Our little vote and democracy

By Maduranga Rathnayake

(December 16, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) Two important characteristics of our presidential elections could be seen.

Firstly, despite our reasonably long election history, our presidential candidates have only had missions and no vision. Jayawardena, hardly a visionary, more a withered political juggler, whose mission was to instantly fill the markets with commodities and open up, and it was done quite wantonly, the then import-proof dying economy. For Premadasa the election in itself was a mission and he personally had to make sure he got the required 50%. He suffered from tunnel-vision and it was a Housing Minister in a President; though he was a true worker, losing sight of the macrocosm. Kumaratunga; mission of ultimate peace and the Lady from Sorbonne finally giving in to chauvinist fanatics. Then, Rajapakse the conqueror, took upon himself the hitherto mission impossible; and of course did it.

Secondly, be it presidential or any other election, the people either voted for the lesser evil or they mistakenly wholeheartedly voted for the greater evil. This, as an abstract proposition, seems to still hold some water given the intrinsic fragility of the franchise in its implementation in truly third-world set-ups like ours. However, the polity always plunged into the grave when the popularly perceived lesser evil proved in fact to be far worse an evil. Over the years it has given rise to a general complacency among the voters who have begun to cast their vote increasingly merely as an assertion of their right to vote, in other words in defence of a right, and not as an exercise of franchise in its democratic sense of being privy to bringing about credible governments. For us it is now more a way of life.

The forthcoming presidential election would be no exception.

This time around

The common candidate’s agenda proper is to be made known to the people once he is elected as he had had little time to formulate any policies. On the issues such as the economy he would act on the advice of the main parties of the common opposition and on the Tamil question he might go beyond the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The common candidate’s mission is to abolish the executive presidency; however, he would not want to be a nominal president either. Included in the common candidate’s campaign, also, is a “who killed who” segment. One major weakness of the common candidate appears to be lack of coherence and his inner struggle, coming to surface oftentimes, in his response to the dictates of the main parties in the common opposition and his own vanity of an ex-military chief.

President Rajapakse, on the other hand, with the unexpected calamity of having to oppose a General of a military so much glorified by President Rajapakse himself, in his rush for policies, has stumbled across his ex-policy booklet “Mahinda-chintanya”. President Rajapakse would now simply take “Mahinda-chintanaya” forward from wherever he left it. His main theme is that he is no king, only a trustee and he appears to be seeking only a further extension of his trusteeship. Though President Rajapakse called, on his own volition, for the presidential election two years prematurely, he has nothing plausible to counter the serious allegations of corruption and nepotism against his regime. These allegations are yet to be judicially established; however, in a majority of the cases, and usually nowadays, facts and figures coming from whistle-blowers, credibility and the factual strength of the allegations are not only very high but also are perceived by the public to be not untrue.

In this precarious situation, of the two, who any voter would like to vote for? The other usual half-a-dozen of presidential candidates contesting from various minor parties and some as independents would not share more than 0.5% of the votes and thus, our party-based voter-mind is such that the race, in fact, is between the common candidate and President Rajapakse though both have very little to offer in terms of a vision.

The Tamil voters

For the Tamils, though the common candidate as well as President Rajapake are responsible for ridding them of the LTTE brutalism, both these candidates would be equally utterly unacceptable if they had a vision or not. We have seen a similar reaction from the Sinhala population consequent to President Premadasa’s suppression of JVP terrorism. The Tamils, if they were to vote at all, would do as told by various Tamil political and the so-called democratic military leaders. Some would vote for the common candidate and some President Rajapakse; under compulsion.

If elections, as they say, are an inalienable aspect of democracy, well then, “is this democracy?” would perhaps be best left unanswered.

-Sri Lanka Guardian