By Vishwamithra –

“When you can’t see someone all day long, the only thing you have to evaluate is the work. A lot of the petty evaluation stats just melt away.” ~ Jason Fried

Losers are many and winners few. That is the macro verdict of the year 2024. In an Election Year, one expects to close the year with a net positive. However, the human condition deems it absolutely essential that whoever wins or loses, the country at large and her people remain, if not winners, at least recipients of a draw. Sri Lanka is fortunate. She has done no harm to its exploiters. She has been patiently waiting for the D-Day. And when it arrived, they showed the entire world, albeit the western media which observed an absolute silence and oblivion of sort, that adulthood is not just growing old, accumulating numbers at the end of years lived, but a comprehensive advancement of intellectual curiosity, emotional equilibrium and wide wisdom. They elected Anura Kumara Dissanayake as President and National People’s Power(NPP) as the ruling majority in the legislature and they proved that they are becoming wise.

Winners

1. Country

In short, the country, Sri Lanka emerged as an outright winner in 2024. A country that was on the brink of total catastrophe, a declared bankrupt nation, whose citizens spent more time of the day in long unending lines for cooking gas, petrol and diesel now have more of their time that could be spent buying the essentials for their children’s schooling, their books, wives’ saris or brothers’ and parent’s primary and secondary needs. It is still not the ideal situation. It’s far from such a comfort zone. Yet the grueling journey is more tolerable than the energy and time wasted on unmoving lines and the scourge of corruption-ridden politics and social depravity.

The long term goals have been set and they being relatively attainable is looking more and more realistic than elusive. Failure of the time squandered and gone-by could not be withstood anymore. The people, the ultimate arbitrators of a nation’s destiny, took it upon themselves the leading role. Exposed one time  to hard  and cruel sun and at the same time submerged in the relentless waters of dangerous floods, the people and the country collectively responded to the challenge which usually confronts a nation, whether democratically ruled or dictatorially suppressed. They were not swayed by a barrage of misinformation and brazen lies of the opposition that consisted of a dying school of thought.

2. Need for Change

Next comes the need for change. Sri Lanka was ruled by a traditional class of rulers which was bogged down in traditional thinking and traditional action. Having being driven to the fringes of racial prejudice and ethnic discrimination, the people whose values were degraded by their own leaders for eight long decades, decided that they needed a to tread along a different and hitherto unknown path. The financial and economic calamity that set in along with a deadly pandemic, opened their eyes. A philosophy founded on class hatred, ethnic identification and social separatism had reached the end of its usefulness. Awakening of the mind as a collective society, the country responded to the need for change in remarkably positive manner. It was not a change for change’s sake. It was one for its very freshness and the invalidity of the old. Change was not what the people were forced to accommodate. It was the need of the hour and they embraced with open arms. The need for Change indeed was a resounding winner in the year 2024. Without that change, nothing else that followed could have had a chance of a snowball in hell.

3. President AKD and NPP

Of course, no change is possible without its mechanisms and crusaders, advocates and champions. The National People’s Power (NPP) superbly led by AKD, Vijitha Herath and Harini Amarasuriya provided precisely that leadership, advocacy, and zeal to the need for change. Example, which is a hallmark of authentic and sincere leadership gave way for inauthentic, cosmetic and fake status portrayed by the Wickremesinghes, Premadasas and the Rajapaksas. The people understood the difference of the NPP from the traditional politicos and they responded by voting them to power overwhelmingly. It is an understatement to say that the NPP prevailed at the end of the day. It is a positive response and much more. Aragalaya-22 suggested and even traveled the distance of displaying that social equanimity which usually dawns on man in the wake of intellectual search.

AKD and the NPP leadership were with the people; they accompanied them every step of the way. Providing authoritative guidance, orchestrating the whole drama and being with the soldiers to the end of the journey is no mundane task. A very few men and women have achieved that onerous undertaking in the human story. Certainly in Ceylon, since Independence in 1948, none could be compared to the current leadership of the NPP. Sweeping the parliamentary elections, dusting old carpet and cleansing the floor of the old fossils was left to the abilities and aptitudes of the NPP and they did not let the country down. The faith and trust that was bestowed on the NPP leadership was real. Now is the time not to waste that faith; now is the time they reciprocated that faith and deliver the much wanted goods; the time for no more talk and time for no more excuses.

4. Democracy

One more winner is the country’s democracy and the people’s allegiance and faith in this utterly imperfect yet indispensable method of elective, representative governance. When some countries in the so-called developing world are trending towards oligarchic and dictatorial modes of governance, Sri Lanka, despite her precarious economic ills, chose democracy as her master in the field of governing principle. That in itself is a winning position to be in. By electing  a onetime ultra-leftist Marxist party into power, the people displayed their faith in a system that has led them astray many a time, but remains to be a politically acceptable working instrument of governance that still satisfies a greater majority of the people. They accepted the NPP as a reformed JVP, more akin to democratic principles than the ones that were ousted- UNP, SJB SLFP and SLPP.

Losers

1. Ranil Wickremesinghe

Ranil Wickremesinghe became our constitutional President in the wake of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s untimely departure from office. Ranil, albeit his clever management of the country’s ailing economy  at a time when it was flirting with certain disaster, has never been a success at the polls. His general behavior, both in private and public, has not been attractive to the rural masses of the country. It is reliably understood that even on the night of the presidential elections, Maithree, Ranil’s scholarly wife and Ranil himself were quite optimistic that he would win. Such delusional expectations were very much akin to the mindset of Sirimavo and Felix Bandaranaike on the eve of the General Elections in 1970. Politicians of all parties ultimately become victims of this hallucination of victory in all circumstances and Sri Lankan politicians are not spared of that humiliation. Ranil’s defeat was nothing but a reaffirmation of the people’s choice in election of leaders.

2. Sajith Premadasa

Sajith’s story is altogether another story to tell. Driven by single-minded ambition, Sajith too has been unveiling a psyche of an amateurish entry into politics. Having been brought up in the lap of luxuries that was not available to his father, the late R Premadasa, Sajith simply does not understand nor does he make any attempt to empathize with, the real hardships of an ordinary man and woman in our society. He is definitely suffering from the ‘entitlement syndrome’, in that he is of the deep-seated condition that he too belongs in that closely-guarded elite of society. Allegedly financed by some casino businessmen, Sajith’s preaching is totally fake and rubbish. He too suffered a humiliating defeat at the Presidential Elections and another sweeping failure at the Parliamentary Elections. He is starting a count of defeats, which one day may very well come close to the number of defeats his former leader Ranil is so infamously branded for.

3. Rajapaksas and their henchmen

The Rajapaksas, including Namal, the so-called heir apparent to the Rajapaksa dynasty, came down as outright losers, at both Presidential and parliamentary elections. A nation’s verdict on the Rajapaksas appeared to be final but only a political novice would say such a thing as final. In politics nothing can be ruled in or out. If the son of Marcos in the Philippines could come back to power after the shameful exit of the father, nothing can be predicted as final. Yet the defeat handed out to the Rajapaksa henchmen such as Gammanpila, Aluthgamage, Dilum Amunugama and Lohan Ratwatte is an ultimate judgment of an awakened nation. But the jury is still out there on some other elements in this corrupt cabal of politicians who chose to take the country down the drain; enriching themselves  was not merely a collateral damage, on the contrary, it was a willful exercise of political power they  enjoyed at the time.

Conclusion

There are many more winners and losers of the year 2024. But the most prominent amongst them are the ones about whom I chose to pen about. Within a given period of time, when the country is in the process of raising her head from a disastrous period of ill-governance, financial mismanagement and unadulterated corruption, it sounds quite easy to make forecasts; yet it is also extremely hard to arrive at one hundred percent right ones. We are all imperfect men and women. Within that imperfection we all try to reach a perfect status of being and it is certainly not in the realm of impossibility for at least a few of us reach somewhere close to imperfect perfection.

Happy Holidays to all our readers!

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