The intermission is over: Let’s play

When a country and the parliament are full of an uneducated, corrupted majority, we cannot expect consensus among them to implement a progressive decision

Often, political scientists write on the need of structural changes to the governance systems in Sri Lanka. I am not a political scientist to analyse their views and the formulae of the proposed solutions. However, I have a problem with repeated solutions within the constitutional framework.

I learnt an important lesson, especially early in my academic life, the hard way. If I do same activity, same way repeatedly, irrespective of how determined I am or how good the tools I have, I will get the same result. In my case, it was an abject failure. Until, I changed my behaviours, I got the same result. The goading of people into a newly formed system would not work and even minute achievements would not be sustainable. Forced compliance to a system does not work as there is no genuine willingness for the system users to follow and any system has loopholes for the users to sneak through or short circuit. Systems compliance would only work by educating the systems users, empowering them with tools and fair processes and procedures, rewarding them for the use and building a culture of autonomous compliance.

If we want to see a better Sri Lanka, we all must concentrate on two main activities. One is to be a “Change Agent” by displaying right individual behaviour. That means that we cannot wait until others behave as we expect. We must lead the way by ourselves. Consequently, others will follow. The second action is the educating of public proactively on the long-term benefits of right behaviour (highlight their children’s future) and the encouraging them to view situations holistically beyond their immediate needs and to make better decisions. The responsibility of the second action rests with all the professionals. The public as taxpayers have already paid them directly or indirectly to become professionals and it is their utmost duty to deliver this service.

This is easier said than done.

Notable individual efforts

Recently, by chance, I watched two videos on YouTube.

One was the new musical video titled “Sabandini” released on 2 September by multi-talented artist Abhisheka Wimalaweera. I know that number eleven was a special number for Abhisheka, but I was not sure whether it had been a mere coincidence as the release date; two and nine turned out to be her lucky eleven. The product was of the highest quality in recent local musical history and there was absolutely a perfect blend of Abhisheka’s trained voice with the young Tamil Singer Pranirsha’s crispy, fresh voice and the semi-classical Eastern music.

Abihisheka has the Midas touch. This whole package draws vivid visuals in your mind. The listener can interpret the combined lyrics and visuals unique manner and build an own story. I believe that her previous association with veteran lyricist Rathna Sri Wijesinghe for a song closer to her heart, might have opened this magical door. In my view, this work deserves a national award. Already, it is an instant chartbuster, attracting closer to two million viewers. However, my focus here is not the song but the message she gave us by blending the essence of Tamil and Sinhala cultural elements into the lyrics, music, voice and the visuals. It reminds us the richness and the closeness of two cultures. That feeling made me to shed a tear.

At the same time, I felt how unfortunate we are, as a nation, not being able to promote the ethnic harmony and to blend these two rich and unique cultures through our behaviours and works. I salute Abhisheka for her courage to do so and I value her versatility, skills and talents. The whole country should congratulate and support her to do more and this should be taken as a precursor to encourage others to do the same in their chosen fields. Joint studies, joint presentations, etc. by multi-ethnic players would make this society more cohesive.

This island could have been a paradise if Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese embraced each other’s cultures, respected each other’s differences and celebrated each other’s year-round cultural festivals. We must be intelligent enough to beat the plots hatched by the narrow-minded, self-serving politicians and die-hard followers continually poisoning the people’s minds to disunite ethnicities and take personal advantage.

The second video was an interview between Anushi Hakmanage and the veteran artiste Saman Athaudahetti. Anushi is a multitalented freelance current affairs presenter, in addition to her base profession as an analyst in the banking sector. Anushi is not a run of the mill news presenter. She displayed in-depth understanding of her current affairs presentation craft and her desire to continually expand her domain through intuitive abilities and innovative ways. She consciously maintains role play boundaries by avoiding too much pre-research on the subject matters, to avoid the usual trap; the interviewer becomes the interviewee. Her intention is to get the best out of the interviewee and let the audience judge.

Her views and practices remind me of veteran Australian current affairs presenters in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She explained the realities in the Sri Lankan television industry set up and her constant struggle to overcome the outdated cultural barriers, preventing female to perform in the same manner as the male counterparts. During the short interview, she explained vividly and eloquently how the male domination prevented females from conducting political and religious discussions actively and how women were used as symbolic exhibits in the interview panels just to “tick” the gender balance requirements.

That reminded me of a famous joke. A journalist asked the Indian astronaut who went to space under the joint venture Russian Indian Space Travel in the early eighties. The Indian answered that all went extremely well but the only problem was his fingers were a bit sore. When asked why, the Indian said, “We both sat together and watched the beauty of cosmos but whenever I touched a switch on the control panel, my Russian friend slapped on my hand and pushed my hand away from the switch. That’s all.”

Anushi did not pursue for the quantity but for the rightful quality. I salute her for her progressive attitudes, long-term vision in professional life and her conscious effort and courage to stand up and express what she believes in. It is not about the women’s rights. It is about treating women equally based on merit rather than on gender. She talked about the rights of the whole LGBTQIA family. This is an uphill task in a society embedded with the outdated cultural norms under the guise of religious connotations and with the poor understanding of medically proven behavioural impacts on humans due to natural chemical and hormone development in human bodies. Unfortunately, some women themselves are responsible for downgrading fellow women and lock them into stereotyped roles only.

In a previous article, I mentioned how now internationally famed Yohani broke the shackles. I learnt, Abhisheka Wimalaweera did the same by carrying her father’s coffin, defying the outrageously idiotic cultural norm in which a woman cannot carry a coffin. I wish I had the chance to meet her and personally praise her decision to openly challenge this norm and display unwavering courage as the only child of her beloved father.

The highest paid Australian corporate world CEO is Shemara Wickramanayake and she was the first female CEO of the highly reputed Macquarie Banking Group. She was nominated for this position by the former male CEO, purely based on her performance and merit, disregarding her gender. He had the courage to break his company’s over 50-year-long tradition. In Sri Lanka, if females try to break cultural barriers, they are ridiculed as indecent, errant, boyish, bad role models or NGO agents planted by the West to tarnish local culture. If men do the same, they are recognised as progressive macho figures who challenge the status quo. I blame adults, including my generation, on promoting these misconceptions.

By the way, who did give males the power to dictate what should women wear to ensure their safety in society? Who did give males the open licence to behave as vultures and treat women as pleasure objects discounting those are just boys’ acts, in this so-called holy land? Who did give males the right to decide women cannot step on to the upper terrace of sacred Dalada Maligawa? Who did give the religious lunatics the pseudo medical knowledge to claim that women would make the holy environment contaminated (kili) due to their physical presence during the natural menstruation period?

I challenge adults in Sri Lanka to initiate an open discussion and express their unconditional support for female to allow them to behave the same way males can behave under the cultural and religious norms.

Political leadership

I personally do not care who governs the country. I am not a slave of any political doctrine. What I care is how a chosen leader behaves, what he/she does and delivers to the nation. I believe in a set of governance standards. Politicians should possess integrity, empathy, and they should heed the laws and regulations on the land. They should not violate human rights. I believe that governments are not there to run businesses. The government is there to develop policies and procedures, laws and regulations, checks and balances, and enforce those to ensure the society gets equitable outcomes from the businesses operated and services delivered by non-government players, in the open competitive market.

To play this role, the politicians should not possess any conflicts of personal interests with the business and services delivery sectors. This means, not only the politicians should not own businesses but also their families must declare all relationships with any businesses and the positions they hold in any organisation. In developed countries, the employees in the public sector and all politicians must sign a Conflict of Interests declaration each time they involve in a discussion to engage a business to deliver a governmental service or a project. If they say “yes”, they will be excluded from any such discussions.

I highlight here the words “each time”. This is a legal document and if later, auditors find any non-declared or wrongfully declared conflict of interests, it would be a straightforward legal process to send the culprit to jail. I believe that, to implement these processes in Sri Lanka, we don’t need new laws as the current laws may have enough provisions. It is about the willingness to do so. There should be a true open competitive market for every business player to compete each other and the Government should facilitate it.

Do we have true entrepreneurs? In my view, majority are racketeers who operate under the patronage of political masters and or insider trading practices. In developed countries, there is an ombudsman to whom the public can complain on business malpractices and anti-competition practices. There are huge fines imposed on corrupt business leaders, even resulting in declared bankruptcies. There are enough laws to curb insider trading practices. I heard that in Sri Lanka, many product importations are monopolised by a selected few.

Walk the talk

Talk is cheap. If humans are designed products, they have an original design defect. Their tongues are overly flexible allowing them to turn any direction as they wish and utter nonsensical verbose. Politicians talked 74 years delivering nothing.

I do not personally believe that anyone in the current parliament has the genuine and unconditional love to make Sri Lanka a better country. All behave to fulfil their own political agenda. Everyone has skeletons hidden in their almirahs. So, their approach is to openly argue on nation development initiatives to hoodwink the public and look after each other’s corrupt acts behind the screen.

I understand why people do not like the powerful “Executive Presidential System”. It is due to the possibility of occupying the seat by an autocratic, ignorant person. However, the positive side is that if this position is occupied by the right person, the country can be led to prosperity, disregarding the resistance from the corrupted and uneducated rest. So, the question lingering in my mind is whether the problem is with the powerful position or with the characteristics of the position holder. In my view, all are barking up the wrong tree. It is not the post to be axed but it is about having the position subjected to the law as any other public office. There should be a clear, reasonable legal process that could be initiated by any person of the country with factual, proven evidences, to remove the executive president at any time, without any involvement of the parliament.

Let’s assume the Parliament has the power. When a country and the parliament are full of an uneducated, corrupted majority, we cannot expect consensus among them to implement a progressive decision. Hence, a disunited parliament is bound to fail in efficient decision making. It would be a merry-go-round circus. Until we have sensible, god-fearing, nation-loving Sri Lankans in the parliament as elected members, the executive presidential system is the best bet we can rely on to rescue Sri Lanka from this dismal abyss. I am disappointed that none of the presidents appointed so far played the role they should have played.

When the president position was vacant recently, I thought that the people representatives in the parliament had already realised their past mistakes and that they would collectively decide to direct all national list MPs to resign and bring in non-partisan, non-political, socially respected people into the parliament and appoint two of them as the PM and the President collectively and unanimously and afterwards appoint the rest of the new group as the cabinet to run this country for the remaining term. This tiny country only needs maximum of 15 cabinet ministers. If the appointees complain on the workload, that means that they are not even fit enough to run a tea boutique. Legally or otherwise, there is no need of having deputy ministers.

Obviously, we were not that fortunate to see this. Whatever happened so far proved that there is no hope for the future of this country with the current lot. So, could we continue to rely on them? Of course, we cannot. So, we must change ourselves and alter our behaviours in peaceful manner.

The intermission is over. The world is waiting until the Sri Lankans begin the right act to offer their support and applause. Always, we paid the production cost of this play. Hence, the script should have been written by us. Why don’t we write a new script, educate people, select new actors and direct the play as well?

We must not forget that, before the intermission, the self-appointed actors wrote the script as per their acting capabilities, they selected their costumes and directed the play. We paid them dearly like fools. We watched their kindergarten standard play patiently for 74 years. Our investment was totally wasted. Enough is enough. The silent peaceful public educational revolution play must be performed. When all individuals collectively start playing their respective role of this play, no one can control it, and no one can stop it because the truth wins at the end. When we are divided, the truth is the first casualty.

(The writer is a Chartered Professional Engineer, a Fellow and an International Professional Engineer of both the Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka and Australia. He holds two Masters Degrees in Local Government Engineering and in Engineering Management and at present, works for the Australian NSW Local Government Sector. His mission is to share his 32 years of local and overseas experience to inspire Sri Lankan professionals. He is contactable via [email protected].)