Saturday Dec 28, 2024
Saturday Dec 28, 2024
Wednesday, 11 March 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
We write with no great sense of surprise, as the Government of half-the-people reaches it more than midway mark, that this administration lacks the desired colour: the one it advertised in its election campaign.
In comparison to the previous regime, the incumbent republican administration has more white than black. But comparisons are odious. They say. We did not vote a packet of good eggs in simply to replace a bunch of rotten banana republicans. We voted them in to reinstitute democracy, reform policy and procedure, and restore the nation to statehood from being a republic going bananas.
So, how has this Government fared? Is it possible to assess – after the passage of a mere 50 days and a few more – what measure of success it is enjoying? Is it profitable to assess such progress at the mid-term point of its brief incumbency? Or is it pointless to expect governments of any stripe to keep promises made in the run-up to the polls?
Here’s a via media point of view, for what it is worth. It looks back, briefly, to the recent past, in order to look forward, with bated breath, to the rapidly approaching finish line of the 100 days in hand. Not as people partisan to any colour or creed would do; but as an ordinary expectant republican neutrally assessing a relatively colourless coalition Government.
Don’t expect political correctness or conventional wisdom here. We are taking the business of good governance seriously; even if all of the key players concerned are not. We are seeing the realities of government subversively; especially because none of the key players are.
Recent past
The regime that was ousted was ousted when it looked like it was settling in for the long run. That change was effected by a combination of factors. In particular, there were the subterranean efforts of a small coterie of senior politicians on both sides of the partisan divide.
In the final analysis, the people cooperated in making the paradigm shift from ‘autocracy’ to ‘democracy’ possible. But it can be seen that behind the scenes, seasoned politicos with cynical agendas were manipulating the perceptions of not only the people, but the key players themselves who went on to make it all happen.
The Prime Minister has recently been quoted as citing Bismarck’s or Butler’s aphorism that “politics is the art of the possible”. What he might have left out of the equation is that “politics is also the science of the improbable”.
It looks easy – and it was made to seem effortless – from the outside that the General Secretary of one party was successfully weaned away to go on to become the President of another party’s Cabinet. Even if his primary allegiances to Sri Lanka in general and the SLFP in particular have not changed.
We reckon that was the hardest part of the process. Convincing a stalwart to betray his then President and build up a rival’s – and a rival party’s – agenda in the guise of a game-changing, country-saving gambit. There are still many who can’t quite believe what happened, virtually overnight, only 50 days ago. Truth is stranger than the fiction that the public have consumed.
The reality is that it was not necessarily the country that was saved. The reality is that it was the flagging fortunes of a has-been party that was revived and resurrected and returned to not just power in camera (cabinet) but the perception of the people as a party with prospects (albeit a minority in Parliament).
Real potential
Be that as it may, there is no denying the fact that – however and by whomever the desired result was effected – there came in with the new Government’s 100-day programme a real sense of hope. That, after a hiatus of ever so long, a restoration of the basic principles and practices of republicanism could be possible.
In that sense, the Government that is in today must be congratulated that it has – so readily and righteously – ensured a return to the fundamental rights that we republican citizens had missed for so long that we had stopped realising that these rights were missing.
The right to life: no more murders and abductions or even the threat or possibility of violence against “those who are not for us”. The right to liberty: a guarantee of the basic freedoms of information, expression, even dissent. The right to the pursuit of happiness: a demilitarisation of the public square, a democratisation of plans and programmes that government engages in, a delicious sense that the State is serious about the business of life and liberty.
In that sense, the Government that could be out tomorrow must be cautioned that it may have – perhaps unbeknownst to a majority of its constituents – laid the foundation for its own demise.
In one sense, it has possibly taken “good governance” too far in going after the small fry such as the Tissas and the Sashis of this world. In another altogether related sense, it has probably not taken this “yahapaalanaya” far enough by dint of failing to go after, and bring to book, and put away the alleged big fish such as the Basils, the Gotas, the Dumindas, the Sajins of this world and underworld. If, as, and when these ex-bigwigs and their associate bit players – like the Welé Sudas, and the Bourse’s and Central Bank’s “robber barons” alike – are culpable and prosecutable.
Of course, the conventional wisdom on that and the subversive view on this are at a tangent. The conventional wisdom has it that the Coalition Government was never sincere or seriously committed enough to pursue the allegedly or demonstrably corrupt on the grandest scale.
The subversive view is that the upper echelons of at least one half of the Co-Government is keeping its trump cards up its sleeve for precisely such a contingency as the emergence of a real electoral threat in less than 40 days. Then, it is rumoured, and only then, will the cards and files and trumps be pulled out in spades. Oh, what a colourful spectacle that will be – a black to end all shades of grey that the plodding, pusillanimous powers-that-now-be have shown to date...
Time will tell. But in the public’s mind’s-eye, time is running out.
Rumblings in the present
So it comes as no surprise that the mood in the marketplace at present is one of some confusion and consternation.
On the one hand, supporters of the Government want to celebrate with the President, Prime Minister, and principal players in the efforts being made to change the way the game is played.
On the other, subscribers to good governance see more – and, increasingly, many more – areas in which the powers that be can and must be challenged and critically engaged with in order to ensure that the game is not played in the same old way as it has always – and, recently, aggressively – been played.
So it looks like those halcyon days we – or at least half of us (don’t forget: 47.5% voted in favour of autocracy and rule by law peculiar to the powers that were at the time) – dreamed of are still far off in the future. If ever they come to be a genuine reality for true republicanism in the island again.
Rumoured prospects
We all – well, at least, the 51.2% who voted for what we thought would be a colourful era of good governance and peace, with justice done and justice seen – have to pause and ask some hard questions.
Why has the “reign of justice” taken so long to see results in critical areas? How is it that the Tissas and the Sashis are being hauled up before the awful majesty of the law while members of the much rumoured drug and ethanol mafias have yet to be identified?
Have the likes of Sarath and Rajitha and other who waxed eloquent about bringing corrupt criminals to book forgotten their promises? What stern but secret measures and machinations are shortening the long arm of the law when it comes to casino kings and stock market barons, some of whom are one and the same person or persons?
Is there a conspiracy between the upper echelons of this Government and power brokers of the previous regime who could be useful to further the interests of the party in power, such that collusion for the moment must override the promises of the months past? Or is there a more charitable view that we the citizens of the republic who voted for this Government and/or good governance must take?
These issues deserve a hearing, a reflection, a resolution. In public – unlike the dark secrecy and deep suspicion of the age gone by. Ergo, this column.
Rotten possibilities
There is a raft of options:
The charitable view is that the Government is sincere, but is struggling to keep its promises because it had not seriously envisioned the opposition, obstacles, and its own lethargy or lack of time and energy it would encounter halfway downstream. If this is true, all good republicans would still be willing – and warranted – to submit to the rest of the 100-day programme.
The critical view is that the Government is serious, but is going about the project in a less than sincere way, safeguarding the interests of the republican old guard while undermining the agenda of the Chief Executive’s once and future party. If this is the reality, all good republicans and true might continue to support the ideals of good governance in principle while critically engaging with the ideas and actions of the Government in practice.
The subversive view is that the Government within the Government was neither serious nor sincere to begin with, but has always embarked on and is still sailing in a ship that is heading in the direction of an electoral triumph and an executive coup for the minority party with a majority chip on its shoulder and the members in Cabinet – if not yet in Parliament – to carry it through.
If this is the case in actuality, republicans can resign themselves to another 40 days of grey shades. As the masterminds in the coven within the clique within the claque in the Cabinet continue to cynically exploit the electorate’s expectations of it to establish its own ends.
That would be the rottenest possibility, but one which is entirely within the ambit of realpolitik and the practice of politics as the art of the impossible.
