magical 100 days, the winds of despair have blown with increasing frequency sending quivering chills up our collective spines which we managed to keep straight briefly on 8 January.
We got our spines straight not because we wanted Ranil Wickremesinghe in office as Prime Minister. We had an overarching desire to deny President Mahinda Rajapaksa a further eight years in office.
Ours is a land of definite opinions. President Mahinda Rajapaksa was either loved or loathed. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is either respected or ridiculed.
The one lesson that can be drawn from the results of the presidential contest is that neither Wickremesinghe nor Sajith Premadasa could have dislodged the Rajapaksa monolith.
The Maithripala Sirisena candidacy was a credible instrument of change. A confident incumbent President with no credible contender in the horizon sought the consent of the governed. The movement for a just society headed by Venerab
le Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thero made it an opportunity to deny consent and change the existing order. It was this initiative that resulted in selecting a common candidate.
What the majority desired was not to install the UNP in place of the UPFA. It voted to restore the powers of an emasculated legislature and to change the electoral system. The 100 days time frame is not what the people demanded. It is what was promised.
Victor Ivan the founder Editor of the Radical Sinhala weekly newspaper recently explained why President Rajapaksa lost. “He united the territory of Sri Lanka but failed to unite the nation.” It is an accurate and valid statement that explains the staggering numbers in the North and the East.
But it fails to explain the serious erosion of support for the patriotic project in the Sinhala South. Those who endorsed the candidacy of President Maithripala Sirisena demanded the dismantling of an abhorrent system. The Sinhala South in particular and the country in general made a leap from an irrevocable past in to an uncertain future. Only ten years of that irrevocable past belong to the Rajapaksa tenure. An uncertain future awaits us all.
The President has explicitly declared that his task is to transform the oligarchic autocracy in to a democracy that guarantees equality, tolerance, accountability and transparency within 100 days of his election. The first ten days have sent out ominous signals.
The future uncertainty has less to do with the President and more to do with Wickremesinghe. He has vested 40 out of 49 UNP parliamentarians with Cabinet, State and Deputy Ministerial office. The total Monk hours devoted to the chanting of Seth Pirith invoking blessings of the ‘Thrirathna’ on the selfless reformers holding office for 100 days would work out to around three days of the precious 100 days.
Heavily garlanded septuagenarian parliamentarians in custody of ministerial office for a mere 100 days , promising good governance is a stern reminder to Professor Rajiva Wijesinghe that he should instruct Vice Chancellors to stress the discipline of geriatric medicine in future resource allocation.
When President Maithrpala Sirisena addressed the nation from a dais erected below the Octagon of the Temple of the Tooth relic the United National Party should have had the good political sense to note the message from the ‘Peasant from Thamankaduwa’ (A phrase used earlier by this writer).
Since the introduction of the Executive Presidency, a UNP President too had addressed the nation from the same venue. President Premadasa addressed the nation not from a temporary dais at the foot of the Octagon but from the Octagon itself. These implied variations in projecting a public persona are as important as or more important than the promise of observing Lichchavi protocols in governance. In any event a majority of our citizens, including this writer, know nothing about Lichchavi governance except that a great famine in that kingdom had made the Buddha to instruct Arahant Ananda to recite the Rathana Sutta to drive away evil spirits.
The transition team implementing the 100-day agenda seems to have jettisoned the promised electoral reforms. If correct, it is a serious breach of trust in light of legislation for its implementation for local government institutions is almost a done deal.
‘Rainbow Coalition’
The Minister of External Affairs Mangala Samaraweera is the only authoritative voice to have used the term ‘Rainbow Coalition’ to describe this interim administration. It is a reassuring voice that needs to be heard above the UNP din of imminent assumption of power. In a signed article in the Hindu he says: “I am privy to the collective sigh of relief that Sri Lankans are feeling, as the fear and intimidation dissipate, and signs of true reconciliation begin to precipitate. I hope the story of our people and their rainbow revolution is able to provide a beam of hope for the rest of the world.”
The cynical and surreptitious attempt to convert a civic endeavor in to a partisan power project has not gone unnoticed. The outspoken JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake has scathingly condemned the vulgar and naked pursuit of power.
He laments “… when we see how greedy they have been and how they have been fighting to grab the best ministries, we are somewhat disgusted,”
Comedian Bob Hope famously said of political parties: “No one party can fool all of the people all of the time; that’s why we have two parties.”
When some pseudo left intellectuals described the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration as a constitutional coup that installed an unelectable leader in office, this writer dismissed such statements as petty bourgeois sophistry.
It is difficult to comprehend the urgency in appointing a Governor of the Central Bank for a term that extends beyond 100 days when the more transparent option would have been to appoint the most senior Deputy Governor for a short-term pending the implementation of good governance parameters which would include the selection of the Governor of the Central Bank.
In this age of deliberative democracy it is advisable for us to hear John Exter the Architect of the Central Bank on the qualifications of the Governor of the CB as he contemplated.
“The Governor should be a man of recognised and outstanding competence in an understanding of the economic and financial problems of Ceylon and of unquestioned integrity and responsibility. In order to attract such a man it is recommended his salary be set at the highest possible level not inconsistent with remuneration in top ranking posts elsewhere in the Government and its agencies.”
Wickremesinghe’s handpicked nominee for minding our monetary policy has an exceptional record as an internationally acknowledged banker. But he is no Raghuram Rajan.
His decision to offer D.M. Swaminathan the Ministry of Resettlement in preference to an elected Parliamentarian from the peninsula is again a return to the elite world of Chunnakam. Swaminathan is a distinguished Rotarian. But he is no Kadirgamar. The only lesson in history is that there are no lessons in history.
This writer would plead with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe not to look for the fastest gun in his battle for hearts and minds of the public. The 8 January revolution had far loftier purposes than providing space for dowager mothers to watch their anointed offspring promising to relive history.
It is all too apparent that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe finds himself in a serious quandary in deciding his role in the first 100 days.
In sharp contrast, the future hopes of his party Harsha, Sujeewa, Ajith and Eran seem to have settled comfortably in the Rainbow Coalition. That is understandable. They are not burdened with the obstinate conviction of omnicompetence as is the case with their leader.
The Prime Minister soon after his swearing-in, rushed to Pelamadulla to commiserate with the kin of a UNP supporter who died while erecting a stage. That is how it should be. If Wickremesinghe had the political common sense to travel to Agalawatte and apologies to the Tamil Provincial Councillor who was intimidated into knelt obeisance in public – the resulting photo opportunity would have reassured that a just society is indeed a possibility and no mere promise.
Rhetorical deception and an air of authority will not suffice in meeting the present challenge. Revolutions are not easy. Of revolutions Hannah Arendt says that their history “could be told in parable form as the tale of an age-old treasure which, under the most varied circumstances, appears abruptly, unexpectedly, and disappears again.”
It is our business to make sure that the promise of 8 January 2015 is no ‘Fata Morgana’ – the highbrow term for mirage.
Sarath de Alwis is a former Journalist and a retired professional in the leisure and aviation industries
