By Vishwamithra –

“Paths are made by walking” ~ Franz Kafka

The people yearned for a full transformation from the old and the wicked to a new and challenging. Fed up with the traditional and boring political leadership, they demanded a real transformation; not a mere superficial change. Their thirst for a system change was never mitigated. That system which was the fundamental reason for our collective apathy, aimless pursuits and falling flat on our own bellies after realizing that it was the same mirage that we were deceived by, time and time again, came to a certain end. The country’s financial bankruptcy saw to it that we were never going back.

Those who thundered from atop the election platforms for that system change are now deafeningly silent about it; the change that they told us they would bring about is not even on the horizon. The IMF is still dictating our policy changes or lack thereof. What went missing? What never came about has been swept under the proverbial carpet. Lack of governing experience cannot be a reason; it could be an excuse, that too, whispered within inner conversations. The bureaucracy, that led or misled or even enabled the corrupt, dishonest and utterly self-centered governments of the Rajapaksas and the Wickremasinghes, is supposed to be patently experienced and well-equipped to run a government. But they seem to be more corrupt, double-dealing and incompetent than an inexperienced bunch of men and women that the NPP government is made up of.

The challenge is not for the current generation, nor for its offspring generation. It is for the grandchildren of them. Not knowing what their grandparent generation that endured without withstanding, tolerated without questioning and submitted without fighting the rule of a family cabal and decadent elitists, would step into a sick and suffering societal dynamic that would ultimately devour its own without blinking an eye. It is indeed a tragic turn of events that was in cycle for seven long decades. The only wrong that those generations did was not to question, not to suspect and not to recognize the true composition of their political leadership.

Rohana Wijeweera‘s approach was starkly error-ridden and too animal-like in execution. Delightful slogans and pontification without mercy is not the answer to galvanize a sleeping citizenry. Pol Pot’s execution style has energy and zest only for a very short time. Shelf-life of rhetoric and speechifying is calculatedly short. It’s only for the deception of the masses and driving them to unattainable goals. Utopia is as distant and unattainable as ‘Ithaca’ in Homer’s Odyssey. They exist only in the dead, yet appealingly enchanting pages of poetry. Wijeweera proved that subjective leadership is no leadership without an objective and a scientific foundation.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake is not only a successor to Wijeweera, he is also a direct product of that school of thought which determined the direction and path to a real change. After more than a half a century of years, during which time the country went spiraling down from peace to war and from moderate and less-than-abundance to bankruptcy, the objective conditions provided for a real, true  and unvarnished change. The people saw in AKD their own image; they dreamt that, not of a land of milk and honey, but one of content and room to advance to a better day and place. Were they deceived? Were they hoodwinked again? The real jury is still out!                    

The Executive Presidency is still in tact and the day it will turn even a well-disciplined hermit monk into a cruel and pitiless dictator-ruler might not be too far away. Anura Kumara Dissanayake was elected President not to safeguard the elitist school of political thought; nor was he chosen by the people to keep pontificating from his exalted Presidential Secretariat what must be done and what must not be done. That phase of the rule is long gone. Six months is a long time in politics.

Indeed, it is a long time. Not only is it appearing to be senseless to talk about the subtle and elusive  aspects of governance, it seems to have become redundant to engage in legalistic and constitutional innuendos; an ideological approach to the way the NPP is governing the country is observably absent.  Its Cabinet of Ministers, except perhaps Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, Justice Minster Harshana Nanayakkara and Foreign Minister Wijitha Herath seem to be uncomfortable in verbalizing a cohesive point of view. They are either seemingly lost in their verbalization or incapable of articulating a simple and obvious train of thought into words, whatever the language is. Political speechmaking is hardly a qualification for contextualizing and presenting a cohesive argument for an intelligent audience.

We cannot close our doors to international fora and other conventions which are a part and parcel of global exchange of governmental matters. What alternatives are there for the government. The most ideal example is the late President Premadasa. Whatever his shortcomings in the sphere of policies and other approaches he adopted in order to overcome the opposition hurled at him by his adversaries, Premadasa was a role-model for any intern who wishes to improve on his or her self-confidence and deeper knowledge of the subjects that they wish to study.

Governance is not an effortless and cushy job. Its very execution is what brings improvement or deterioration to the people it is supposed to serve. Power that accompanies position that one holds can kill everything that the he or she dreamt about service- the unwritten definition and the ultimate end goal of politics. Arrogance and all-powerfulness that creeps into his mind cannot be taken softly. Its impact and negative influence could be the destroyer of his ambitions.

Absent all this maddening dynamics that comes to play in the exercise of power and policies, the particular sociopolitical context that helps the politician is a demanding populace and evidence of an imminent need in society for the change the citizenry demands; a sense of total and absolute honesty and implicit incorruptibility on the part of the politician then becomes a must in this equation.

Nevertheless, what we must remember in all this sociopolitical environs is that we are witnessing a moving social drama and the players are inherently flawed and the challenges that are thrown at him by society at large could be utterly unbearable, both in the short and long runs. The voter, the subject people, expected a total change, a system change that could offer some immediate relief and affordability for their day to day household essentials. What happened with the election of an NPP-led government was neither. They didn’t get immediate relief nor any signs of s system change.

That root cause has become an irritant for the government. And it has been constant in its manifestation and the government being mute in its response is being built by the Opposition as a weakness in the governing circles. However, one must always bear in mind that the fundamental cause for the election of AKD as President and NPP as a two thirds majority power in Parliament was the grave economic crisis that enveloped the whole country from the remotest rural hamlet to the busiest urban junction. Change of constitution from Executive Presidency to whatever the resultant system be is essentially secondary.

Yet a willingness to change from the ‘old’ to a ‘new’ has not been shown in any considerably prominent manner. The manner and means to execute government plans and policies, a fundamental change in the country’s education system, a radical transformation in the bureaucracy, overseas trips for conventions and conferences by Ministers and other parliamentarians, approach to our geopolitical partners, especially India and China, making fishery a significant foreign exchange earner for the country by enlarging the capacities of the fisheries industry, transforming our farming community from peasantry to a fraternity of agricultural entrepreneurs, once and for all settlement of the land problem in the North and East, relieving minds and hearts of the Tamil community and of course a carefully planned economic advancement in the North centered on the Giants Tank in Mannar, could all be amongst the subjects of a workable policy document the government could issue and be widely discussed at the highest Cabinet, Parliament and decentralized levels.

None of these has manifested itself. The distress and disfavor among the voting population is basically because of the failure on the part of the government and its line Ministers. Unfortunately, both for the government and the people, the face of government is AKD. No other Minister or Prime Minister has become a trusted communicator for the government. ‘One man show’ cannot be a mode of governance for the country that is struggling to emerge from a severe economic crisis just three years ago. How they are going to come out of this quagmire is anyone’s guess. But guesses would not take you anywhere. Nor would crisis management be a proven methodology applied as a consistent  tool in macro management of a our polity.

AKD does not have to introduce collectivization of our farming and land-based economy; large scale purging of men and women in the civil and military service in the various sectors of government need not be exercised. Yet a system change could be installed provided the intentions and the ambitions meet at the same juncture where the country’s ambitions and her collective pursuit of justice and well-being meet. All our men and women are waiting for that day.

*The writer can be reached at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com