Change the game

The crux of the Sri Lankan political system is fundamentally driven on a client system. Since winning the universal franchise in 1931, the general public have functioned as the clients of politicians from their constituencies or from their district: the people cast their ballots of politician X or politician Y in exchange for a job, school for their child, a government contract. 

For an educated citizenry with over 80 years of participation in electoral democracy, this has created startlingly low standards to which we hold our elected representatives. The system makes for selected winners but the long-term consequences for the country and society at large have been disastrous and deeply disillusioning.

Every new Parliament has produced worse characters than the last. Political degenerates, plunderers, scoundrels and crooks reign supreme, fattened on ill-gotten wealth for six years, bartering their votes or their seats to the highest bidders in the annual horse-trading. The revelation that 140 members of the Parliament elected in 2010 were not Advanced Level qualified, and that 90 others had failed to pass their Ordinary Level examinations caused shockwaves throughout the country. 

The Ordinary Level qualification is a requirement for the applicants of the most menial jobs around the island. Yet astoundingly, nearly a hundred legislators, making crucial decisions on governance, public policy, the constitution and law-making had no basic educational qualification, in a country boasting a literacy rate of well over 90% and free education up to university.

The time has come to lift ourselves as a citizenry from this morass and demand something better. On 8 January, for the first time in decades, Sri Lankans voted against an age-old client system and impunity that had so corrupted the body politic, choosing instead to vote with new values, for good governance, for rule of law and for fundamental freedoms.

As the August Parliamentary election swings round, citizen driven campaigns have begun to make voters think before casting their ballots once again. Campaigns to vote against racism and cronyism; to vote for educated political leaders; to vote against corruption, have erupted on social media and across some sections of the mainstream media. The movement is led by civil society voices and leading academics who seek qualitative change in Sri Lanka’s political system and psyche. This is a profoundly-encouraging sign of an emerging civic consciousness in the citizenry. Perhaps it has been the abject ineffectiveness of the Legislature elected in 2010 that has caused this sea change, and a demand for something better.

Suddenly there is a civic desire to keep drug barons, rapists and murderers out of the Parliament. There is similar public disdain and loss of appetite for those who seek to protect the corrupt and ignore their vices in exchange for absolute servility.

By 18 August, the answer to whether this call for sanity has been heeded will be known. Some of the worst bad eggs in the political mainstream are wildly popular in their electorates. They are the most charming, they have money to throw around and control their home bases with an iron hand. One argument made is that to think broadly about national or constitutional issues is not always easy at ground level, where only local politicians can open the doors of economic opportunity. Yet that is deeply insulting to an electorate that has watched this circus for well over 80 years.

Perhaps the Sri Lankan electorate is finally collectively growing up. Hopefully the House elected on 17 August will be reflective of the maturity of our democracy. It is easy to blame the politician gone astray and beat our chests about the brokenness of the system. The truth is that all power, and most of the answers, lie in the voters’ hands in three weeks’ time. Vote wisely. It will set us free.