Would you want our votes, Mr. President?

“At the minimum though, it seems safe to assume that the electoral landslide earlier confidently expected by the Rajapakse Presidency will now be that much more difficult. For that slight gain, those among us still hoping to live in at least a nominally democratic society should most certainly be profoundly grateful.”
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By Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena

(December 14, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) If at all President Mahinda Rajapakse must be congratulated for steadfastly refusing to provide the proverbial ‘floating voter’ in the country, (to which healthy category this columnist most happily belongs by the way), with any solid basis as to why votes should be cast for him in the first instance.

To pledge or not to pledge

To say this is to be positively, if not satirically, commendatory. It would have been easy for the incumbent to pledge (for example) to restore the 17th Amendment to the Constitution or to (indeed) prune down the Executive Presidency with the constitutional immunity provision being taken off as a good first step. Such pledges are, after all, not worth the air that they are wasted on or the paper that they are written on. They may be easily made pre election and just as easily disregarded post election. Instead, to give the incumbent his proper due, he refrains from any pledges whatsoever and confines himself to merely hosting dinners, lunches and breakfasts at his official residence for the infinitely less discriminatory among us; today it is the media and tomorrow it is the lawyers. The day after tomorrow, it may even be the scavengers, heaven only would know.

Satire aside, the point is that that is scarcely nothing new that this President is holding out which may make those of us willing to forgive the manifold contempt that he has displayed for the law, the Constitution and the protection of the basic human rights of his people during his Presidency. In that sense, those atrociously repetitive cutouts, posters and the like featuring him in thousand and more variations that rudely adorn our city junctions, walls and village culverts add insult to injury.

The known devil vis a vis the unknown devil

Yet the argument goes that it will be better to incline towards the known devil rather than the veritably unknown devil. This argument proceeds on the assumption that we may have something worse off than what we have now. In effect, we may have a ‘military’ dictatorship.

To consider this assumption, it is necessary however to rationally examine as to what we mean when we talk of a state of affairs being worse off than what we have today. What exactly do we have today? We have, if not a ‘military’ dictatorship, definitely a political dictatorship. This is surely an acknowledgement that the most fervent Mahinda Rajapakse admirer may be forced to make, albeit making out that it is a benevolent dictatorship. But is it really? We have a situation where the Constitution (Vide the 17th Amendment) is not only thrown into the mud but it is being stamped upon and ruthlessly rendered bereft of any validity whatsoever. There is not even the pretence of a constitutional process which earlier like minded autocrats such as President JR Jayawardene used as a convenient fiction when subverting the Constitution.

Some of us may contend that open arrogance in discarding the Constitution is preferable to veiled arrogance in so doing. However, the danger in forsaking even the fig leaf of a constitutional process is that this leaves us with nothing to hang onto, not even a faint hope that we are a democratically working system. Worse, political thuggery is elevated to ministerial rank of the most unsavoury kind. And if we look at the killings and intimidation of media personnel, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions of civilians that had occurred during the past few years, this too testifies to extreme political authoritarianism. This administration has been even more blatant than its predecessors in attempting to put forward politically compromised Presidential Commissions of Inquiry as substitutes for independent and credible investigations, prosecutions and judgment of egregious civilian killings and grave human rights violations. Where is the benevolence in all this?

Core issue of corruption

But what distinguishes the administration of the incumbent from all other autocrats who have preceded him is that corruption is now more outrageously rampant than at any other point perhaps in our history. There is scarcely any attempt to hide the many faceted aspects (familial, administrative and political) of this phenomenon. Now more than ever, we cannot hope for an open and transparent information regime with a Right to Information law at its heart. This administration does not even promise us this. The lack of even nominal recognition of the basic necessities for a democratic system brings us to the unavoidable reality of a dictatorship pure and simple. Where indeed is the benevolence in all this?

Bestowing an electoral reward?

Another argument is that this victory at the elections should be a fitting reward for the President for ridding this country of its Northern megalomaniac, the late and unlamented V. Prabhakaran. This is however an even more amusing contention. So is the conferral of a mandate to undemocratically rule this land for a further term to be bartered away for a war victory for which the credit goes not only to the Commander-in-Chief but also to the three service Commanders, one of whom is, in fact the contesting political candidate? The absence of logic in this type of argument defies all description.

Radical change in politics needed

This is, of course, not to say that those of us who remain robustly unconvinced that they should vote for the incumbent may not yet change their minds at election time. For this however, a sea change needs to take pace in the current politics of the Rajapakse administration. The President should return to the basics that made him a popular leader in the first instance, even if to expect him to take on the initial mantle of a human rights crusader assumed by him in the eighties is expecting far too much. He should discard familial politics, set right the corrupt aura surrounding his administration and immediately restore the Constitution to its rightful place. At a time when the possible threat of terrorist terror is far less likely, the rolling back of emergency law and the pardoning of journalists such as JS Tissainayagam should form part of this changed culture. Importantly the credibility of legal processes of justice for grave human rights violations should be secured. Hosting dinners and the like most assuredly will not meet this demand.

Nominal gains for democracy

Yet, the possibility of such a sea change occurring is unfortunately remote given the extreme arrogance with which this administration conducts itself. Its abusive anti-rights (equate anti-Western) anti-liberal ethos worked to its advantage during the conflict and the immediate post conflict period. In this, it was ably aided by propagandists working not only in the state media or as official spokespersons but also by segments of the private media owned by cronies of the current political order. However, the need for speedy transition from acrimonious and scurrilous squabbling to a different mood of engagement with its critics given election imperatives appears not to be felt by the ruling family clan and the media that it controls.

At the minimum though, it seems safe to assume that the electoral landslide earlier confidently expected by the Rajapakse Presidency will now be that much more difficult. For that slight gain, those among us still hoping to live in at least a nominally democratic society should most certainly be profoundly grateful. Anything more will only come as an unexpected bonus.

-Sri Lanka Guardian