by

Tisaranee Gunasekara

“…half ready to believe

That a crippled trust might walk.”

Seamus Heaney (The Cure at Troy)

Walter Benjamin called fairytale ‘the first tutor of mankind’ (Illuminations). One of the most evocative warnings about the dangers of ignoring limits comes precisely from a fairytale – the much-narrated story of the fisherman, his wife and the wish-granting fish.

In the tale, doom does not come unheralded. As the wife ups her demands, nature responds with increasing rage. On his last visit, the hapless fisherman is greeted with a devastating storm and a sea which “came in with black waves as high as towers and mountains…” Doom is avoidable and inevitable; a different path is possible but the fisherman’s wife is too possessed by hubris to see it.

The Rajapaksas are not the first rulers to self-destruct through hubris; nor will they be the last. Had Mahinda Rajapaksa paused to ponder the once mighty Vellupillai Pirapaharan’s humiliating end, instead of celebrating it unceasingly, he may have understood how much of it was self-wrought.

The UPFA reached its electoral zenith at the 2010 parliamentary election. Afterwards its average vote began to decrease despite limitless abuse of state power and resources. Electoral statistics reflected emerging societal reality – a growing wave of mass discontent, caused primarily by economics. According to the CPA’s August 2014 opinion survey (Democracy in Post-War Sri Lanka), a clear majority of Lankans (54.5%) believed that their own personal economic condition got worse in 2013. 39.5% of Lankans and 78.8% of Sinhalese said they had to reduce the quality/quantity of the food they purchased in that year.

Not a time to have an electoral contest, even on a constitutionally-politically-financially unbalanced playing field.

Mr. Rajapaksa should have used the two years remaining to him to effect urgent course corrections, starting with a radically different approach to economics and minorities.

Instead, he decided to go for an early presidential election.

Astrology obviously played a part, but in a context fashioned by politico-dynastic needs. Post-18th Amendment, the Rajapaksa project had only two potential vulnerabilities – the succession was not ensured since the PM was a non-Rajapaksa; and the SLFP was not quite a Rajapaksa-party. The early election was partly an attempt to close the first loophole. It inadvertently turned the second loophole into a sinkhole.

Mahinda Rajapaksa, the consummate politician, would have seen the signs. But by then he was the ‘Universally Acclaimed Lord of the Three-Sinhala Lands’ at least in his own eyes. Ensconced in an echo-chamber, he could hear nothing but paeans of praise endless repeated. Not even the UPFA’s near-defeat at the Uva PC poll could dent that fog of self-adulation.

Though Mr. Rajapaksa was impervious to the Uva signal, others were not. Uva demonstrated that barring a mass-scale election-theft (which would be politically untenable), a united opposition fielding a strong candidate could defeat the incumbent, even in an extremely unfair election.

A Clash of Worldviews

Perhaps no election campaign in Ceylon/Sri Lanka was fought by a major party (and a ruling party) on a platform so racist, retrogressive and benighted.

Racism, increasingly naked, accompanied by unending images of blood and gore, was the main fare of Rajapaksa propaganda. Blood-and-faith patriotism was its battle-cry. Astrologers played the role of pollsters, telling the electorate who was going to win.

Traditionally in Lankan elections astrology was limited to deciding auspicious days and times. But this time astrology played a key role in the election campaign, labouring ceaselessly to inculcate a belief in a cosmically preordained Rajapaksa victory.

This descent into the realms of mumbo-jumbo reached its nadir with the ITN hosting on conclave of astrologers (‘Athulanthaya’ – 10.12.2014). Astrologer after astrologer preached the good news of an unstoppable divinely-mandated Rajapaksa victory. ‘Royal Astrologer’ (that’s how far we had slipped down the ladder of progress; we actually had a ‘royal astrologer’) Sumanadasa Abeygunawardane (who was also a director of the ITN and the NSB) said that Mahinda Rajapaksa will win a third and a fourth term. Others echoed him. Astrologer Mapalagama Wimalaratne announced triumphantly that he alone possessed a copy of Common Candidate Maithripala Sirisena’s horoscope. Mr. Sirisena is going through an extremely bad time he said; ‘Saturn will impose every possible defeat and destruction on him’.

On January 5, 2015, the last day of the campaign, newspapers were full of advertisements, most supporting Mr. Rajapaksa. Unique amongst them was a full page ad by the Diyawadana Nilame and the Basnayake Nilames of 31 devales. The ad denounced ‘local and international forces and other evil people’ who are trying to ‘commit the great sin of destabilising the country’; it also expressed full backing to the ‘holy leader courageously defending the country’.

The election was thus a contestation of two diametrically opposite worldviews, between a semi-feudalist ethos based on monarchic rights, tribal loyalties, gods, god-men and stargazers (who work in an earth-centric universe) – and democracy. Primitive beliefs became political arguments. A Rajapaksa victory would have amounted to a win not just for dynastic politics and Sinhala-Buddhist supremacism but also for superstition and mythomania in their crassest form.

VS Naipul wrote, “Power came from the people…. As high a man could be taken up, so low when he lost power, he could be cast down” (India: A Million Mutinies Now). That is the democratic reality the Rajapaksas tried to override. They failed, but it is important to remember that they almost succeeded. The task therefore is to create as many impediments as possible to any future attempt by any leader/party to disembowel democracy from within. That task requires constitutional, economic and psychological changes, in state and government, polity, economy and society and in our own thinking.

Economic Truths and Political Realities

Economics is often the Achilles Heel of democratisation projects.

Corruption and waste are hallmarks of anti-democratic regimes. Despots are no more ‘clean’ than they are efficient; they are just better able to hide the truth both about late trains and stolen billions. Their successors, finding themselves saddled with financially precarious debt-ridden nations, impose austerity measures in a vain hope of restoring economic health. And austerity, in a neo-liberal context, means nothing more than burdening the already overburdened bottom layers of society. The result is a slow but steady evaporation of the popular consensus necessary for democratic transformation – and a re-legitimisation of anti-democratic and racist ideas.

The danger is particularly acute in Sri Lanka, where a National Socialist variety of anti-capitalism has had a strong historical presence. Had the new government presented an ‘austerity’ budget, had it asked the poor and the middle classes to tighten their belts still further, the brand of anti-capitalism which blames all Sinhala woes on avaricious Tamil, Muslim and Christian capitalists would have made a triumphant comeback.

Fortunately the Interim Budget has stalled that danger.

Rajapaksa economic strategy was an extractive one. Rajapaksa politics was an extremely expensive affair which required a modern form of ‘tax-farming’ for financial survival. 80% of tax revenue came from indirect taxes imposed on essential goods and services. These taxes became a key source of inflation; they reduced the purchasing power of the ordinary people and had a knock-on effect on small and medium entrepreneurs.

Loss-making political favourites thrived. Mihin Lanka had a lot of company. The UDA, run by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, was making losses from 2006. By 2011, its accumulated losses amounted to 1.23 billion rupees. Sometimes financial sleight-of-hand was used to create an impression of profitability. As the AG reported, in 2011, the UDA used a financial-injection of Rs.532 million to show a non-existent profit (before tax) of Rs.242 million (The Sunday Times – 27.4.2014). In actuality, in 2011 the UDA made a massive loss of Rs.290 million!

Rajapaksa economics was business-friendly, selectively; it was extremely friendly towards friendly businessmen. Their aim was to turn the private sector economy into another Rajapaksa-dependency, like the military, the judiciary, the bureaucracy and the Sinhala-Buddhist establishment. Symbolic of this transformation was the rapid rise of Dhammika Perera (Chairman, BOI in 2007; Secretary, Ministry of Transport 2011 – perhaps the first time a functioning businessman was made a ministry secretary).

Education was de-prioritised; budgetary allocations declined from 1.81% of GDP in 2010 to 1.51% of GDP in 2013. This contributed to an increase in youth unemployment (believed to be around 20%). Sri Lanka became identified as a country suffering from alarming increases in income disparities. Regional disparities which took an ethnic nature made matters worse. During the 2012 household survey of the Northern Province by the UNHCR, “researchers found that 43 percent of participants reported having a monthly income of Rs.5,000 ($38) or less, against a national average of Rs.36,451 ($280) per month” (IRIN News – 9.1.2014).

The course correction effected by the Interim Budge therefore is a necessary one. It has reduced reliance on indirect taxes while taxing some of the favoured-businesses which enjoyed economically irrational privileges. The pay hikes to the government sector (its beneficiaries include the armed forces and police) are a socio-political and an economic necessity; it will help correct income-distribution anomalies, expand purchasing power at the middle and lower level and help local businesses, especially SMEs.

The economics of the Interim Budget tallies with the latest economic findings by the OECD, the ‘West’s leading think-tank’. Its December 2014 report has made a radical break with neo-liberal trickle-down economics. The Report identifies inequality not as an engine of growth but an enemy of growth: “Income inequality has a sizeable and statistically negative impact on growth….redistributive policies achieving greater equality in disposable income has no adverse growth consequences….” The Reports’ recommended solutions include “higher taxes on the rich and policies aimed at improving the lot of the bottom 40% of the population… Government transfers have an important role to play in guaranteeing that low-income households do not fall further back in the income distribution”.

According to the OECD’s Secretary General, “….addressing high and growing inequality is critical to promote strong and sustained growth and needs to be at the centre of the policy debate. Countries that promote equal opportunity for all from an early age are those that will grow and prosper” (The Guardian – 9.12.2014).

Hopefully the Interim Budget is not just an election-sop but the first decisive step of new, more intelligent and just, economic path. The 19th Amendment is necessary but insufficient to ensure the success of the re-democratization project; it must be accompanied by real economic changes.

History never ends. The Rajapaksas thought it did, when the LTTE was defeated. They believed it was possible to keep the collective Sinhala-psyche ossified, an eternal prisoner in the blood-and-faith patriotic mould. They were wrong.

Public opinion is not a monolith but a pendulum. And the ‘Jam-tomorrow’ economics of austerity can give the discredited cause of ethno-religious racism a new lease of life.

A Second Coming?

Mahinda Rajapaksa, as blind to the prevailing reality now as he was in the weeks and months leading to the presidential election, seems to be planning an immediate comeback, encouraged primarily by a handful of political has-beens. The 5.77 million who voted for him on January 8th are not totally or even predominantly Mahinda-voters. They are mostly SLFP voters and will vote for any candidate who is fielded by the party.

For Mr. Rajapaksa the most sensible path would be to really retire. The Eelam War was won under his leadership; that more than any constitutional provision renders him Teflon and ensures for him a degree of continued political currency, at least in the Sinhala South. Someday his son, hopefully after loads of political maturing, will be able to become within the new SLFP what Sajith Premadasa and Navin Dissanayake are in today’s UNP.

The Brothers Grimm tell not what happened after the fish took away everything and the fisherman and his wife returned to their original hut. Did the wife realise her mistake? Did she learn from it? Or did she haunt the beach day and night, screaming at the wish-granting fish to grant one more, just one more wish?

Will Mahinda Rajapaksa continue down the path of hubris, breaking up the SLFP, becoming the Supreme Leader of a rump-faction, which (perhaps after an initial mini-success) will shrink into a political freak-show? Will his-story too repeat itself, as farce?

Courtesy:The Island