by
Vishnuguptha
“I stay a little longer, as one stays, to cover up the embers that still burn.”
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It’s been like this for quite some time now. The anxieties of the parents, fractured hopes and aspirations of the youth, dashed ambitions of the workers; unfulfilled dreams of adolescents, broken promises of the women, starved bellies of the poor and fleeing expectations of the professionals for justice have all been burning inside them; slowly but surely consuming the outer coating of false armour.
Accident at Eriyagama-via Newsfirst.lk-Aug 8, 2013
They penetrate into the very bones and marrow, eventually attempting to reside in that very essence of man’s spirit that is fighting to extricate itself from the traps and cobwebs of tradition and convention and of decency and self-restraint. But if let go, alas, the explosion would gobble up every living thing around it, leaving behind once again dust and ashes with orphans of a civil catastrophe roaming the streets with bare hands and empty faces.
The frustration and the feeling of helplessness is so profound that it has gripped them into inaction; it has made them static, killing all initiative and aborting any creative action, making a once vibrant community look downright feeble and groping for answers and not getting them from any quarters, living or dead. There are many reasons for this socio-political apathy. From three-wheeler drivers, pavement hawkers, cart-vendors, lower middle-class clerks, labourers and salespersons to middle-class executives and professionals, they are deeply concerned about the deteriorating law and order situation in the country.
With the breakdown in law and order, a societal degeneration starts and it’s natural that people at large feel a sense of anarchical superiority over the law-enforcement agencies and their enforcers. They see the emergence of groups and gangs following the ‘Mafia Code of Ethics’ in engaging their rivals and peers. What should have been arbitrated by officers of the law are now being adjudicated by armed thugs, who are attired in jeans and sleeveless tank-tops, invisibly led by the sons of those who exert real power, either in the defence establishment or the political circles going all the way up to the Cabinet level.
People take a cue from these day-to-day occurrences and mistake this action of the active and inaction of the docile, for something totally different; they follow the cue and take the law into their own hands.
Increasing violence in the remotest of villages, multiplication of road and motor vehicular accidents and resultant fatalities, a teacher of a leading Colombo school climbing on top of the balcony of a school building because she is not happy with the transfer orders, Grandpass erupting in a quasi-religious riot, they all tell an ominous tale of disaffection with the status quo, of how things are being tackled or not tackled by those who should perform that task. The sense of alienation that has crept into the psyche of every man, woman and child is taking them further away from that steady, strong and firm foundation of a decent and civilized society- enforcement of law and order and the subjects’ confidence in the enforcing authorities.
When one adds to the above confusing assortment of circumstances, the closure of many busy roads due to this demonstration or that protest and repeated mistakes on the part of examiners leading to an almost total collapse in the examination process in the education sector, people wonder how on earth this government is surviving. For all these misdeeds and mishaps, the Governing Party is sitting pretty comfortably and the opposition too is sending a wrong signal to the country and her people that all is cozy and good in Amsterdam!
The real miracle is when the election time comes; people do vote for this government and articulate in no uncertain terms their endorsement of the policies, principles and the personalities of the governing Party. In the writer’s assessment, there is more than a couple of reasons why people vote for the nominees of the government, time after time since 1994 in general and since 2005 in particular. Among them are: War-victory, Money and Muscle-power, Opposition inaction, lack of leadership and so forth. The opposition has to necessarily overcome these obstacles, if they are ever to win an election.
More than 70% of the voting population of Sri Lanka are Sinhalese Buddhists. When independence was obtained in 1948, after almost five centuries of foreign domination by the Western military powers – Portuguese, Dutch and the British – it gave Sri Lankans an opportunity to be a sovereign State. The majority Sinhalese Buddhists took it upon themselves the onerous task of righting a ‘historical wrong’. Rightly or wrongly, the task so undertaken by some extreme elements of this segment of the population, mostly made up of the indigenously-educated middle-class Sinhalese Buddhists, posed a formidable challenge to the political leadership at the time which came from the foreign-influenced English-educated upper echelons of the elites of Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was known then.
The second and third generations of this class of Sinhalese-Buddhists were witness to the changing realities of socio-economic-political changes in the fifties and sixties. For them, the psychological lift that resulted from the war-victory achieved by the Sri Lankan armed forces against the Northern Terrorists led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), rendered a dramatic departure from the ‘inferiority complex’ that they were suffering from vis-à-vis the Tamils in the North, despite the fact that the Sinhalese Buddhists comprised a shade more than 70% of the total population. This escape from this paradoxical complex in fact assumed a role much more destructive in its potential growth. Civil organizations formed on the lines of the Bodhu Bala Sena, Ravana Balakaya and others are merely outward manifestations of this paradox.
War-victory lent itself as a vehicle to transport the Sinhalese psyche and its possessors to the fringes, further alienating the middle-of-the-road, more urban-educated reasonable men and women. Yet this middle-of-the-road reasonable men and women do not have among them, any articulate leaders nor do they have ‘natural drive’ which is usually ascribable to those who dwell on the threshold. This war-victory has given the government an unshakeable advantage at the elections.
Added to that is the ambivalent positions adopted by the main Opposition Party, the United National Party and it has rendered the UNP almost impotent and powerless especially in the rural villages where this ‘neo-patriotism’ slogan is most effectively used by the government party. Some extreme elements that could be classified as social degenerates are getting away with almost anything; war-victory has given them a cover beyond their expectations.
The opposition is in no credible position to challenge the money and muscle power of the Government Party. Eighteen years decaying in the opposition benches without holding any hope for its diehard supporters is not a generous omen for any political party. When a political party is in that state of decomposition, one could hardly find any prospective donor to contribute to the Party coffers. The problem with the UNP is not only its leader although he is primarily the main cause but its other office-bearers are equally ineffectual and politically uneducated even though each one of them has spent all their adult lives in politics.
But they simply don’t seem to realize that drifting away in an opposition party that has no direction or aim is no experience at all to relate to your grandchildren. On the contrary, the governing United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) is heavily backed by big money and even bigger muscles. Winning at a very consistent rate is one obvious reason for this, yet a well-articulated program and policy, strong and credible leadership, well-knit organization and a winning attitude would provide an incentive to would-be donors to throw in enough cash and other support in kind to any political party.
This has been discussed at length in my previous columns and it still needs to be repeated. The main political entity in the opposition is the United National Party and it commands more than 90% of the total vote bank of the opposition. But today, both the UNP and its leader are ‘damaged goods’; their brand is hurt so much that unless a total revamping is effected from top to bottom of the Party hierarchy, which includes the leader, other office-bearers and the Working Committee, it won’t stand a chance against the current regime and its partners at the elections. The people will keep on voting for the UPFA, not just for one or two reasons but for the combination of all the reasons illustrated above.