The room in the elephant: a space, the potential, some strange destiny

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM – Not quite united! But still national enough to be the best bet for a pluralistic inclusive democracy? And if the polity proves willing to forgive past scams and evergreen arrogance especially after the coup – only the palace coup now on is preventing the UNP from embracing its full potential in the national interest  

Politics used to be the art of the possible – at least in days gone by. It was so in 1971 when Butler popularised the phrase. And it was certainly the art of the attainable when Bismarck made an obscure Prussian prince the Emperor of all the Germans. 

Today, it has become the last refuge of amateurs, armchair technocrats, bullying backbenchers with more brawn than brain, craven conspirators in their coffee klatches, demagogues without a proper podium canvassing missed calls (dial 1326 for the real deal), and an effete oligarchy tired of its own trite clichés and inconsequential ramblings. Remind you of anyone? The centre cannot hold …

Perhaps this is nowhere truer these days than in the ranks of Tuscany. Once the province of grand old statesmen and enlightened men of civics and governance (note how small their Cabinets were!), the Grand Old Party of Sri Lankan politics today has degenerated into chaos. 

A cabal of costermongers at worst – backroom deals and blatant chicanery under the nose of an ever-cynical public – or puerile idealists tilting at windmills at best (‘Transform the republic but do not try to change the party!’). There are many more elephants in the UNP’s war room, and it’s a hamstrung beast that dares not speak the name of #modernise and #reform or be damned!

A space

By the way, in my book, it’s the safest best for the preservation of Sri Lanka’s sanity in the face of present and future threats to our territorial integrity and sovereignty. Even if the nation at large or the Greens’ own Cabinet itself are still unaware of the mantle that lies on its pachydermatous shoulders! The UNP – if you recall 1971 and 1987-89 – is not the fuddy-duddy its present image projects itself to be: some of the old authoritarian DNA still runs sluggishly in its senescent veins.

In the public space, where ethnic chauvinism lies like a shallowly buried body, the last refuge of the political scoundrel has been to thump and then scrape the bottom of the barrel of ultra-nationalism. It does this brazenly when elections are at hand; all the while conjuring up spectres of terrorist cells, foreign agents, international conspiracies and other bogeymen designed to drive the cowering masses into strongmen’s defending arms. Is it a chink in our islanders’ psyche that can be plastered over by the UNP’s limp internationalism? Or will the people at large always fall prey to roosters rising early to crow over the dunghill of the majoritarian ethic that passes for democracy because most – well, just under half of the voter base of – Sri Lankans subscribe to it?

So ironically, the lapsed defenders of the realm (green at the gills – naïve at the defence of the realm; not nauseated by doing what is necessary) – have had to eat humble pie and admit to ‘mea culpa, mea maxima culpa’ at the sorry hearings of 4/21 and its aftermath – hat and body parts in hand. If they look a trifle better than those who now claim immunity from egregious assassinations of critics of the government on the spurious grounds that the killings were state business, it’s not necessarily because of their naïveté. And if the UNP thought confession cleared the soul and sorted out the polity for the presidential poll, it will be proven sadly mistaken.  

It’s regrettable, though, to see that some scurrilous elements of the UNP have decided – by design or default – to bell the SLPP’s “big cat”, with such scare tactics as painting dire pictures of what Hieronymus Bosch-like hell could ensue if a certain ex-bureaucrat was handed the presidential purple to come. However, as diplomat par excellence if something of a rotten human being Dr. Henry Kissinger once surmised: “Just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean the b*st*rds aren’t out to get you!” Therefore, we might allow the anti-Gotabaya propaganda (a truth repeated often enough becomes a lie?) to live … and let live – or let die. Especially since it was the Pohottuwa candidate’s campaign that opened that can of worms in the first place, by timing the announcement (at the very least) of their presidential aspirations with the Easter Sunday fallout. 

One thing is sure: if push comes to shove, our increasingly strategically poised island-nation will soon have some tactical choices to make … World player or regional stronghold? Western approval and aid, or a deceptively loving Eastern embrace? Wedge between hostile East and adversarial West playing Indian Ocean war games? Or independent republic navigating between the Scylla of hypocritical diplomacy (all smiles and handshakes but knives under the cloak) and the Charybdis of politico-military expansionism in the garb of socio-economic development?

In this milieu, there is only one democratic party – like democracy itself: possibly the worst of the lot, save all the others! – that still embodies the principles of a pluralistic inclusive ethos while eschewing ethnic identity politics. However green at the gills (I mean nauseous, not naïve) their clubbable humbuggery sometimes makes me, I’ll take their lame posturing over the more martial sabre-rattling of their erstwhile bêtes noires, now returning to a fresh challenge as executive nemeses. 

Therefore, for lack of lust of knowing what should not be known, let us take the Golden Road to a Samarkand of savvy non-alignment and internationalism. Vote UNP even if its present leaders couldn’t organise a proper p*ss-*p in a brewery – or especially if they like to look like that in order to be let off the hook of culpability for white-collar crimes! May we also not start out on the road to Mandalay – I think it’s in Myanmar, so interpret that politically or philosophically as you may – with its majoring on militarised efficiency in business and development, plus pride of place being given to the most peaceful of philosophies but sadly desecrated by a militant folklore-ism. All of this to prod our masses into majoritarian complicity with Growth! Development! Progress! (I can sense the palpable arousal of plutocrats) – but without true peace and real justice. You provoke those tyrants with impunity.     

The potential

I may have said too much – to too little effect or avail. The purpose of this piece is not to heap calumny on strongly aggressive militant chauvinists, but to damn the weakened divided democrats with faint praise. In the faint hope that common sense will prevail, and UNP republicans of leaner cleaner greener hues will rally round a new standard. At least, a more personable, less tainted flag-bearer, who has a chance of more than a ‘takarang’ sheet in a cyclone. There are promises made by them to the nation since before the Flood to keep …  

Not that the Olympians who masquerade as champions of democracy are any good, by the looks of it, at hearing the hoi polloi out; or giving ear to alternate or other voices than their own or that of their innermost most intimate covens. But that the ongoing conflagration of a palace coup might serve the party well – and surprisingly, the nation best – in bringing about resurgence in the United National Party. And that which has not been truly national, is no longer united, or works better as a broad front or alliance of likeminded parties than a singular behemoth.  

There is some merit in even such relative mediocrity triumphing over egregious excellence – or seeming strength – when the worst are full of passionate intensity. If Sajith Premadasa can stymie the SLPP’s man, machine, and movement, it won’t be because he is savvier, but because he is more relatable as a person, even if less reliable as a President. And also because he’s a walking, talking monument to an equally effective presidential legacy – albeit inherited.  

In a milieu where recidivists in the MR camp are thumping the table with a threatened return to the 18th Amendment, I’ll take the bumbling stumbling bureaucratic shilly-shallying of a party… oh dear, I could or should have written ‘coalition’ – but that party of the other part to the UNP’s part in it has burned his bridges with me. 

True, the UNP/F championed the 19th; compromised that Amendment in the name of realpolitik; and barely survived a coup by eating the fruits of its labours. But give me lame-duck democrats with a new cluck any day. Particularly if my lords and ladies and feudal dynasties that would save me should sacrifice my fellow countrymen and me in order to shore us from the failures of our republican friends! Shall we not all tremble at the shape of things to come?   

Oh, one more thing. Just don’t ask me to vote for the UNP ever again. They had my trust as well as my faith and hope – and they squandered it by their cupidity during the Central Bank imbroglio as well as their arrogance after the coup; their stubborn refusal to regroup as a democratic party both in and outside post a Supreme Court judgment in democracy’s favour; and their inability or their unwillingness – or both – to cleanse the Augean stables whose occupants they still clasp to their bosom with hoops of steel …

On balance, I’d rather see the progressive independents – if that is what they really and truly are, rather than spoilers or vote-stealers – uniting in a common principled front to overthrow the corrupt monoculture that is the bane of Sri Lankan politics in the past 25 years. 

Some strange destiny

Be that as it may, it may not boil down to a principled vote. Or to policies or programs per se, as in days of yore! If, in fact, we islanders ever voted on principle rather than personal fancy? But rather, historically, we have hinged our ballot on persons, personae, personages, personalities – and their assumed alter egos. And also, projections of artificial popularity or borrowed plumes and feathers – because sometimes, I am “my father’s son” or “my brother’s keeper”. That holds true for your national costume – whether red, blue or green. Or a fancy mix of hues in-between; or whether you’re depending on (shall we say) colourful ancestors or present or future dynasties. 

On the one hand, my brother’s keeper is probably wondering how – if at all, at that – to convert the currency of his 6-plus million votes in 2010 (57.88%) into a landslide for his Regent (without eliminating the Young Pretender from a decent stab at a future Game of Thrones-type scenario). On the other, my father’s son is counting (and rapidly learning) the cost of leaving his adoptive uncle’s abode in search of his fame and fortune, and no doubt the inheritance he perceives as legitimately his own. To a majority of the masses out there, it’s a matter of the temperaments and character of these respective contenders – assuming the elephant in the room makes space for destiny to fulfil its potential – rather than any dividing of the soul between the joints of principle and the marrow of plans, policies and programs. ’Twas ever thus!  

So caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, gentle reader, what could or should you and I do? (I, for one, would wait it out.) 

For one, the jury is still out as to whether the senior jumbos will come to their senses and sacrifice personal prestige for guaranteed continuity in a putative future Cabinet under another name in a respectable-enough role. Ranil Wickremesinghe is in it for life and might well outlive – and politically survive to be born again in another avatar: Opposition leader under a grim regime? – all of us!  

For another, the Greens for all their likely bankrolling of their Red brothers are worried about how much the ostensibly principled stand of the JVP will attract anti-‘Yahapaalanaya’ votes. So you might – O Colombo elite or Sri Lankan sophisticate with more ideals than sense! – vote JVP?

Then again, some of you are flirting with the neo-fascism that has become fashionable for those who are ensconced so safely in life and lucre that you can entertain totalitarianism, because you don’t know or care what it will take behind the scenes and in front of the firing squad to make the trains run on time… 

And last but by all means least, some of you will be thinking that the incumbent is starting to look good again. Now that he’s decided to throw his lot in with the political-military machine of the past going by his recent security service appointments in the face of prevailing winds and cautionary rumblings abroad.

Yes, politics is the art of the possible. Impossible is nothing – unless it’s making the green leader an evergreen executive. Or you’re a washed-out, one-term, lame-duck limpet clinging on to what’s left of your dignity and our patience.

                                                                            

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