By Vishwamithra –

“To grow up requires a whole life but to become old one night is enough.” ~ Ignazio Silone

Twilight, the most expressive phase of the day, is gradually embracing this remote hamlet. The crimson skies are even more telling, a riot of colors bidding adieu to another uneventful day. Those who had to expend their physical labor are tired and weary, rushing home with day’s wages or what is left of it, after purchasing daily groceries to greet the wife and child who are eagerly awaiting the return of the lone breadwinner of the household.

Life in this remote corner is hard and unforgiving. Its cruel aspects are manifest in the meager meal they consume in the thatch-roofed home. The skies are not pregnant with even a thread rain cloud; a sliver of hope for deep and comfortable slumber is distant; the roof is old and giving way with leaky spaces in between the cadjan that’s holding itself literally almost at the end of its tether. Rustic life is held together as a family with a lot of unexpressed love but very little material essentials.

Governments come and governments go, and lives of hundreds of thousands of men and women meander on without any episodes worthy of mention. Dry and irrevocably consistent, at least in their daily situations, the husband wakes up in the wee hours of the day and comes back home with the setting sun each day without a break. The only beautiful facet of their lives is the surrounding environment; mountains on the one side and an immense valley whose land is owned by the village ‘mudalaaly’. He holds all mortgages of most of the denizens of this hamlet. The picturesque valley is maintained beyond  belief by the enormous wealth of Sirisena, the ‘mudalaaly’. His palatial house is built on a hillock overlooking the valley. With an exclusive view of the magnificent contours of this otherwise dull and drab residential settlement, Sirisena has had known no want, deficiency or inadequacy. Contradictions in rural life are many and can be utterly wicked and cruel and savage.

Twilight is nearing dusk in which the setting sun is whispering to a rising moon, painting a delightful mosaic on a vast blue sheet of skies above. What follows shall lure many a romantic damsel hurriedly trudging towards the lotus pool of water located a few hundreds away from her home. Her lover, an ordinary farming young man is awaiting her arrival, yet for another exchange of designs of their marriage and the mutual future they are intent on sharing as man and woman. Their issues are mainly centered on the family’s economic condition; anything else would take a back seat. A very ordinary way to lay eyes on life and plan their schematic time ahead.    

Up north, beyond the palmyra curtain, in the Jaffna peninsula, the narrative runs in the same tune in a less melodious tone and in a more guttural voice. Abundance is present only in relation to the scorching heat and excruciatingly hard means of life and livelihoods. Echos of racial equality and justice for all are seemingly meaningless, cavernous platitudes. Politicians are well versed in that trade. MA Sumanthiran, their main voice in the hard and unrelenting concrete-Colombo, has no seat in Parliament. Shanikiyan Rasamanickam’s narratives have become a cacophonic voice in the proverbial wilderness. They have lost all context of the present. They have not yet come to terms with the reality of Anura Kumara Dissanayake‘s Presidency and an NPP-led government. An electoral loss in Jaffna has had its lingering and agonizing effects of pain and fear.

Nevertheless, the last six months, beginning from September Presidential Elections and November Parliamentary elections, the National People’s Power (NPP) has been warming the seats in the House of Parliament. Have they ushered in a new era? The straight answer is NO. AKD and his leadership committee may not like to hear it. But that s the bitter truth. Presidential System of government is still governing the country and it seems to go nowhere except inside the Presidential Secretariat and deep in the core of governance.

One can understand that, given the grave economic condition the country fell into in 2022, such constitutional reforms can wait for a another day. Granted. Yet, what’s irking the electorate is not just the failure on the delivery of the promise; total silence of any mention about the intention of the government in respect of a constitutional transformation is making them rightfully furious. It is utterly naive to expect, as time goes by, the NPP politicians to be totally disciplined and would abstain from any corrupt or dishonest deals that fall at their doorstep. Falling victim to alluring greed or avaricious transaction would be natural and not beyond these mundane minds. But such failure cannot be condoned in the context of the repeated slogans and election pledges made on their election platforms.

If the Aragalaya-22 has any consequential meaning and if its effects are to be honored and respected, leave alone it being the main galvanizing beginning of the transformation of the JVP to a more amenable and market-friendly NPP as a political entity, both AKD at the helm and the NPP as a collective government need to be responsible for the deliverables promised in the campaign. It’s not yet time to panic, but a little concern is not out of place. Power being corrupt and excessive power more corrupting, Executive Presidency has only lured the holder of that power to more power. The all-consuming egocentric sense of sheer control over whatever he or she presides over can ultimately kill all the ‘good’ things that he has promised and they could evaporate in a nanosecond. That is the human condition; that is what could kill all lofty intentions and pave the way for unthinking, unkind and inconsiderate means of governance. Let that not happen to AKD.

The crimson skies might transfer that color to what may begin to flow on parched and tired earth. ’87 to ’89 era might make a revisit with power transferred from those who were killed in that period to the ones who opt to be at the source of killing and torture. Pol Pot in Campuchia and later in the twenty first century’s Duterte of the Philippines have kept all of us busy in comparative governing systems. A leader enwrapped in self-righteousness could be a dangerous and killer-carrier of the infectious malady of ‘power’; he will be much less desirable than a half-baked mediocre ruler. Before that happens, AKD and the NPP-led government must give an unequivocal undertaking that Executive Presidency would be done away with by such and such a date and when that day arrives they must do it.     

JR Jayewardene’s basic premise for Executive Presidency was that the Westminster system of a Cabinet led by the first among equals, that was the Prime Minister, could be a great impediment to fast and accelerated development of the country’s prioritized projects and schemes. J R may have had a very valid argument. Yet when such enormous powers as those of Executive President are concentrated in one individual whose idiosyncratic ambitions and desires are bound to override those of the country’s, the consequences are irreversibly harmful to the greater interests of the citizenry. A mad man can run havoc with such presidential powers and the Rajapaksas proved it beyond any shade of doubt.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake too could be subject to the same human weaknesses. Power, raw power, is such that its holder might reach a point that what he thinks and conceptualizes becomes of utmost import and everything else becomes secondary and subordinate to what he thinks and acts on. Such machinations of human folly cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the people’s needs and rights and privileges.

We are still a practicing democracy and its values and measurable yardsticks cannot be allowed to be taken away, either by AKD or any other leader. From all what is present and manifestly visible, AKD and the NPP government are totally committed to the principles of democracy. That trust has not been broken, as yet. But crises do not come with prior announcements. They arrive unannounced and without lending any time for planning or strategizing. When they do visit a developing nation as ours, our governance structures must be able to withstand all odds and yet continue as a cohesive nation and on firmer ground, not for the leaders but for the people who are at the bottom of the pyramid of the structure. The architecture of our system has held together without breaking down totally. No military takeovers or coup d’état  has succeeded. Even after the Aragalaya-22‘s success, the country went back to the democratic way of governance and a democratic way of life. What must be uppermost in our leaders’ minds must be the endurance of that way of life and that way of governance.

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