{"id":65931,"date":"2012-12-22T18:16:48","date_gmt":"2012-12-22T18:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=65931"},"modified":"2012-12-29T19:39:01","modified_gmt":"2012-12-29T19:39:01","slug":"regime-change-without-an-election-how-do-you-effect-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/regime-change-without-an-election-how-do-you-effect-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Regime Change Without An Election – How Do You Effect It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Emil van der Poorten<\/a><\/span>\u00a0–<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Emil van der Poorten<\/p><\/div>\n

There is a groundswell of opinion developing in this country for regime change.<\/p>\n

The \u201cground realities,\u201d as our pseudo-intellectuals call them, are several in number and, in order to provide some focus to this presentation, let\u2019s name the major ones.<\/p>\n

Mahinda Rajapaksa\u2019s popularity<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am not the only commentator on the Sri Lankan political scene who has referred to the fact that our new monarch has built up a considerable fund of personal popularity.\u00a0 However, I do not subscribe to the theory that this is due to his heroism in battle as popularly accepted, particularly by the Rajapaksa<\/a><\/span> Sycophancy.\u00a0 Considering that I advanced this fact a considerable time before the defeat of the Prabhakaran<\/a><\/span> horde, it can hardly be defined as hindsight.\u00a0 The annihilation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) could have been achieved with significantly less bloodshed (both Sinhala and Tamil) and the war ended several months before the butchery at Nanthikadal.\u00a0 However, a swifter end to that conflict would not have served a well-orchestrated publicity campaign with a mushrooming number of enormous \u201ccut-outs\u201d of the President, his brother of the intemperate tongue and an army commander described by the Rajapaksa siblings<\/a><\/span> as \u201cthe best in the world\u201d then. \u00a0Let me emphasize the fact that what had ended up as a rag-tag bunch of nihilists, surrounded by the armed forces on three sides and with a sea of which they\u2019d lost complete control on the fourth, did not have the capacity to resist, for any length of time, one of the largest armed forces in the world.\u00a0 Add to that disadvantage the fact that all those countries with the technical capacity to provide marine military intelligence were readily supplying it to the government of Sri Lanka which began to sink Tiger supply ships thousands of miles out of our territorial waters.\u00a0 No, the prolongation of \u201cthe war,\u201d with the attendant casualties, was deliberate and the icing on that cake was a returning Chief Executive, kissing the tarmac at Katunayake airport in a gesture laden with symbolic importance if not originality given that it was pioneered by a pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church \u00a0a long while back!\u00a0 Make no mistake, the Rajapaksa government deserves to be elevated to Public Relations Heaven for its masterly execution of a P.R. campaign that has had no equal in the history of Sri Lanka.\u00a0 Building on that popularity, every illegal act, totally contemptuous of even minimal democratic norms, became the reality in elections that the President called with monotonous regularity.\u00a0\u00a0 To describe the UNFPA government as a political juggernaut during this time would be to understate the Sri Lankan reality!<\/p>\n

The deliberate destruction of the Rule of Law<\/strong><\/p>\n

In addition, to fortify that dominance, the message went out, loud and clear, that whatever the Rajapaksa horde wanted to do, it would, any vestiges of democratic practice notwithstanding.\u00a0 The steady erosion of the rule of law was accompanied by an \u201cin your face\u201d arrogance, particularly by the most violent of its acolytes such as Mervin Silva<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 The power of the lowest in the Rajapaksa Hierarchy was constantly reinforced by the permissive impunity with which their every transgression was met.\u00a0 These were not only ignored but were often extolled!<\/p>\n

The racist euphoria and triumphalism that followed Prabhakaran\u2019s defeat has been followed by an erosion of the rule of law, deliberately driven by a government that wanted that euphoria replaced by an abject fear of rulers who would brook no opposition, not even the most minimal kind, and destroy anyone not prepared to bend the vassal knee to its corrupt machinations.<\/p>\n

This segueing of euphoria into abject fear has been successful primarily because of a war-weary populace who was a stereotypical example of a population expressing a collective thankfulness at being hit with a five-pound hammer after being subjected to assault by its ten-pound sibling for nigh on three decades!\u00a0 As that old cry has it, \u201cAnything for peace!\u201d<\/p>\n

That is the current \u201cground reality\u201d facing those living in this country with no prospect of anything resembling relief, leave alone change for the better, in the immediate future.<\/p>\n

The Rajapaksa Regime must go, but the question is how does one accomplish this without recourse to undemocratic violence?\u00a0 How does one effect \u201cregime change\u201d democratically after the electoral process has been perverted beyond recognition?<\/p>\n

Peaceful protest and non-violent resistance is the only option available to those who still believe in the validity of human dignity and democratic practice.<\/p>\n

In the matter of getting rid of a far more powerful adversary, the Indians, led by The Mahatma, showed the way.\u00a0 While India, sixty-five years after throwing off the imperialist yoke, is not where it could or should have be in the matter of social justice and equity, it is still one of the two behemoths-in\u2013waiting in the matter of international economic dominance and that should tell us something about the possibilities for our small island nation.\u00a0 There is a way and it is one of non-violent protest and civil disobedience.\u00a0 In fact, I would suggest that it is, particularly given our predicament, the only one open to us.\u00a0 Whether Sri Lankans bowed and bent by years of conflict, have the will to engage in what is going to be a slow and painful process is anyone\u2019s guess but I would venture to suggest that they have no other choice and would be far better off voluntarily engaging in such an effort rather than responding reactively and from a position of weakness when that option is forced upon us.<\/p>\n

Make your choice \u2013 act pro-actively or reactively, but act you must if your human dignity is to be salvaged!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":49743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\nRegime Change Without An Election - How Do You Effect It? - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/regime-change-without-an-election-how-do-you-effect-it\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Regime Change Without An Election - How Do You Effect It? - Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[…]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/regime-change-without-an-election-how-do-you-effect-it\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-12-22T18:16:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-12-29T19:39:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/Emil-V-P.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"336\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"402\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/regime-change-without-an-election-how-do-you-effect-it\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/regime-change-without-an-election-how-do-you-effect-it\/\",\"name\":\"Regime Change Without An Election - How Do You Effect It? 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