NPP and Muslim voters

Will Muslim voters back this mission by supporting NPP candidates?   

A planned but scurrilous campaign launched by a policy bankrupt and squabbling Opposition, frightened already by AKD’s measures taken so far to end the 76-years-old corrupt political culture built on a communal platform, has once again forced President AKD to engage himself in an island-wide counter campaign to convince voters to give his NPP coalition another comfortable victory at the forthcoming Local Government Elections. Contrary to the lies spread by the Opposition and their social media the new Government has accomplished quite a lot so far especially in reducing the cost of living but limited by constraints set by the IMF. One should know now that cost of living is a pandemic affecting all economies.   

However, while the national Government engages in its epochal mission to transform the nature, substance and shape of the country’s politics, economy, and society that task could be made extremely hazardous and even be sabotaged by local governments in the hands of an opposition schooled in the old culture. A united focus between the centre and periphery is therefore essential at present. Thanks to an erratic President currently occupying the White House such a focus has become even more critical for the Sri Lankan economy to confront the gathering momentum of a global economic turbulence as warned by IMF economists. 

Tarnishing image of new regime as anti-Muslim

From the time President AKD was elected and NPP Government came into power Muslim leaders in the Opposition had left no stone unturned to tarnish the image of the new regime as anti-Muslim. From the absence of a Muslim minister in the cabinet through to compensation for Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s sacrilegious crime of cremating COVID-dead Muslims, and to the so-called “honeymooning” with Israel, Muslim politicians had been nit picking to turn Muslim voters against NPP at the forthcoming Local Government Elections (LGE). Those criticisms had been responded in earlier contributions to this journal. But there is one issue that compels Muslim voters to show their confidence in AKD by supporting the coalition candidates at the forthcoming LGEs. Since that Easter carnage of 21 April 2019 this community has been unjustly accused as one that incubates jihadism and jihadists and the bloody wounds inflicted by uncontrolled violence unleashed on Muslims after that infamy remain afresh even now. There are hundreds of innocent Muslims arrested on spurious charges linking to that bombing and languishing in jails without proper trials. 

Even recently, the arch anti-Muslim Patali Champika Ranawaka who called Sri Lankan Muslims “outsiders” and authored that racially emotive book in Sinhala titled Al Jihad Al Qaida, has warned that under AKD this country could become the epicentre of Jihadism, because of an MoU signed between the President and Indian Prime Minister. On the contrary, AKD has put under 90-day detention and investigation a key player in the Easter massacre, which has caused panic waves among certain powerful personalities who so far had managed to hide their role in that tragedy. The outcome of this investigation should absolve the Muslim community from accusations heaped upon it by the real culprits. The community should therefore be patient and thankful to AKD for making this bold move. 

Doesn’t NPP deserve your votes at the LGE?

The post-1990 Muslim parties and their respective leaders who always play the religious card to capture Muslim votes had remained pathetically incompetent and gutless to demand justice to their community for the wrongs done by previous Governments in which a few of these leaders held ministerial positions. Once again, they are out in the field now to capture the local councils, notably in the Eastern Province. Not surprisingly, they too are jittered by AKD’s anti-corruption drive.

The entire campaign of the Opposition parties is centred on one issue only, and that is the failure of AKD to deliver his promises made during the Presidential and General Election campaigns. What those critics fail to understand is that those promises were individual items in a total package aimed at system change or paradigm shift. Each of those promises was a micro element in a macro project. The drive to end 76 years of a rotten system cannot be achieved overnight without creating chaos. Pragmatism is therefore the need of the day. 

This is the major difference between AKD’s reformist JVP and Rohana Wijeweera’s revolutionary JVP. For example, AKD’s decision to go along with the IMF and steady the economy before introducing market reforms is a reflexion of that pragmatism and maturity of thought. As a result, the economy has performed better than expected and won kudos from IMF, which has now approved the fourth tranche of EFF. An environment has thus been created for inflows of foreign investment and influx of tourists, a dire need to an economy bankrupted by the Rajapaksas. Resources have started flowing slowly into the agricultural sector by reactivating the neglected Paddy Marketing Board with guaranteed price scheme, and by raising fertiliser subsidy to farmers. A catalogue of what NPP has done over the last six months appears on yesterday’s issue of this journal.    

Pragmatism in addressing ethnic reconciliation

Similarly, pragmatism is also needed in addressing the issue of ethnic reconciliation, which is part of the societal reforms needed to complete system change. The struggle facing the Government in Colombo is to win the hearts and minds of Tamils living in the north and east of the country. True, lasting success is impossible without ethnic inclusiveness. But how could that success be possible by discriminatory policies and disproportionate fund allocation to Tamil areas? This discrimination has gone far too long and it is time to reverse this trend. One avenue to make that reversal smooth is to elect pro-government local councils.  

Elected members of such councils instead of acting as yes-men and yes-women to Colombo must be ones who are not only knowledgeable about the needs of their localities but also committed to utilise the funds allocated for development with responsibility and accountability. Until now just as a fish starts rotting from the head so also in government corruption pervaded right from the presidency down to the local councils. For once the country has a president and a government untarnished by corruption.  

The forthcoming LGE is strategically important to accomplish the mission of system change. Will Muslim voters back this mission by supporting NPP candidates?         

(The writer is a retired economist,

W. Australia.)