From banana republic to basket-case democracy

By Sasanka Perera

Since the end of Parliamentary elections in August 2015, unpleasant and seemingly endless horse trading took place between the two main political formations about the modalities of how to form the so-called ‘National Government.’ Now, that oxymoronic entity has been finally formed which manifests so shamelessly in our collective conscience and lived reality as a very bad dream from which we cannot wake up.

Purely from a selfish point of view, I am elated that due to the over-diligence of the Elections Commissioner, I was thrown out of the electoral register, and therefore could not vote for any of these people for whom betrayal of public trust has come as naturally as the morning yawn.

The political correspondent of Economynext on 9 September eloquently described this unenviable post-election reality as “Sri Lanka’s historic election that voters lost.”1 Indeed, voters and decent people expecting change have not simply lost, they have been made complete fools by people they have trusted and placed in echelons of power.

In that transformation from a cathartic expectation of necessary change and hope, we have now seamlessly travelled via the vagaries of the ‘Banana Republic,’ which many of us wanted to change, to the new and thus far untested possibilities of a ‘basket-case democracy.’

What is meant by the compound word ‘basket-case’ since at least the end of World War I is clear enough: basket-case refers to a situation which has no solution.2 It can also be “a person or thing regarded as useless or unable to cope.”3 All these describe the unenviable politics of governance in Sri Lanka in the present as well as the way in which the meaning of ‘good governance has been so radically and violently refashioned in a very short period of time.

The promise of a lean board of ministries uttered from every election meeting at the time of the presidential and the recently concluded parliamentary poll by the vociferous supporters of ‘good governance’ is already a distant echo. Instead of 30 ministries suggested by the 19th Amendment, now we have 45 so-called Cabinet Ministers and 48 State Ministers and Deputy Ministers.

So nearly half of the mostly pitiful individuals Sri Lankan voters have elected to Parliament are now ministers of one type or another, overseeing their own fiefdoms at public expense. And at the present degree of largesse offered by the regime for its own machinations, we might end up having even more. Possibilities are literally endless; after all, we have not yet seen the likes of Ministry of Jackfruit and Papaya Industries, Ministry of Thuggery and Cake-making and so on.

From the perspective of what decent people usually mean by the words ‘good governance’, ‘honesty’ and ‘fair play’ which constituted the collective slogan that legitimised both the election campaign of President Sirisena and the UNP-led campaign against the powerful and spiteful remnants of the Mahinda Rajapaksa oligarchy in the parliamentary poll, the recent spree of ministerial appointments has created at least two serious interrelated problems.

Of ethics, decency and honesty

One has to do with ethics, decency and honesty which for a long time have been the antitheses of Sri Lankan politics. We have nurtured crooks, murderers and pathological liars, sent them to parliament, vested them with unmitigated political power and have also often re-elected them. In that context, there was an expectation among the people who voted for change that the new Government and the new President they helped elect would necessarily move drastically away from this kind of political culture devoid of ethics and social responsibility.

That is why there was so much angst among many people not very dissimilar from myself over the last few weeks when it became apparent that a bloated and largely unethical board of ministers would be appointed – yet again.

The JVP’s Anura Dissanayake, in his address to parliament on 3 September, placed these concerns in context in a powerful and painfully and brutally honest address to his mostly rogue colleagues. He said that the plea of the people who appointed many of them not to increase the number of ministries was now not heard by the likely beneficiaries and that the idea of good governance and national government were merely slogans that had been used to come to power, to be then disrespectfully discarded.4

As he spoke, all the ministerial beneficiaries as well as these who benefitted later in mindboggling numbers were in Parliament. Interestingly, there was absolutely no heckling during this speech compared to what we have been used to for a very long period of time. As a result, the cold and naked truth of Dissanayake’s facts and their implications seemed to ring stronger. Everybody heard what was said and the silence seemed to suggest that there was no contradiction. But as we know well, nothing changed. And perhaps nothing will.

A crucial consideration that comes out of Dissanayake’s speech as well as the general state of affairs that have emerged post-Parliamentary election has to do with ethics of governance and what honesty and social responsibility means in a democracy. More centrally, how do we understand these considerations in the context of Sri Lanka’s mushrooming ministerial appointments in the era of ‘good governance’? For instance, if the worthies elected to Parliament by the people were serious about their primary argument during the election that their purpose is to serve the people, then why would they want to be a minister to do that?

If they believe in the work-plan of the Government which was to inject democracy and good governance into the political fabric of the country, can that not be done in their roles as Members of Parliament by offering principled support to specific programs of action? Does one have to be a minster at public expense to do this? Couldn’t anyone simply respectfully reject the offer of a ministry and opt to work for the betterment of the country as an MP? Instead, what we saw was everyone’s urgent need to carve out a piece of the cake as if the nation’s treasury was their grandmother’s dowry. But then these are the leaders we have elected to Parliament.

All this means that issues such as ethics, decency and honesty had no meaning in the allocation of ministries as well as in the screaming demands for these positions by the people who received them. Of course, it is also very clear that many of the culprits are from the SLFP who were in the pro-Mahinda Rajapaksa oligarchy during the election campaign.

For the President, offering these failed human begins ministerial positions was a matter of ‘buying’ support and credibility in a party context where his standing was precarious. For the Prime Minster, this was a matter of buying support to set up a UNP-led Government after a very long time. One hopes against hope that he was also thinking of the need to have enough votes to push through much needed reforms. But in the short run and perhaps quite likely in the long run as well, the losers so far are the people whose only misfortune was to dream of change. Their dreams of a better and decent society, which is not asking for much, have been shattered.

Though there were protests by the leaders of various movements who spearheaded the anticipated transformation, there was no significant local-level agitations from voters to force their representatives to relinquish ministerial responsibilities but support the government in crucial decisions. Obviously, such selfless but simple thinking is way beyond the comprehension of our elected leaders and most voters. That is the state of our collective political literacy.

 

Criminalisation of politics

For a long time Sri Lankan politics have been utterly criminalised in the sense that MPs and ministers have come from criminal backgrounds or entered criminal activities consequent to their advent to active politics. In this role, they amassed both millions of rupees and as well as political influence and protection from prosecution.

The nine years of the Rajapaksa oligarchy was the ‘golden’ era which nurtured this sorry state of affairs as never before. In this context, the issue at present is not that we are unfamiliar with criminals in politics. However, one of the main slogans in the campaign for change was against criminalisation, which was often equated with Mahinda Rajapaksa himself. And very clearly, he was surrounded by criminals.

But now, despite the moral high ground the new Government took with regard to issues such as criminalisation of governance, the present board of ministers reads like an unparalleled gallery of nefarious characters. Take just two classic examples. One obvious case is that of Nimal Lanza, the newly appointed Deputy Minister of Tourism. In 2011, his house was raided by the Special Task Force of the Police in search for illegally imported automobile spare parts and narcotics. The local grapevine incessantly identify him as a significant drug dealer.

Soon after the well-publicised raid, his political clout became evident. The then President Rajapaksa visited him personally and embraced him with a great sense of warmth in a public performance of support. The case against him disappeared, moving the UNP Leader of the time and the present Prime Minister to observe on BBC that “the rule of law in the country has deteriorated and there is no decorum in the police force.”5 And now, that same character is the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs in the Government led by Wickremesinghe. Perhaps the Government should in the very least rename Lanza’s charge as the Ministry of Home Affairs and Narcotics Development in recognition of his expertise.

As another example, take the case of the former Civil Aviation Minister in the Rajapaksa oligarchy, Priyankara Jayarathne. In 2014, he invaded the premises of the Karuwalagasweva Police Station and demanded the release of yet another criminal colleague, Chaminda Ruwansiri, the Deputy Chairman of the Karuwalagasweva Pradeshiya Sabha who had been arrested by the police on assault charges.6

Jayarathne was moved by the political logic established by the Rajapaksa oligarchy which was that anyone inked to the regime was beyond the reach of the law. Perhaps by taking this specific expertise as well as a whole series of other nefarious activities for which he is credited into account, the new Government of good governance has vested upon him the responsibility of being the State Minster of Law and Order.

These are merely two examples from a pitiful list of criminals who have been rewarded not by an established despot but by a regime that came to power on promises of radical social and political reform and good governance. Even more seriously, other than further empowering yet again previously well-established crooks from the board of ministers of the Rajapaksa oligarchy in the new echelons of power, the new Government has also elevated regional thugs such as Lanza and others like Prasanna Ranatunge, Nishantha Muthuhettigama and many more to the stage of national criminality by offering them various ministerial portfolios.

As a result, many members of the former Rajapaksa cabinet are back in the corridors of power despite their criminal track records. The only one missing is Rajapaksa himself. It seems like a matter of simply punishing Ali Baba (with due respect to the original character from the Arabian Nights) and elevating his 40 plus thieves in the newly-enacted Lankan version of Arabian Nights to positions of power with a free license for debauchery.

It is indeed a very sorry state of affairs if the SLFP is so politically bankrupt that they cannot find non-criminal members among its MPs to help form the so-called national government. Unfortunately, we also cannot forget the fact that many of these have secured incredible numbers of preferential votes from the people in what was one of the cleanest elections in Sri Lankan history. So obviously, people do want them.

I also wonder how people like Harsha de Silva and Eran Wickramaratne with their clean slates in politics and public life and Ranjan Ramanayake with an established track record in publically taking issue with the corruption of the Rajapaksa regime could share governmental responsibilities with these kinds of failed human beings? I wonder if resigning as a mark of protest from this den of thieves ever entered their minds? Ramanayake of course tweeted recently that he was “saddened by some of the appointments” and that he has no “control over it.”7 So that’s it. One gets a piece of the cake and it is okay not to see the travesties that are in your face.

In this scheme of things, the larger reality represented by this situation is very unpleasant to fathom. That is, many of our people have wholeheartedly elected those who are now in Parliament and have also accepted them being appointed as ministers to manage our collective destinies.

Since their established criminality, lack of human decency and pronounced absence of vision is of no concern to the citizenry in general and to the Government in particular, what would be the fate of people who wanted change? What would be the state of their dreams? How do you explain the silence of the decent few in politics in whom we placed our trust?

Do the dreamers of change have to somehow dismantle their capacity to dream in order to live in recriminalised Lanka for the foreseeable future? If this not a basket case democracy, what else would it be? I hope there is a deserted island in the Maldives where some of us could set up our own state free of tribalist and self-destructive politics and far away from the stench of the Lankan form of good governance.

(The writer is Professor, South Asian University, New Delhi.)

Footnotes

1. http://www.economynext.com/Sri_Lanka_s_historic_election_that_voters_lost-3-2916-10.html

2. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=basket+case

3. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/basket-case

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw5ymLYENC8&feature=youtu.be

5. http://www.bbc.com/sinhala/news/story/2011/10/111025_lanza.shtml

6. http://www.asianmirror.lk/news/item/1466-minister-priyankara-jayarathna-s-devil-dance-threatens-police-to-release-suspect

7. https://twitter.com/ramanayaker/status/641592111276539906