When the centre cannot hold…

 

 I write (it is 12.09 pm, on Wednesday) at a time when there’s a remarkable and unprecedented lack of political clarity in the country. As I write, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has left the country. As per the Constitution, if indeed Rajapaksa did resign, or, as reported, Rajapaksa citing Article 37.1 of the constitution , Ranil Wickremesinghe has assumed the presidency in an acting capacity. There’s ‘fighting’ within parliament with parties and politicians unable to decide on Rajapaksa’s successor and of course who the next premier should be. There’s fighting among ‘aragalists’ over representational legitimacy, ideological and political thrust, and preferred endgames.

W B Yeates, in his poem ‘The Second Coming,’ seems to have anticipated all this.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre  
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst  
Are full of passionate intensity.

That’s a nutshell-capture if ever there was one. All this is new to Sri Lanka and post-Independence generations — yes, even during the UNP-JVP bheeshanaya, the Green-Black July, the long years of terrorist-besieging and at points of economic collapse, things didn’t really fall apart. The centre did hold. Today, there’s no ‘centre’.

There’s struggle of course. That is decent enough English for ‘aragalaya,’ after all.  Actually it should have been ‘aragala' considering all pluralities pertaining to aragalists and outcome preferences, which, it was pretty obvious from the get go were glossed over by the singularity of the prominent slogan and end-point envisaged: ‘Gota go home!’ And it was not all about lofty visions of revolutionary change, system transformation and such. As my friend Kanishka Goonewardena put it, ‘It’s a bread riot, channelled into #gotagohome.’ True, at a very pertinent level, it was about availability, affordability and the political economy of entitlement.

The struggle, then, had something to do with multiplicity. For now, though, it is about what happens next in terms of the political order, crudely put it is about who takes over.  There are three broad struggles unfolding before us. One, within parliament or, let’s say, the established political order which of course is in crisis. Two, there’s a struggle outside parliament which has several subplots: a) coherence in terms of political programme, b) agreement on options on the economic front, c) crisis of representational legitimacy. Three, the conflict between ‘the aragalaya’ and the ‘political order’.  These three are not mutually exclusive of course, but such a characterisation is decent enough for analytical ease. Analytical ease notwithstanding, the way each plays out and interacts with one another is marked by one thing and one thing alone: unpredictability.

As one might expect in a mass uprising that is marked by spontaneity and the glossing over of the specific with an all-can-agree objective, the aftermath tends to favour the organised, those with specific agendas. The spoils not necessarily to the aragalists but rather the politicians and political parties, especially if we defer to parliament and constitution. The lack of coherence on all counts on things outside of ‘sending Gota home’ certainly strengthens the hand of the politician.

The eclectic nature of the aragalaya and aragalists most certainly was a necessary precondition for ‘victory’ but that’s where dreams flounder too. We say this on July 9, 2022. Everything that the aragalaya stood against was affirmed by ‘aragalists’: theft, vandalism, arson and violence of other kinds. Sure, you cannot blame everyone for the pranks of some, but there were many, academics, journalists, self-appointed radicals etc., who openly spurred them on or turned into shameless apologists. The most generous reading is that all of that was just a manifestation of the degree to which people have been disenfranchised.

As for the position(s) of the aragalaya, we can also be generous and say ‘early days; they need time to obtain coherence in terms of broader and indeed overall objectives. It will not be clean. The various pretenders to the leadership are putting forward demands/plans that range from minimalistic and decent through iffy to outrageously ridiculous.

Given that Wickremesinghe has assumed power, whether or not he has political control, and considering the declaration of curfew in the Western Province and emergency island-wide, things are coming to a head. How it unfolds is unclear. When and how the political air clears, no one can tell. At some point though, it must be understood that there was a mass movement, incoherent in objective though it was and is, that brought us to where we are right now. Everyone seems to have forgotten that it was essentially an economic and not political crisis that precipitated matters. That remains conspicuously ignored ;beyond the call for immediate relief measures, presumably on the basis of more foreign loans and debt, which is part of the problem rather than the solution, the demands do not address the structural dimension of the economic crisis confronting the country,’ as Kanishka puts it. And as he pointed out, ‘this is precisely the problem concerning which radical demands must be precisely articulated.’
 
Here are some additional and pertinent points he has made: ‘The Aragalaya—which proudly includes members of all classes—seems to have missed the local and global class dimension of the economic crisis in its demands. The limitations of the political vision of the Aragalaya, restricted to liberal constitutional reform, raises moreover the question about its own representative credentials: how does the Aragalaya authorize itself to speak in the name of the people of Sri Lanka? On what kind of democracy is the Aragalaya itself premised, in order to derive its own political legitimacy in distinction from that of the parliament, with or without constitutional reforms?
 
‘The Aragalaya is without doubt a popular and mass uprising, diverse in participants and spontaneous in evolution. As such it begs comparison with other revolutionary and non-revolutionary mass uprisings, from the bourgeois French Revolution to the workers’ Bolshevik Revolution to the more recent Arab Spring and Occupy movements. In the more successful among revolutionary uprisings, those that achieved systemic and emancipatory change at the level of social, economic and political structures, revolutionaries produced new political forms in conjunction with fundamental economic transformations. No such radicalism is so far evident in the demands of the Aragalaya—in spite of its rhetoric of radical change.
 
‘The true challenge for the Aragalaya in Sri Lanka now is to liberate itself from liberal political reformism and co-optation by the actually existing global capitalist economy, ably represented by the US Ambassador in Colombo, and to imagine what real change actually would look like and how another world is possible in Sri Lanka.’

As things stand, considering that the overall political establishment is severely compromised, nay has lost all semblance of legitimacy, whether anyone likes it or not, hope lies with the aragalaya and Aragalists. The challenges are enormous. It is easy to rubbish them and rubbished they will be, ironically, more so by the classes that never suffered and in fact benefited from the system that has come under fire. May the blood-dimmed tide be turned. May innocence recover its fragrance. May the best renew conviction and may the worst dial down passionate intensity. We are a resilient people. We must prevail.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Recipes for co-opting and subverting #peoplepower

#De-dollarize!

The international community, the opposition and 'the people'

The 'ada davase mahanakama'

#Aragalayaleft?

Personalities and systems

The 'aragalists' and the challenge of re-mapping Sri Lanka

Tomorrow, tomorrow and so forth...

A season of (il)legitimacies 

The brink and beyond

Spontaneity and its discontents 

ලෙයට ලෙය වෙනුවට ආලය

පුද්ගල චරිත මතුවේ, නිර්පාක්ෂික හැව ගැලැවේ, අරගලය ඉදිරියටම....

The BASL Proposals: A review

malindadocs@gmail.com
[Malinda Seneviratne is the Director/CEO of the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute. These are his personal views.]

 
 

Read more

Tomorrow, tomorrow and so forth...

Even in uncertain times, especially times of political turmoil marked by continuous and widespread agitation as well as unmistakable confusion regarding governance and indeed governability, there is clarity on certain matters. It is clear, for example, that for all the political brouhaha of parliamentary intrigue and agitational grandstanding, what brought the citizen out and pushed the politician against the wall, is an economic crisis.  

There’s a lot of debate about root causes including mismanagement, erroneous policy and hanky-panky, not to mention of course the elephant in the room: in a word, capitalism, but if you want details, it’s about scandalous fixations with discredited economic theories, state-led subsidising of capital interests, sustained buttressing of an import mafia, absolute reluctance to encourage export-oriented industry and deliberate scuttling of all initiatives to secure food and energy security and sovereignty.

As is usual in the case of any crime, if we ask who benefited, the easy answer would be ‘audit the politicians and you’ll find out.’ The word in the street would be ‘The Rajapaksas.’ Auditing is good, but selective auditing is essentially a scapegoating exercise. If anyone wants a clean and accountable country then he/she cannot stop with El Politico. One could ask a few more questions.

Who benefited from the tax breaks? If someone accepted bribes, who bribed them? There are 225 parliamentarians and one president — if the thousands of officials in the public sector couldn’t prevent them from mismanagement and theft, is it because they were lazy, weak, incompetent or themselves pilfering the kitty? Shouldn’t professionals including doctors engaged in private practice, lawyers who never issue receipts for money obtained for their services, tuition teachers etc., be audited too?  And how about all politicians, from President to each and every member of a local government authority?

For all of the above, the focus is on the politician and rightly so. They crave limelight, they are credited for successes — they richly deserve to be faulted for failure. And, moreover, in the politics of the moment, it is typical and even expedient to trim things down to manageable proportions. The larger issues are the stuff for declarations, legislative enactment and such. Agitation and agitator can get lost in the relevant broader picture. That said, agitator and agitator cannot misplace the larger picture either.

The target has been a person, not a system. It is after all #gotagohome and not #burythesystem that’s been stitched onto the agitational flag. On the sidelines one may encounter a few who would say ‘it IS about the system and the person is taken as a symbol only,’ but there’s always the danger of forgetting what the symbol represents in the rush of blood and the obtaining of objective.

So we have, essentially, a move for a name-change and perhaps at best a hurried and therefore inadvisable tinkering with the constitution. That would be the granting of political relief to those who believe they are politically aggrieved. It would set a precedent and a bad one too for it would encourage those who perceive grievance to corral the perceived miscreant. In one case, say this for argument’s sake, one might offer, ‘we had no option’ or ‘this is a necessary first step’ or ‘we cannot wait for the due process of the law and therefore have to go with “guilty unless proven innocent.”’ This, if widely and frequently referenced, would subvert justice and also wreck the basic foundation of the social contract.

So here we are today. There's determination to topple a leader and a government. Here we are today, contained by a constitution that will necessitate replacement of one leader with another, one government with another and absolutely incapable of answering with a resounding ‘yes’ the following question: ‘is the replacement endowed with a greater degree of legitimacy; a history without blemish in terms of management, accountability and honesty; armed with a plan to correct constitutional flaw, deliver the people from multiple deprivations and implement a development plan that is sustainable and ensures energy and food security?’ 

One could also argue that none of these are as important as seriously considering whether the ruling nebulous global octopus greatly prefers the incumbent or the potential replacement. Anyone who has taken the trouble to study the history of agitation, regime-change, brutal suppression of dissent, revolution etc. (and that's a non-negotiable for 'revolutionaries' by the way), would have to take such things into account. Otherwise, they aren't serious. Sorry.

Anyway, there’s agitation. And it is beautiful. There’s energy, radicalisation, creativity, the forging of solidarities, increasingly intense engagement with issues that go beyond political order and personality and so many other things that might persuade the easily persuaded to call it ‘revolutionary moment.’  A closer look reveals a far more complex mosaic.

It’s a carnival, certainly. No one said revolutions have to be humourless and need to be dressed in drab colours. On the other hand, just as sporting events attract pineapple-sellers, ice-cream vans, fast-food carts, gram-sellers etc., this ‘Galle Face Carnival,’ if you want to call it that, has attracted all manner of vendors. We see all of the above sorts as well as flag-sellers and horn-sellers. We also see vendors of a different kind — vendors peddling ideology and pet political projects with track-records and political histories that are far from being squeaky-clean. It is indeed to the credit of the committed, nonpartisan, idealistic and determined young people occupying Galle Face that they’ve not fallen prey to on false prophet or another but rather ensured that they have every right to be there as anyone else, only they cannot hijack the overall project nor subvert the thrust of the agitation.

Today there’s talk of people drafting a ‘Galle Face Declaration.’ No document is perfect and no doubt such a piece of prose would be critically assailed as well. If ‘Galle Face’ is shorthand for Sri Lanka and indeed anti-systemic sentiment, then the document should be signatured by it. Galle Face is not Colombo, Colombo is not the Western Province, the Western Province is not Sri Lanka; if any lesson needs to be or has been learned through ‘occupation’ it is this.

The young people have tasked themselves with drawing the blueprint for a different Sri Lanka, a new tomorrow. ‘Tomorrow’s Declaration,’ if one may call it that, would delve into histories both political and economic. It would contain a dissection of the system that allows for the discovery of fault lines and designing correctives.

The young, clear-eyed and determined people who see flaw in politicians and citizens, system and stakeholder, the other and themselves, have demonstrated that they have the guts, the wisdom, the intransigent spirit that’s a revolutionary must and immense volumes of patience. They will drive the nation to a fresh tomorrow. There are many dark hours still to fight through of course. As long as they continue to be inspired by deep feelings of love and compassion, they will see us through. 

This article was first published in the Daily Mirror (May 5, 2022).

malindadocs@gmail.com. 

[Malinda Seneviratne is the Director/CEO of the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute. These are his personal views.]

Related Articles:

A season of (il)legitimacies

The brink and beyond

Spontaneity and its discontents

Elections, electors and elected

Vasalas and brahmanas

Read more

Gota and Mahinda: one and the same or an apple and an orange?

Rajapaksa. THAT name. Mahinda’s surname. Loved by some, hated by some but considered ‘formidable’ by one an all.  And that was perhaps one of the key impetus for the Yahapalana Government to bring in the 19th Amendment.  

What did the 19th Amendment do? Well, apart from bringing back independent commissions (albeit with greater selection-sway for politicians courtesy a Constitution Council whose composition was deliberately made politician-heavy), there was a limit imposed on the size of the cabinet. A loophole was scripted into the text in the form of a non-defined ‘national government’. It made for inflation-at-will. Partisan.  

The 19th clipped the president’s powers. Wait, not the then president’s powers so much as his successor’s.  Power would shift to the office of the Prime Minister. The entire Parliament voted for the amendment in the middle of a tiring night. Except of course Sarath Weerasekera. So, technically we have a person elected by the entire country having less power than someone who was voted to Parliament by a single district. That’s democracy, yahpalana-style. Partisan. 

What do we have now, though? The man the yahapalanists loved to hate, Mahinda Rajapaksa is now the ‘“Stronger” PM under the 19th.’  To make matters worse, even the ‘mitigating’ factor of the diminished executive presidency is no consolation, because we have another Rajapaksa in that position. 

Gotabaya. Gotabaya Rajapaksa. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. What happens after the next parliamentary elections, we cannot predict. It is likely that the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna will secure a parliamentary majority. Whether Mahinda Rajapaksa will contest that election we cannot predict. While it is no secret that Mahinda’s immense popularity was a major factor, indeed if not the most important factor, that secured Gotabaya Rajapaksa the presidency, this is his time. The time of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Another Rajapaksa regime, but perhaps one with a different flavor.  

Now Gotabaya was able to deliver on tasks assigned when he was Secretary to the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development because his presidential brother had his back. In turn, Mahinda had in Gotabaya a military strategist who he could trust. Like in the times of the ancient kings.  Their statures were in a way interdependent. 

As mentioned, Mahinda’s backing was key to success in the presidential race. To that extent and because of Mahinda’s persona, one could say that Gota is under his older brother’s shadow. Will he move out of that shadow? Will Mahinda try to keep him ‘in his place’? We can’t predict, but it is clear that Gotabaya Rajapaksa, for all the salutations he offers his political sibling, is not Mahinda’s twin.   

Gotabaya Rajapaksa clearly shares his brother’s ideological preferences when it comes to the nature of the state, the importance of national security, reading of the international community’s machinations etc. And yet, if there is something cultural which in practice could be called Mahindaism, it has not inscribed itself on the persona of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. 

Simply, he does things differently. Nothing grand about him. No frills. Less talk, more work. He keeps things simple and clearly believes that doing the job is what matters — braggadocio unimportant and perhaps even an unnecessary distraction, over and above the additional costs involved. 

The 19th is not cast in stone. It could be amended and my hunch is that this time around, the UNP, plagued with Mahinda-phobia, might welcome such a move. However, even if amendment is not attempted, the home-and-home political arrangement means that Gotabaya has a better chance of doing things his way than did Maithripala Sirisena, even though he, Sirisena, had better constitutional leverage. Indeed, we may very well see the brothers so in agreement most times that such issues may not even materialize. Mahinda could, for example, play the senior political citizen, offer advice when solicited and lat Gota do his thing.

Brothers sort out differences in ways that unrelated people cannot. Families have their tension-busting strategies. Only the Rajapaksas will know what these tensions are (if indeed there are any) and how to deal with them.  However, family though they are, in the eyes of the constitution and the law Gotabaya and Mahinda are two distinct individuals. Cultural push notwithstanding Gotabaya is a man with a mind of his own. In the first few days in office, he has dispelled all doubts in this regard. 

So far, there’s only been accolades. The cheers have come naturally from those who voted for him, but interestingly from even those who didn’t. Maybe it is less that ‘Mahindaism’ is outdated or despised than Gotayism being something fresh and as appealing for obviously different reasons.  

‘Gota’s War’ was the title of an account of the operations seeking to eliminate the terrorist threat. Gotabaya Rajapaksa is not in the middle of a similar battle, but there’s some fighting on the cards. There are institutional arrangements that rebel against change. Procedural matters can block him. A political culture under threat may very well fight back rather than fold down and concede defeat. 

One thing is clear. The opposition is in such disarray that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has ample maneuvering room. He has a mandate. He has shown unwavering determination to fulfill tasks taken on. Mahinda Rajapaksa, ideally, would let back him to the hilt, just as his brother did from 2005-2015. Siblings are like that. In any event, the nature of their relationship would most certainly make everyone want to look at the 19th Amendment afresh. 

Siblings, shadows, mirrors, histories, ego and humility, strength and perceived strength, the clash of weaknesses — the Gotabaya presidency could be all about such things. We are in for an interesting presidency.

malindasenevi@gmail.com

Read more

Presidential Election and Racism: the loud claims and small print

‘Scratch a Sinhalese and you find a racist,’ I’ve heard my Tamil friends say. In jest of course. ‘Scratch a Tamil and you find an Eelamist,’ I’ve heard my Sinhalese friends say. In jest of course. ‘Scratch a Muslim and you find a Jihadists,’ I’ve heard people say. In jest of course. Perhaps it is not a laughing matter. Rivers have sources, trees have roots and perceptions have histories or rather are produced by a healthy complement of history, myth and legend. It is often framed by political selectivity which of course is a product of expedience, let us not forget.

Broad brush strokes, that’s what is common. And we’ve seen these in various analyzes of the presidential election results.  The country has been carved, so to speak, and it is being consumed in part with relish or dismay, as per choice or diminished circumstances respectively.  

So we have an election marked by ‘racism’. True, false, true and false? On the one hand we have the provinces that voted overwhelmingly for Sajith (North and East, to the tune of over 80%) where the population is predominantly Tamil and Muslim. The rest of the country, predominantly Sinhala, voted overwhelmingly for Gotabaya Rajapaksa. That’s cutting the result along ethnic lines.  

Various explanations have been offered. Perhaps the Tamils went along with the claim of  Tamil National Alliance (TNA) — ‘Sajith will deliver’. Deliver what? Well, if we go by the conditions for support articulated by the TNA, then it is essentially a road map to Eelam via federalism. On the flip side, it is argued that the Sinhalese were irked by the taunts of Tamil and Muslim communalist parties — ‘you can’t win without us,’ and ‘vote for Sajith and teach the Sinhalese a lesson’. Others argue, ‘Gota is a Sinhala Buddhist chauvinist and so is the Sri Lanka Podu Jana Peramuna (SLPP) whereas Sajith is not; therefore the minorities voted for Sajith.’

One might also point out that the North and East saw Sarath Fonseka, the Commander of the Army fighting the LTTE (‘The sole representative of the Tamil people,’ according to the TNA) was less of a threat than Mahinda Rajapaksa (the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces at the time) and therefore the lesser evil, which is why 67% voted for him in 2010. They believed, one can argue, that Maithripal Sirisena (a member of Rajapaksa’s cabinet) was even less an evil than Fonseka, which is he was able to win 75% of the vote in the North and East in 2015. Gotabaya was the Secretary, Ministry of Defence, at the time whereas Sajith played no part in that drama and as such the latter was not seen to have any evil trace whatsoever — hence the massive support in 2019.

Some have argued that the people in the North and East preferred by quite a margin a Sinhalese (Sajith) as opposed to M.K. Shivajilingam, a Tamil, and therefore ‘race’ was not a factor. That would be simplistic, though. Shivajilingam is a) not from the strongest party in the coalition that makes up the TNA, and b) didn’t have even the slimmest chance to win the election.  More logical, it would seem, would be to vote for the candidate who is more likely to deliver demands, which is essentially what the TNA told the people. After all, R. Sampanthan claims, ‘Tamils voted for Sajith to win rights in a united, indivisible Sri Lanka’.  That’s sleight of hand. ‘United’ and not ‘Unitary’ as has always been the word-choice of Eelamists. ‘Forego the term but obtain the meaning’ has been Abraham Sumanthiran’s operative dictum as revealed by ‘independent’ elections commissioner Ratnajeevan Hoole.

On the other hand, almost 50% of Tamils live outside the North and East. Who did they vote for? We can’t really get a number on this, but the UNP has counted the Tamils and Muslims outside the North and East as part of its vote base. This means, that counting ‘out’ the TNA vote-loan and taking out the Tamil and Muslim votes from other parts of the country, the UNP’s slice of the Sinhala vote has shrunk to less than 30% or is even hovering around 25%. That’s something the UNP should worry about as it looks ahead to future elections. This element however is not at center of the ‘racist-discourse’.  

It is clear that Gotabaya won the support of large numbers of Sinhala Buddhists. He has acknowledged this instead of pussy-footing around the fact. A certain segment voted, he named and acknowledged. He also said he won’t leave behind anyone, whether or not he or she voted for him, as he takes the country forward. He is, as he pointed out, President of everyone. Time will tell how he performs and how the people of the North and East assess his performance. 

Name-calling is easy and cheap. ‘Racist’ is an easy and cheap label, applicable to one and all on account of things said and left unsaid, things done and refrained from, association and absence of association. Racist, dependent on racists, approver of racism, tolerator of racism — all easily ‘pinnable’ on one and all. It is a useful political tool and has been used extensively. By one and all, one might add, to a lesser or greater degree. 

There is one indisputable fact, though, which the new president has not only recognized but has stated that he has noted: the vast majority of voters in the North and East did not have confidence in him. They have, by association at least and perhaps on account of pledges made (verbal and/or written) by Sajith Premadasa, hinted at certain aspirations. Whether these are extrapolations based on myths frilled as history or demands deliberately exaggerated to ‘bargain down’ to something acceptable, we do not know. It is a signal, though.  

In 1976, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) under the leadership of S J V Chelvanayakam (of ‘a little now, more later’ fame) resolved in Vaddukoddai to push for a separate state. The TULF scored in the 1977 parliamentary elections consequently.  The racism and wild optimism embedded in the resolution notwithstanding, it did strike a chord with the Tamil voter. The question that should have been asked at the time is ‘why?’ That’s the same question that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa can ask with respect to the results from the North and East. Grievances and aspirations. These are the answers, whether frilled or wild. However you may wish to call it, it boils down to a lack of belonging. 

The previous regime saw ‘reconciliation’ as something that can only be obtained by vilifying the Sinhalese and Buddhists and submitting to the Eelamist demands of the TNA (ref: constitutional reform proposals of the Parliamentary Selected Committee dominated by federalists and rabid anti-Sinhala and anti-Buddhist persons). That’s a recipe for continued inter-communal tensions and perhaps one reason for the massive surge against the candidate of the UNP-led coalition, one could argue. 

Belonging. That could be the key. Inclusivity. Inclusive nationalism, if you will. Racism of course won’t help. Name-calling by way of alleviating political grief is in the end a distraction and even an obstacle to progress.  There’s no way around engagement, though. There could be any number of approaches. Every single ‘way out project’ offered by the federalists have failed. Abandoning engagement and pooh-poohing the sense of un-belonging of the Tamils, for example, has not yielded reconciliation either as the results in 2015  indicate. 

Those who want the future to look different must cure themselves of term-fixations. A new language is required. No, not to facilitate disavowal of problem, but to ensure that its true dimensions are obtained.  It's less, then, about scratching skin and discovering racist than vicious mis-branding. We can do better than that, one hopes.

The country can be carved in many ways. A cartographer can do it. A divide-rule expert can do it. Words can do it. But cartographer, politician and rhetorician can also eliminate difference and distinction in wholesome ways. Let us see what the Gotabaya Rajapaksa years will yield.

malindasenevi@gmail.com

Read more

Carbon-neutral electioneering: Gota sets an example

This is not about all the candidates, their policies, their relative merits over other candidates or chances of winning. This is about carbon footprints. 

Time was when elections were marked by violence. Before, during and after elections. The Mother of All Violent Elections was of course the presidential election of December 1988 when Ranasinghe Premadasa’s UNP and Rohana Wijeweera’s JVP competed with each other for the tag, ‘The Worst Brute’. Premadasa won that battle. That’s another story.  Elections since then have been less and less violent. This time, there’s hardly any violence reported apart from a few isolated scuffles.  

Then there was pollution. Clutter in the form of posters on every square inch of walls. Clutter in the form of cut-outs, hoardings and of course polytene banners and decorations. Garbage, cluttering places where rallies have been held. We’ve managed to do without these for the most part, the last thanks largely to the example set by the JVP.  

And yet, even factoring these positive developments, election campaigns cost the environment. Today we can even measure it fairly accurately. The enormous amount of energy used results in carbon dioxide emissions. The use of paper and electricity also cost the environment. They add up and make what is called the Carbon Footprint. The carbon footprint of an election campaign as a sum of the ‘footprints’ of all campaigns of all candidates. 

So far, there has been no mentioned whatsoever of this issue by any of the campaigns. Except that of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The campaign team or rather a section of the team tasked to think of such things has estimated that carbon neutrality can be achieved only if 20,000 trees were planted, taking into consideration average mortality rates and a reasonable buffer for unexpected destruction of trees. This is new. It’s fresh. Wholesome.  With the campaigns scheduled to wind down by midnight Wednesday the 12th of November, Gotabaya’s campaign has planted 26,000 trees across the country with the participation of local communities. That’s probably supporters. 

The campaign team maintains that each tree will have a geo-tag that makes for monitoring and that allometric equations will be used to infer the carbon content stored in these trees by using data such as height and diameter of the plants.  The monitoring and verification is to be done by an independent organization. Time will tell if enthusiasm for all this will outlive the campaign. That itself will be a challenge and will tell us something about this candidate. 

Of course, this does not mean that a) Gotabaya will win, or b) if he wins it would be better than if someone else does. What it means is simple.  Gotabaya’s campaign would have left something positive on the ground. 

The benefits will accrue to the people of Anuradhapura, Jaffna, Mahiyangana, Horana, Kaduwela, Ruwanwella, Ampara, Padukka, Dompe, Polonnaruwa, Kegalle, Nuwara Eliya, Wellawaya, Matara, Homagama, Weerawila, the Mahaweli Zones and indeed every place where major rallies were held. nd it won’t be just the loyalists. Even those who vote for someone else would one day enjoy the shade, reap the fruit and of course breathe cleaner air. That’s freedom of a kind. ‘Nidahase Husma’ (The Breath of Freedom) is an appropriate label for this element of the campaign.

The carbon-consciousness apart, there is an obvious propaganda element to the exercise. That said, it is indisputable that Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s campaign team has come up with a fresh, unique and wholesome thing which any of the other candidates could have also adopted but didn’t. Ideally it will set a trend (like the JVP’s post-rally cleanups) and carbon-neutral election election campaigns will become the norm in Sri Lanka. 

If only Sajith Premadasa could have extended his 'whatever you say, I will better it' policy to this element of Gotabaya's campaign! If only Anura Kumara Dissanayake and other other candidates got into a 'more green than you' kind of battle! They did not. They may in future elections. And we would have Gota to thank for it.  

Read more

Which candidate will bell the Islamic Fundamentalist Cat?

Promises are cheap, plans expensive. Promises easy, plans take time to formulate and a certain basic level of intelligence to articulate. Promises don’t add up to vision, plans do. Some candidates promise, others plan. I need not elaborate. 

Let’s flag some issues.  

The economy. We have one of the worst growth rates in the region; only Afghanistan lags behind Sri Lanka. For all the talk of a debt inherited by the Yahapalana Government (of which Sajith Premadasa is a minister), the quantum of new debt had nothing to do with the past.

National security. Easter Sunday showed the mess we are in. It’s a product of an insane revenge-drive that constituted of a comprehensive witch hunt against intelligence and security officers assumed to be loyal to the previous regime and an equally insane misconception that ‘reconciliation’ is about dismantling the security apparatus. That’s Yahapalana thinking for you (and Sajith Premadasa is a minister in the Yahapalana Government). 

Reconciliation. That’s a term which in practice had a rider: ‘pseudo’. It was all about hurting one way or another the majority community. It was not about inclusive nationalism, as it ought to have been. That again is a Yahapalana thing and yes, Sajith Premadasa is a minister in the Yahapalana Government.  

There’s more, but let’s focus on issues related to religion, secularism and national integrity.  Now these have been constant themes of this regime and those who supported it. The focus of course has been the removal of the special status of Buddhism (Article 9), which has anyway been negated by Articles 10 and 14. However, for all talk of secularism, there’s been dead silence by the vociferous secularist lobby on customary laws pertaining to religion. The caveat ‘other than the marriages of Muslims’ in the Marriages (General) Ordinance No 19 of 1907 made more specific by the the Muslim Marriage  and Divorce Act No 13 of 1951 and the Marriages and Divorce (Kandyan) Act No 44 of 1952 have not caught attention. Strangely.  

If religion, as the likes of Mangala Samaraweera frequently claim, is a personal matter and not the business of the state, if the route to modernity involves a separation of state and religion and if a secular state is a non-negotiable when it comes to an integrated Sri Lanka that has reconciled community-based differences, then these things should be done away with. Surely?  

And yet, the entire debate in ‘civil society’ (can we call it a ‘Civil Society gaaya’ following Thenuwara’s pet peeve, the so-called ‘Ranaviru gaaya’?) has been about reforming and not repealing these archaic statues that stand in the way of everything they swear by (secularism, national integration and reconciliation). Why? 

Rev Athureliye Rathana Thero tabled three bills to repeal the aforementioned Acts. It hasn’t been taken up. It hasn’t generated any comment from the secularists. Child marriages, selective sanctioning of polygamy and so-called customary dress codes (Niqab and Burqa) are absolutely at odds with the kind of modernity that these ladies and gentlemen advocate for Sri Lanka.  

A dress is a dress in whatever form. Even nudity can be described as a dress-preference. We have norms which do not sanction nudity but we can’t have laws that sanction dress-form. We can have norms though and in certain cases even laws. If a masked man enters a bank, would not the employees feel uneasy? Do they have to ‘grin and bear’ because ‘that’s his/her dress-preference’? 

In an age that is marked by insecurity, in a country where the single most bloody act by adherents of a particular religion targeting non-believers was the Easter Sunday attacks, in a country that has seen 30 years of terrorism, we all have to pay a price for personal and community security. Vigilance. Laws that could be seen as infringements on personal freedom. For example. 

Banning the niqab and burqa are relatively minor infringements but most importantly warranted by particularly terrifying circumstances. Please note that even though these new ‘customs’ are a direct product of the spread of Waha’abism and even though it is this religious sect that has given rise to Islamic extremism, it is not the religious association that makes such a ban logical. It’s a national security issue.  

Of course, none of the terrorists involved in the Easter Sunday attacks wore niqab or burqa, but that’s not relevant here. The issue is concealment of identity.  If anyone wears anything that indicates ‘I can see you but you cannot see me,’ then that kind of attitude has no place in civilized society. It does not make for free and equal person-to-person interaction. It could work in a circle where everyone wears such garments, not elsewhere. 

Why should we have religious holidays in a secular state? If it’s a personal matter, then people can affirm their ‘personal religious preferences’ on their own time. Why should certain people be allowed time-off for prayers? Why should there be different leave-options for women of a particular religious community on account of childbirth or widowhood? That’s taking religion and custom way too far. Sure, they can take time off, but institutions need not be forced to pay for the religion-time of their employees. Perhaps we could consider 'religious leave' as a category similar to 'medical leave' or 'casual leave'. Every employee could be guaranteed a certain number of days which could even be broken into hours so that, for example, devout Muslims could go to Mosque for a certain period of time on a Friday.  

We don't do that kind of thing, do we? That would be religious intolerance right? No, wrong. You can't have the cake and eat you. You can't ride two horses with one backside. Either go with the 'One Country, One Law Thesis' or quit griping about religion and its relationship with the state. 

It is for these reasons that the Bills that Rev Rathana Thero has tabled are very important pieces in resolving the conundrum of integrity and reconciliation. 

Right now, in the thick of presidential campaigns, in the war of promises bettering the promises of others, the clear front-runner Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the optimistic hopeful Sajith Premadasa, the more-pale-pink-than-red candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the choice of the less-political-but-indignant Mahesh Senanayake and the destined-to-be also-rans have maintained a dead silence on these issues.  

They are playing cheap politics with a serious national issue. Sweeping these under the carpet of expedience may help win the day but they are creating conditions for the entire nation to trip on them sooner or later. 

At what price, ‘The Muslim Vote’? That’s the question that remains unanswered. My personal view is that Muslims have traditionally voted for the UNP.  Sajith Premadasa taking a principled stand on this issue will not cause any dents.  Those Muslims who have supported the Rajapaksas tend to be the more liberal elements of that community. They are not for a ‘One Sri Lanka with Ethnic/Religious Enclaves’. Gotabaya Rajapaksa taking a principled stand will not irk them. 

Regardless of the impact on votes, it is good when candidates are principled rather than populist. Does Sajith have the what-nots? Does Gota? How about the others? Let us see.

malindasenevi@gmail.com.

Read more

Questionnaire for Gotabhaya Rajapaksa

Dear Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, what do you have to say about the murder of Lasantha Wickramatunga (never mind that Ranil Wickremesinghe said Sarath Fonseka was involved)? What do you have to say about white vans? Ekneligoda? Thajudeen? And how about the mausoleum built for your late parents?

If these are the questions you were waiting for me to ask, sorry.  These are legit questions, I’ve asked them, noted contexts and the not-so squeaky clean histories of the interrogators and so on. This is not about regurgitating the questions that Colombots, Kolombians, Rented Voices, Born Again Democrats, Candle Light Ladies put to the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) presidential candidate. 

Simply, I have little patience for those who refuse to see that for every Lasantha they weep copious tears over there were ten thousand Lasanthas shot dead in cold blood or burnt alive during the time the United National Party (UNP) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) were quarreling over the size of their respective ‘manhoods’. For every Thajudeen, ten thousand Thajudeens killed during that time. For every Ekneligoda, ten thousand Ekneligodas disappeared. For every white van, hundreds of vehicles of all kinds carrying vigilante groups striking fear into every household. 

Those gentlemen are still around and are now calling the shots in their respective parties. When justice is called for selectively, it’s politics. UNP politics in this instance. 

But why put questions to ‘Gota’ only? Is it only he that is answerable? Well, as of today he’s the only candidate to be nominated by one of the main parties. The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) looks to be ducking this one. The JVP is to announce a candidate in a few day. 

There are of course groups that are talking of putting forward someone not tainted by party politics, a professional, someone with integrity and standing. There’s Nagananda Kodituwakku and Rohan Pallewatte. The National People’s Movement claims their announcement is imminent. As opposed to the UNP and the SLFP, these groups have plans, policies and vision. The UNP and SLFP, for all the rhetoric, manifestos and grand plans, have not just floundered but have lost all credibility over the past five years. 

Then there’s the issue of ‘the likely winner’. If we consider voting patters, the worth of recent history (as opposed to what happened earlier), key issues including the scandalous incompetence and criminal negligence that paved the way for the Easter Sunday attacks, fears and insecurities, what was said and not said, done and left undone or ignored altogether, the configuration of coalitions in 2015 and their current realities etc., Gota is way ahead, for now, we have to acknowledge.  

If the history of personalities and parties matter, then it would be silly to talk about anyone from any of the main political parties. If such things mattered, then Maithripala Sirisena would not be president today. We don’t live in an ideal world. There are evils and lesser evils, there is the reality of a tendency to vote governments out rather than vote governments in. We don’t have pure politicians, parties and certainly not voters. So if anyone wants to be different and protect sense of integrity, then the logical choice would be to strengthen one way or another candidates or groups outside the political mainstream.  

That’s long term. Arduous. Important and even imperative.  In the immediate, which also counts, there’s Gota and we have to put to him the questions which anyone who has presidential ambitions could and should answer. 

Here goes.

What does Gota have to say about UNHRC Resolution 30/1, co-sponsored by a spineless, confused government utterly at sea when it comes to the national interest and implications for national security? What’s his take on the dominant model of development which brought prosperity to the prosperous largely through plunder and installing a system whose sustainability necessitates wars, mass killings and destruction of the natural world to the point where the future of the planet itself is under threat? Is he aware that those countries which advocate and impose systems that are supposed to bring about the good life but in reality sustains inequities and impoverishes are now abandoning all of it in favor of ‘happiness’ where measurements are not heavy on materialistic considerations?  Does Gota know that after a few centuries of pursuing profit, they’re now, essentially, echoing the observation of the Buddha, santhutti paramang dhanang (there is no greater wealth than contentment)? 

What does he have to say about toxin-free agriculture? Does he have a plan, a time table? How about renewable energy? Does he have a plan, a timetable? Will he protect Wilpattu or in the name of ‘communal harmony’ look away? Does he have a policy about illicit felling in other protected areas?

Does Gota believe that national security is only about protecting borders and eliminating the threat of terrorism? Is that the limit of his vision on national sovereignty? Will he, like the Yahapalanists and the regime his brother Mahinda led, sacrifice such things for short-term economic benefits? What of SOFA, ACSA and the Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact? Does he understand that the identity of oppressor is less relevant than the condition of oppression?  

Law and order. Nepotism. Corruption. Politics of patronage. What’s his take on the alcohol and tobacco mafia (as or more pernicious than the drug mafia)?

Rhetoric is easy. Cost-free. Manifestos are cheap. Politicians are made of promises (if you doubt this, check out Sajith Premadasa’s recent speeches!). Gota is not exactly an ‘outsider’ although he’s never contested an election or held office in a political party. He can be, but that’s left to be seen. 

Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is yet to be elected. It is quite possible that he will be the next president, the way things stand. This is why he can ignore all these questions. He would do well, however, to respond and make his responses the basis of thrust of his campaign speeches.  

Better still, his political opponents can do the same. Steal a bit of thunder. Steal a march. Make the voter think twice. Make Gota and the SLPP wary. As opposed to regurgitating invective that’s selective and therefore, frankly, boring.   

malindasenevi@gmail.com 

RELATED ARTICLES

ගෝටට හනිකට එන්න කියාපිය, මේවට උත්තර දෙන්න කියාපිය

So it is Gota and also-rans?

A political reading of the US Ambassador's angst

Read more