By Vishwamithra –

Continued from March 11^th Column: ‘Sri Lanka’s best and worst came together, set apart by just two years‘

“If they answer not thy call, walk alone, walk alone…” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Resilience of a people can never be foreclosed. However long a time they had been in a state of apathy and oblivion, there comes a moment, as Jawaharlal Nehru said, ‘rarely in history’, when they give expression to their collective grief and agony in order to rise against the wrongs done unto them by their own elected leaders. Aragalaya-22 was an unparalleled tribute to a people who chose to express to the world that  ‘enough is enough’. They had no leader; at the time, all political leaders, except perhaps the National People’s Power (NPP), did not understand the underlying psyche of the country.

However, the lengthening of lines for petrol, diesel, kerosene and cooking gas shortened the patience of a people whose aspirations and hopes were dashed to the ground. The numbers of men, women and children who gathered on the Galle Face Green continued to grow; hundreds became thousands and thousands soared to tens of thousands. The protests expanded and stretched their orbit from Colombo to Galle, Kurunegala and Kandy. It grew until the sitting President, the so-called ‘Veeraya’ of the war against the Tigers, namely Gotabaya Rajapaksa, hurriedly ran away from the ‘throne’. Leaving behind in his Presidential House some millions of rupees, more than fifteen (15), Gota fled the country. It was not a well planned coup d’etat; nor was it a violent, armed revolution, even though it could be called a modern-day revolution armed with anger and determination and style. On a future date, historians will describe and define the Aragalaya-22 in their own terms.

How could a leaderless uprising of a people be so successful in achieving its desired goals? When Sajith Premadasa, the leader of the Samagi Jana Balavegaya(SJB), accompanied by Eran Wickremaratne, another member of the top leadership of the Party, attempted to cross the threshold of the Aragalaya ground, they were asked to leave the premises in the most humiliating and unmistakable fashion. They were stoned and chased away and the entire country witnessed one of the most shameful political spectacles: never was there another parallel incident in our short history of seventy seven years since Independence.

However, there were two leaders who were tolerated by the protesters: Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the leader of the NPP. Not that Fonseka and Dissanayake (AKD) were greeted as heroes, they were merely allowed to enter the hallowed arena of the Aragalaya. The leadership of the movement, if there were any, remained behind the rigorous visage of those who openly carried out many a mundane and extraordinary task related to the Aragalaya. Colombo seven ladies joined the Aragalaya as a matter of style, as they too were at the suffering end of the lack of petrol and cooking gas. The country’s plight had spread from the fashionable drawing rooms in Cinnamon Gardens to the most remote hamlet in the rural hinterland.

The International Monetary Fund identified the blatant corrupt practices of the ruling class and idiotic decisions made in relation to the country’s fiscal and monitory policies by the Central Bank Governor and his co-staff  for the pathetic situation in the country as the main cause for the collapse of the country’s economy.

As always in history, such extraordinary crises produce even more extraordinary challenges. Clever politicians who are alert to such unique sociopolitical dynamics respond to these crises intelligently, strategically and with unqualified determination. The National People’s Power (NPP) proved to be the only political party that was sensitive to the sociopolitical challenges that were generated by the country’s economic collapse. The Aragalaya-22′s defined the crisis as one engendered by the successive governments of the previous seventy six years; it also helped the NPP to characterize all those who governed the country in that period as protectors of the status quo; and the NPP as the only alternative, representing the suffering masses.

In such a sociopolitical quandary, where the people are offered a binary choice, they, more often than not, opt for the non-status quo alternative. AKD and the NPP identified this version of history. In order to map out their own path, the NPP began a very vigorous campaign of mass rallies and the people gathered for these mass meetings not because they wanted to gather behind the old JVP, but because they seemingly had no alternative. Rejection of the status quo was an unequivocal course of thought and action. And the NPP had one unchangeable weapon in their midst: Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) and his echoing voice.

Both Ranil Wickremesinghe, the un-elected President and Sajith Premadasa, the leader of the SJB, faded into nothingness in the presence of AKD. In addition to AKD, the NPP also had a whole gallery of second level speakers who could hold an audience and convince them as to their point of view. The people who were starved of sincere-looking (not necessarily genuinely sincere)  political leadership, the very oratorical profile of the NPP and that of its leader presented an irresistibly palatable alternative. The status quo stood on very unsteady and trembling ground. All that was done and left undone by the previous governments from the Senanayakes, Jayewardenes and Bandaranaikes to the Rajapaksas looked dangerously close to the threshold of extinction.

The abyss that their collective efforts from 1948 to 2022 resulted in was not only glaring in the face of Mother Lanka, she was dangerously flirting with national apathy and indifference all the way onto catastrophic collapse. AKD and the NPP offered a seemingly probable alternative. And in the Presidential Elections followed by Parliamentary Elections held in 2024, the people expressed their endorsement.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his Party, NPP are in power now. They promised an incorrupt and incorruptible system of governance; they promised that they would bring all those who committed many atrocities, both financial and criminal, before the Law. One by one, they are being brought before the long arms of the country’s legal system. We’re seeing the tip of this massive iceberg of corruption and other crimes so committed by these so-called heroes of the people.

Up to date, the obvious ones are in prison; but many more are to be produced. Who amongst them would be behind bars, one does not know. But it must be taken in the context of ‘justice for the most vulnerable in society’, not in terms of extracting revenge from the defeated rivals on the political field.

The country’s economy is not in an advancing stage yet; but it’s steady and seems to be headed in the right direction. Government interruptions seem to be limited and the political heads of the government have so far been distant from corruption, nepotism and bribery. No system change has been installed, but the status quo has had its day and seemingly on the way out. But in politics, nothing can be ruled in or out.

In the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos who ruled the country like a brutal dictator was deposed in 1986, yet his son, Bongbong Marcos was elected President in 2022. What a cruel irony of people’s choice? Namal Rajapaksa is still in the arena. His father and uncles are being alleged to have committed gravely blatant financial crimes against the people of Sri Lanka, but one can never rule out the possibility of Namal Rajapaksa coming to power in the future. Shelf-life of people’s memory  could be too short and other circumstances certainly can intervene to create objective and subjective conditions to make way for Namal again.

Therefore, AKD’s role now becomes crucially significant. His and his government’s focus should be laser driven and must be on the service of all Sri Lankans: Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and other minorities. There is no way can he evade this challenging paradigm. As much as he created a new dimension in the country’s’ political mindset, that a boy who had his secondary education at  Thambuththegama Central School in Anuradhapura district and passed out as a Physical Science graduate from the University of Kelaniya and of Peradeniya,  has more than he has bargained for. His comprehension prowess that has been weaved into impeccable oratorical skills has catapulted him to a unique position in society. That by itself is a remarkable achievement for a boy who learnt his abc in politics in the cells of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) when it was under Rohana Wijeweera.

AKD has not only transformed that cellish JVP into a mainstream national party, he has mutated and reshaped the country’s meandering flow of events into a vibrant and fresh  cascade of thinking and ideals. He cannot rest, for those who tire and pursue a righteous path have no time to rest their feet or mind. AKD has proven that he has, within himself, that extraordinary determination, capacity and ability to take the country where he originally thought was its ultimate destination. Whether he would reach that destination or not, the very journey itself can create many an achievements of unparalleled measure, despite the inevitable obstacles and deterrent by his rivals.

It is indeed an enchanting journey, originally in the woods of the unknown where the fellow travelers could pass away without notice by the leader, but with each new step, new adventures stare in your face that challenge you to the ends of your endurance. It is an enthralling awakening!

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