{"id":43573,"date":"2015-10-18T01:08:47","date_gmt":"2015-10-18T05:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=43573"},"modified":"2015-10-18T01:16:20","modified_gmt":"2015-10-18T05:16:20","slug":"43573","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=43573","title":{"rendered":"Growing Public Impression that the new Rulers are Acting with the Same Arrogance and Callous Disregard as the Old Rulers."},"content":{"rendered":"

by Tisaranee Gunasekara<\/strong><\/p>\n

“When the social contract is abrogated, when trust between a government and its citizens fails, disillusionment, disengagement or worse follows.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Joseph Stiglitz (The Price of Inequality)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The protest was peaceful, until the police intervened. The protestors were demanding access clean water. This was October 12, 2015, in Bandagiriya, in the Hambantota district, the bastion of the Rajapaksa clan.<\/p>\n

During the Rajapaksa decade, no expense was spared to turn Hambantota into a megapolis. A port, an airport, an artificial island, an international cricket stadium and an international convention centre were among the many infrastructure projects Hambantota was saddled with. Another Rajapaksa term and Hambantota would have ended up like Naypyidaw, the massive ghost-capital Myanmar\u2019s military rulers built, a place replete with buildings and bereft of people.<\/p>\n

In the rush to provide Hambantota with all the trappings of a glitzy super-city, the Rajapaksas forgot the ordinary needs of ordinary people; such as water.<\/p>\n

Hambantota\u2019s innumerable new additions include a botanical garden, with many wet-zone plants. To keep them alive in this rain-poor district, bowsers of water are brought from outside. “If people know the true extent of the water being wasted here, there will be a riot,” a university professor, who refused to be named, told the AFPi.<\/p>\n

That is what the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government should have done. Told the protesting people of Bandagiriya what the Rajapaksas did with their water.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Bandagiriya protest provides incontrovertible proof of the failure of Rajapaksa economics. In the Rajapaksa development plans, the people didn\u2019t count and their needs were de-prioritised. So living costs soared, basic requirements went unmet and hopes for a better future eroded. The gap between the Rajapaksa rhetoric and the everyday experiences of ordinary people widened. The regime did not understand what the people were going through and the people lost faith in the regime\u2019s capacity to improve their lives.<\/p>\n

Mahinda Rajapaksa lost the presidency. History was made.<\/p>\n

Taking Ordinary Lives Seriously<\/strong><\/p>\n

Marc Stears was Edward Miliband\u2019s chief speech-writer. In a recent New Statesman piece, Prof Stears argues that to win the next election, Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s Labour do what Ed Miliband\u2019s Labour couldn\u2019t: convince the British public that it \u2018respects them\u2019 and \u2018takes their lives seriously.\u2019”ii<\/p>\n

The Rajapaksa regime didn\u2019t. As the CPA survey of 2014 revealed, 58.1% of the Sinhalese wanted the regime to focus on reducing living costs. iii The Rajapaksas did anything but. The resultant gap between Sinhala-needs and Rajapaksa deeds played a main role in the defeat of the Rajapaksa project in January and August, 2015.<\/p>\n

Economics played a key role in the Uva debacle which signalled the beginning of the end of Rajapaksa rule. As the 2014 CPA survey revealed, 43.4% of the Uva populace thought their economic condition got a little worse and 31.9% thought their economic condition got a lot worse between 2012 and 2014. 28.6% of Uva households had to go without medicine or medical treatment in 2013; 43% had to make cutbacks in the quality of food purchased.<\/p>\n

This economic malaise and the resultant political discontent were national phenomena. In 2011, 70% of Sinhalese thought the general economic situation will improve in the next two years. In 2013 only 38.5% of Sinhalese thought the general economic situation will improve in the coming two yearsiv. Official figures confirmed the trend. According to the Department of Census and Statistics, 53% of the urban population, 73% of the rural population and 81% of the estate population did not receive the minimum income necessary to pay for food and other basic needs.v<\/p>\n

This was the context which enabled the historic electoral outcome of January 8th.<\/p>\n

The Rajapaksas believed that a combination of patriotic rhetoric, toxic attacks on the minorities and shrill warnings about international conspiracies could make a sufficient number of Sinhala-Buddhists forget their very real economic problems. In the end, everyday experiences trumped grand slogans.<\/p>\n

The minorities turned against the Rajapaksas for obvious political reasons. But this loss in and of itself would have been insufficient to defeat the Rajapaksas electorally. If the Siblings managed to retain their 2010 support-level amongst Sinhala-Buddhists, Mahinda Rajapaksa would have scraped through on January 8. That was what he was counting on.<\/p>\n

It is not absolute poverty which gives birth to political dissent, but relative poverty. The ruling family atop a bloated political caste enjoyed the good life at public expense even as ordinary people struggled to make ends meet. The regime\u2019s refusal to even acknowledge the economic sufferings of the people added insult to injury.<\/p>\n

During the time between the presidential and parliamentary elections, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government acted as if it has learnt the necessary lessons from this Rajapaksa-failure. Since that victory, the new administration seems to be inclining increasingly towards Mahinda Chinthanaya, not just in matters such as leader veneration and family bandysm but also in the all important area of economics.<\/p>\n

Had the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration remained sensitive to the ordinary needs of ordinary people, it would have embraced and not ignored the Bandagiriya protest. This protest over something as basic as clean water in the Rajapaksa-heartland revealed the hollowness of Rajapaksa development. With the money spent on any one of the mammoth infrastructure projects, the entire populace of Hambantota could have been provided with clean drinking water. The Rajapaksas didn\u2019t do it. That shows their real nature.<\/p>\n

The new government\u2019s incapacity to understand the explosive political potential of this incident is indicative of a malaise which, if left unattended to, can have devastating consequences.<\/p>\n

Ever since the parliamentary election, the new government has succumbed to a Rajapaksa-like indifference about the adverse effects of its policies on ordinary people. The price hikes of the last two months, caused by the depreciation of the rupee and increased taxes, have caused living costs to jump again. The sudden axing of subsidies has resulted in plummeting rubber prices, pushing small-and-medium rubber growers into a serious crisis. Tea sector is facing its own crisis while the government\u2019s promise to make vehicles accessible to the new middle class is turning into a grotesque joke.<\/p>\n

There is growing public impression that having secured power, the new rulers are acting with the same arrogance and callous disregard as the old rulers. With every mistake the administration makes, with every act of insensitivity, with every broken promise, the gap between it and the Rajapaksas erode.<\/p>\n

A more dangerous situation for Sri Lanka\u2019s restored democracy cannot be imagined.<\/p>\n

Enabling Extremism?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Internationally democratisation projects suffered violent failures in the recent past due, in part, to the erroneous equation of democracy with neo-liberalism, a mistake to which both opponents and proponents of democracy are prone. Newly emerged democracies need time to consolidate their gains, and this time can be brought not by imposing austerity on an already traumatised populace, but by providing much-needed economic relief to ordinary citizens.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka is a deeply divided nation, ethno-religiously. The Rajapaksas exacerbated these divisions as part of their political strategy. They failed because they did not get the economics right. Post-defeat, they are staying the Sinhala-Buddhist course, hoping to regain power the only way they know. And they might succeed, if the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration continues to get its economics wrong.<\/p>\n

Take the Geneva consensus. It is not perfect, but still it is a step in the right direction. Not just accountability and justice but even common-or-garden acknowledgement that civilian lives were lost was rendered impossible thanks to the Rajapaksa insistence on the myth of \u2018Humanitarian Operation with zero-civilian casualties\u2019. Since only \u2018Tigers\u2019 were killed by the military, even mourning for the war-dead became outlawed.<\/p>\n

Israeli human rights activist and co-founder of B\u2019Tselem, Daphna Golan-Agnon, points out that there are multiple layers of denial operating in Israel on the war crimes issue: literal denial (it never happened); denial of significance (these weren\u2019t really war crimes); justification (we had no alternative). A similar system of collective denial was deliberately encouraged by the Rajapaksas. Even if there is no justice, this denial, the lie that the war was won without harming any civilian Tamils must end. The nature of the LTTE made the war necessary; but that does not mean it was humane or desirable. That distinction needs to be made.<\/p>\n

The recent acquittal of a Tamil mother after spending 15 years in jail for a crime she did not commit highlights the degree of injustice which flourished \u2013 and still persists \u2013 in Sri Lankavi. The conviction of four soldiers by the Jaffna High Court for gang-raping two Tamil women in 2010 is a welcome development, but much more needs to be done, if Tamils are to gain some faith in the judiciary.<\/p>\n

Accountability, reconciliation, hopefully even a political solution to the ethnic problem – for any of these to happen, there must be a minimum level of consent from the Sinhala South. Support would be ideal, but benign indifference would do. And that would depend primarily on how successful the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government is in alleviating the economic burdens of ordinary people.<\/p>\n

Democracy, accountability and reconciliation require a minimum degree of economic contentment in the South. If people feel their economic burden has lessened, they will have hope for the future. Such a people would be more capable of resisting the lure of majoritarian extremism and minority-phobia. That was what happened on August 17th.<\/p>\n

If the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration governed from January to August, as it is doing now, Mahinda Rajapaksa would have won the parliamentary election.<\/p>\n

Eric Hobsbawm argued that the purpose of government is not to look after the gifted minority but to care for the \u2018ordinary run of people\u2019: “Any society worth living in is one designed for them, not for the rich, the clever, the exceptional, although any society worth living in must provide room and scope for such minorities.”vii In other words, a meritocracy which does not ignore popular concerns; a meritocracy committed to the alleviation of the problems of the less-merited majority. Such a meritocracy is good for any country but absolutely necessary for deeply divided land trying to heal itself, like post-Rajapaksa Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

In the run up to the crucial presidential election of January 8th, JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake said, “If the people fail to defeat the insane dictatorship of Mahinda Rajapaksa at this point, there will be no turning back for Sri Lanka.”viii<\/p>\n

The people did, twice.<\/p>\n

Now it is the turn of the government, not to fail the people or the country, not to open the door to ethno-religious extremism and to the Rajapaksas.
\n
\nCourtesy:Sunday Island<\/em><\/p>\n

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by Tisaranee Gunasekara “When the social contract is abrogated, when trust between a government and its citizens fails, disillusionment, disengagement or worse follows.” Joseph Stiglitz (The Price of Inequality) The protest was peaceful, until the police intervened. The protestors were demanding access clean water. This was October 12, 2015, in Bandagiriya, in the Hambantota district, …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Growing Public Impression that the new Rulers are Acting with the Same Arrogance and Callous Disregard as the Old Rulers.’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43573"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43576,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43573\/revisions\/43576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}