The plate tectonics of local-global coup politics

TANGLED WEB: When first they practised to deceive, our elected representatives may have had a lower-level understanding of their own betrayal of the people’s mandate. But in the warp and weft of shifting loyalties and priorities, our politicians may have been caught in a complex trap … beyond their own weaving.

We live in interesting times. The tension for some time now has been between a stifling volatility and a vapid sameness. On the one hand: political volatility for over a month is stifling country prospects, international support, and any real Government on the ground. On the other: the same thing over and over again – a stubborn President refusing ad nauseam to amend his stupid error of a moon and more ago – is making silly fools of more than two Prime Ministers.

This is the milieu in which we all – business, professionals, academics, housewives trying to make ends meet, and fathers without a leg to stand on (because their household ‘hero’ in Parliament has proven himself a ‘zero’ to the children of the nation) – live … and try to survive. Certainly not thrive.

If it is true that these shallow waters threaten to drown an island-nation swamped in the muddy swirl of realpolitik, perhaps part of the solution to some of our most pressing problems is to go deeper. This means, among other things, that we have to stop calling the leaders of the coup ‘unconstitutional’ – among other words starting with a small ‘c’ – and see the profound abyss in which we flounder at present for what it is.

Sorry to say that at the moment, most Sri Lankans, including their duly elected – and unduly appointed – leaders are behaving (or acting up) like children who are playing with mud pies in a street-level urchin-like brawl – when we have all, until recently at least, been promised a wonderful holiday by the sea.

 

Political

The first level at which we have interpreted recent events is the purely personal. There is this ambitious politician who emerged from under the shadow of his former boss to be catapulted beyond the aspirations – and the capacity – of a common candidate. That sublime elevation has gone to his ridiculous head. He has lost it. In a desperate bid to convert a one-term presidency into one more tenure in power, he has a) acted highly strategically or b) brought himself down low to hold on to the reins.

It is a common enough view that is probably accurate, if not complete. There are a host of other related factors – interpersonal and partisan – that have militated towards this coup. It behoves us as a polity to nuance our view of the chief executive as being a tad more than a major nuisance.

Conventional wisdom: The President’s native cunning has fuelled his personal ambitions in a seemingly narcissistic manner. It’s all the fault of his pet peeves and spectacular inability to become a statesman-player of tactical games from being a servant of village-level politics. This is certainly the dominant view on social media. It’s partly true. The part that’s missing gives us a rather more realistic take…

Devil’s advocate: Both the ‘former’ and ‘fake’ Prime Ministers must share the blame for precipitating this crisis. They each have their own partisan and petty agendas. Hope in, and fear of, the reforms agenda drove either party to pursue their own goals, resulting in an own-goal for the country they each profess to serve. The former Premier is no less ambitious for self but is something of a more constitutional savant in steering the ship of state his way. The fake one in situ is the real conundrum. For had he possessed his soul in patience a year or so more, at least the Premiership could or would have been handed to him on a platter. Now half the country would have his head on it.

 

National

There is a deeply divisive germ in our nation’s DNA. It is a twin helix of conservatism and chauvinism, almost inextricably intertwined. One strand arcs up towards open skies, liberal policies, progress at any cost. The UNF and stakeholders in an increasingly globalised world subscribe to this. The other winds down to sunless seas: safeguarding hoary bastions like sovereignty, protectionism that is atavistic at best, or arrogant and ignorant at worst. Left, old left and new or pseudo-socialists wave this flag.

This is why our country is torn in two – even if the political super-class whom we elect to represent and defend these respective ideologies are united in a most unnatural way. It is why we have two types of protest movements in our city – one decent, orderly, and utterly incapable of changing a tyrant’s mind; the other disorderly, chaotic, perfectly poised to sweep an authoritarian regime back into power.

Not many see the creeping statism of a controlled capitalist giant pulling the strings behind the scenes. There are many more – for reasons best-known to themselves, for the purse has its reasons of which the heart knows nothing – who are blind to the Chinese connection.

Conventional wisdom: An illegal government must be opposed in House and Court to uphold democracy and all that jazz. It is our problem and we most solve it in our way in our time. So hands off!

Devil’s advocate: The truly fake ethos of our political culture is seen in even younger politicians capable of salvaging a measure of normalcy. Not only bowing to peer pressure, but kowtowing with ogres from a grotesque regime we all thought was past, but is looming larger than a shadow over a clouded republic. That vague sense of not too surprised disappointment to see the UNP’s heir apparent – until recently – hobnobbing with goblins, gremlins and other unsavoury ex-strongmen!

 

Geopolitical

That third and cosmic level on which we float is as a navel in the sea of growing trade and commerce in our region. Sri Lanka is sitting pretty atop a maritime basin that by 2025 will be home waters for over 70% of the world’s seagoing trade. Let’s not forget that since the coup, China has received our island-nation’s approval for two more port projects to the tune of $ 57 million.

In a world quartered by four horsemen of an impending apocalypse – 1. The West; 2. Islam; 3. Third-World ‘Global South’ nation-states, including India, no matter its self-image; 4. China – we can no longer see ourselves as a tiny frog in a small pond.

We are a former sprat turned medium-sized minnow, swimming with sharks. And it’s time we grew some fins, gills, guts (whatever it takes) to navigate increasingly perilous oceans. Must we auction off more ports to the Belt and Road Initiative’s bridging infrastructure to get across these gaps in our GDP growth? Or is there a cleaner safer longer-term way to woo back the big boys of aid tranches like Japan, the US and the IMF?

Conventional wisdom: We must choose between China and India/US/the West. The fruit of the West is but well known. India has been a mercurial Big Brother to us since Independence. However, it is China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ that we must watch out for or not be a part of. Devil’s advocate: There is a third option: A middle path. The return to our non-alignment of old. That will take savvy statesmanship, not debt-trap diplomacy. It is our last best hope. ASEAN, SAARC; so long as we don’t play into India’s hands – like Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia are considering doing – to counterpoint China’s growing dominance in the region.   

 

Bottom line

The upshot of all of this is that we cannot continue to subscribe to business carried on as usual during alterations to the geopolitical map of South Asia. A new dark age made more sinister by the enlightened expansionism of an eastern imperialism is raising its head in Indian Ocean littorals from Sri Lanka to the east coast of Africa.

It’s called the Belt and Road Initiative. It involves over 70 countries, about half the planet’s people, and an estimated 25% of global GDP. The ‘good news’ of Chinese neo-imperialism – what seem like golden hand-outs, followed by grim debts on hard-to-repay loans at inflated rates – has pros and cons. Malaysia, among others, have seen Sino-munificence for what it is, with its premier Mahathir saying a polite but firm “no” to Chinese projects worth $ 22 billion three months ago. The Maldives too seems to have followed suit.

A love of lucre, the toil for growth without labouring for it, the strife for development sans social conscience, the pursuit of progress at the cost of its people, threatens our island-nation as it once did the Maldivian Archipelago, and still does to Pakistan and Bangladesh. A ‘string of pearls’ is being strung across our seas. Which, by 2025 or so and beyond will no longer be postcolonial backwaters, but the omphalos of seagoing trade and commerce. 

 

An upshot

We welcome China to its rightful place. We welcome its flag upon the Silk Route seas and its banner over Belt and Road Initiative passes. But not at the cost of our Constitution, sovereignty, liberty and eagerness to breathe the air of ‘democratic-republicanism’ in our time again. And so, this is the lesson. To recognise that our present impasse surpasses the purely personal or political, supersedes national and regional paradigm shifts, and reflects planetary or even cosmic conflicts. Never, never, never, give in to anything less of an understanding than this!    

(Journalist | Editor-at-large of LMD | Writer #SpeakingTruthToPower)