Friday Nov 15, 2024
Friday Nov 15, 2024
Saturday, 18 April 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
[I, like you, gentle reader, desire a good – if not great – government. Truth is: we all get more or less the governments that we truly deserve. So bear with me to the end…]
Nice and necessary
The “pragmatic” position is that everything that has happened in the political arena has been necessary and that government has had no choice – but every serious and sincere intention – to do what it has done to get thus far.
From this point of view, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution (19A) is every true republican’s fond day dream, if one that is yet to become a reality. All that has transpired up to this point – consultation with the chief executive on the big picture, compromise on the nitty-gritty with political opponents across the floor, consensus of the most unlikely bedfellows over the be-all and end-all – was needed to go for game. Once 19A is signed and sealed, all the grief of taking the low road to get there would become a thing of the past...
Through this prism of 19A as necessary and desirable, the PM is a nice guy. Mr. President is possibly a nicer guy, willing and declaring he is able to do his bit for the sake of country and a new political culture. Nimal Siripala de Silva is a nice guy, for playing ball. Even Wimal Weerawansa & Co. are nice guys for being so naïve about the need for an alternative and appropriate opposition leader. For such naïveté lends credibility to the lie that bipartisan politics is alive and well in Sri Lanka today. When, in fact, the tactics of realpolitik have rendered it deader than a revered relict who’s transcended this sea of samsara (with all due respect to the translated prelate, whose passing on saved the UNP-led parliamentary proposals some serious angst).
This brings us to the cunning employment of strategy to stay one step ahead of a fast-paced game in an accelerated state of play today.
Strong but self-centred
The “strategic” position is that despite being both serious and sincere about good governance, the incumbent administration has had to tilt the playing field and move a few goalposts to ensure that the practical outcomes of its policy drive don’t take the 100-day program farther afield than it intends.
One of the strategies, as seen from the outside, has been to over-promise and under-deliver. In virtually every sphere. The rule of law and order (criminal and civil procedure is applicable to all) has been seen in instances to be a return to rule by law (criminal and civil procedure are applied to some, but not everyone all the time). Investigations have been instituted, though few have enjoyed genuine breakthroughs leading to much-delayed justice being done in a plethora of cases involving excesses from capital graft to murder crafted by the state and its octopus arms.
Could it be, though, that the truth – about corruption, especially, and even crime – which still lies beneath the surface will be brought to light in a last-moment, last-ditch effort? This might be a pre-emptive measure to strike a blow at not-quite sleeping giants who could rumble and thunder from April to June; catching the NUG in-between the inter-monsoon of dissolution and the gale force wind of general elections; causing the National Unity Government’s heart to flutter and pass-by? That’s part of the subversive view, in which a heavyweight butterfly fluttering its wings in Tangalle and Devinuwara could cause a hurricane or tempest at Temple Trees or in and around the Diyawanna! Which is just a perhaps unnecessarily coy way of saying that the Mother of all Strategies (MS) is to keep the Master of the Regime (MR) out in the cold of political past tense.
However, there may be more to the machinations of a man (RW) and his movement (UNP/NUG) than keeping a monumentally memorable ex-executive out of power. Which leads us to a darker, deeper, dimension of realpolitik.
Manipulative. Selfish. Cynical
The “subversive” position is that the National Unity Government – emerging from a cynical has-been party’s election strategy, evolving into a coalition with the somewhat sceptical participation of an opposition with vested interests – is neither serious nor sincere about good governance per se. This view has it that all players are simply manoeuvring themselves and their constituent members into places from which it (or they, as can be seen; things falling apart) can manipulate the public into leveraging their respective party’s best interests.
Therefore, the UNP’s urge to get on with general elections now. This is good politics, but hardly generous-hearted national unity governance. Therefore, the UPFA’s urging of caution and restraint, until later, when it can bring in safeguards through electoral reforms. This is also good politics, but hardly gracious cooperation contributing to national interests. Therefore, the JHU’s sullenly crying foul about 19A as it was then... and crowing soothingly over 19A as it is now, post referendum-evading tweaks. This, too, is good politics all round. But it is hardly great-hearted concessions to democracy by Premier R. Wickremesinghe, or graceful placing of the overarching national agenda above vested personal interests by ex-Minister P.C. Ranawaka. A possible aspirant to more than the prime ministerial mantle, executive or otherwise; or even the presidency as it is today? Which would explain a lot of his heartache at pruning the powers of the powers that be, and attendant hand-wrenching and chest-thumping by those who don’t want it to go or wish it to stay as is! Warts and all. Especially the warts!
So, it seems that there is more to moves around 19A, 19A+, and 19A-, than immediately meets the eye. There is a corresponding perspective which culls sundry elements from all three positions above, from which this vision of an alternative way of describing our present reality emerges:
New year, same old stuff?
It’s almost the 11th hour before 23 April, as we all wait. The sun is poised to transit – astronomically speaking – from the House of Executive Past (Presidential) to the House of Executive Future (Prime Ministerial). The stellar program around which we have orbited these past nearly 100 days, to put it politically, is about to enter a new phase. It’s a portentous time… as just about everybody from critical columnists to fairy-story-tellers are positing. Peace at any cost, with a modicum of fair play and even-handed rule passing for democracy, and justice being called out for – to be done – are the clarion calls of not a few tougher-minded philosophers sensing a hiatus in the plan…
As the aluth avurudda dawns, 19A hangs in the balance; as does a minority government’s last best chance to live to fight another day – tied in intimately (too close for comfort?) with taming the Beast of the executive presidency. As good governance founders between the Scylla of practical politics and the Charbydis of pragmatic compromise in a worthy cause, the hopes of half a nation swing in abeyance (with the other half half-hoping for a return of the Beast in one form or another). As the 100-day deadline approaches, we see that in a government of constitutional amendments and committee-work (where after all has been said and done, more has been said than done) many good promises will be honoured more in the breach than the observance. We don’t grudge the government its naïve shortcomings or necessary compromises. We do mind if it has been cynically strategic – worse, callously subversive – in its desire for political survival sutured to political cultural change. So should you.
