By Vishwamithra –

“A  dreamer is one who can find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Those who contested the Presidential Elections and did not win want Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) and his government to fail. That is an obvious observation. Electioneering is a grueling exercise for power. Everyone involved in as candidates does not want his or her rival to win. When the campaigns begin, some candidates travel the whole nine yards and more. They do not have boundaries; for them, as Vince Lombardi, the famous American football coach said: ‘Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing’. Later, when Richard Nixon contested the 1968 Presidential Elections, he too adopted the same slogan. How ironical that the man for whom ‘winning was the only thing’ had the most inglorious and shameful exit from office of Presidency! Donald Trump was not second to Nixon when he refused to concede defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 Presidential Elections.

The entire Opposition, barring the MPs representing the Northern and Eastern provinces, might want the government led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the National People’s Power (NPP) to fail totally. Even though such a wish is completely dishonorable and self-centered, one cannot argue against the psychological conditioning of those who fought for the same office and ended up at the wrong side of the results. The purpose of this column is not to delve into such palpable behavior of those politicians, but look at the whole picture from a different angle.

Nevertheless, it is not possible to write about this subject without making reference to one segment of our population whose pastime has been elitist in one sense and in another sense, totally divorced from the average man for whom living is a hard and miserable struggle. The average man’s scope of the world is constricted; its stretch and values could be extremely narrow and simplistic. He does not have disposable income for entertainment. Entertainment, if at all, is a drink of illegitimate liquor available next to the  grocery stores from which his wife buys household needs on loan. There is no journey to the cinema hall located in the township a couple of miles away. He has limited income and his needs have been curtailed by the unavailability of that limited income. His wife is not working and after his two children’s school needs are met, there is hardly any money for a three-meal a day life.

Having been constrained by lack of earnings sufficient for elementary comforts of rural life, his daily itinerary is  starting at the wee hours of the morning and ending close to midnight. However, he is the focus of President Dissanayake and his governing party. AKD and the NPP could not care less for the pipe-smoking, whiskey-drinking pukka sahibs in Colombo and all other big cities. Whether the country’s economy is doing well or performing badly, these social cockroaches would continue to survive without even sacrificing his single-malt variety of scotch whiskey. The gulf between the two extremes is far too wide for any politician to talk lightly about.

Now is not the time to get bogged down in talking about who was responsible for the downfall of the economy and who should be taken to task. Such topics apparently have outlived their usefulness. On top of all that is the issue of the new Speaker’s dishonesty and his eventual resignation and the government’s silence for more than two solid weeks on the issue also played a role in the shaping of the arguments against the new government and its prosecution of all those wrongdoers of the past. And then reform of our education system, so that instead of producing arts graduates on a assembly-line basis from our universities, begin shaping and reshaping our education system that will produce university graduates as integral part of the marketplace needs. The country’s focus needs to turn to the economy and to the issue of upholding the law of the land at all times, to its ultimate end. The elections are over and a new government is in power, apparently to address these nagging issues of the rural folk with the singular intention of resolving their issues once and for all.

That so-called elite does not want the rulers to address these serious issues with any earnestness. For them the government’s efforts should be solely focused on business of projects for which the investments and efforts have already been spent on bribes on the previous government’s politicians and the bureaucracy. These charlatans want this government to fail. When their friends from abroad visit Sri Lanka for the festive Christmas season, they shuttle between five star hotels and the other six star restaurants. Colombo city in the evenings can look spectacular. One cannot say that this was the country that was declared bankrupt a couple of years ago.

Lit up in twilight splendor, the tall magnificent structures resemble downtown areas of developed countries; the cascading lights against a backdrop of darkness beyond the Indian ocean, add a touch of sophistication that is far from the eyes of the rural folks whose life struggle has begun one day at a time. A coconut priced at Rs.175 is no reason for these visitors to bother about. A looming rice shortage and its vanishing from the markets is not a subject for these elitist wallahs to write home about. For them the genuineness of the single-malt whiskey, its remarkable and extraordinary taste and the texture of the drink when it travels from the tongue-tip to the throat is very much talked about. Hardships and daily struggle of the rural farmer or fisherman, uncertainty about the next day’s rain for the planting of the seeds and planning for the next harvest, availability of kerosene or petrol for the boat for the next evening’s plunge into the unruly waters of the sea are never the subjects of conversation for these social parasites. And these parasites want the AKD government to fail.

They were never critical about the way the Rajapaksas and Ranil Wickremesinghe ran up expenditure for their security detail. They simply looked the other way. Now they want accountability on the Speaker’s credentials. Fair inquiry. Yet it’s not that they who should not inquire. The average Sri Lankan must also do that and if he is not satisfied, then the NPP government must respond and must do so fast and furious!

The elite that is completely oblivious and insensitive to the struggles and hardships of the rural man patiently waits until the results of the new government emerge. They don’t want good results. They hope and pray that the government’s programs would fall short of their goals. Their daily life from dawn to dusk consists of unrelenting effort to make a deal; they still think that every politician has a price; they are calculating what that price could be. That is precisely how they operated during the last few decades. Well being of man is nowhere near their orbit of computations.

Every man, every politician may have a price. NPP’s task should be to make the perception of that price as foggy, elusive and undiagnosable as possible. Resistance to ambition, evasion of avarice and  defiance of mighty temptation are super-mundane qualities. But if you came to power preaching such noble thoughts backed by nobler action, you must be able to withstand every temptation, every enticement and even a modicum of ambition. Can the NPP achieve such lofty heights. The people are certain about President Dissanayake, the leader. Would the second, third and fourth tier men and women of the National People’s Power endure such a demanding and energy-sapping journey. They should.

National awakening is not a mere slogan; nor is it a temporary state of a nation. It is a constant, ever-advancing journey. The flow of events, cascading episodes of leading men and women, their respective states of mind and its relatability to the collective psyche of the vast majority and the euphoria of victory and frustration of untimely stagnation are all part and parcel of national awakening. Most of us treat such awakening as one single event. It is not so. It is the very story of an unending march. Its leadership might change hands every now an then. But the followers would not wait. Mankind has landed on the Moon not by being lazy and weak and unambitious.

That story must continue; it is continuing in our neighborhood. It is showing remarkable results in some desolate deserts and far out mountainous regions. Being located close to the equator, our country is blessed with endurable and withstandable natural disasters. If Japan could rise from the dead after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear winters, why can’t we defy odds against a financial bankruptcy and a bunch of corrupt and corruptible politicians. Failure is not an option.

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