Perfecting family rule technique in democracy

Sri Lanka and India show the way

By N.S.Venkataraman

(May 02, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The latest news from Sri Lanka is that President Rajapaksa would amend the constitution to remove the clause that a person should stay as President only for two terms. It is not clear whether he would have any upper limit at all for the number of terms that a person can hold the office of the President.This amendment would ensure that President Rajapaksa can remain as the President for long time to come, if he can manage to continue to win the elections. This would also ensure that his family members will be part of the ruling class holding ministerial positions for long time to come. In other words , the Sri Lankan Government will continue to remain a family ruled government.

News have appeared that President Rajapaksa’s son would be given more important positions . President Rajapaksa , with such approach , will ensure that his family members including brothers, sisters, perhaps cousins, nephews’ nieces etc. would also be given increasingly important positions in the government to perpetuate his family rule. Then, the situation would be that only the members of President Rajapaksa’s family and those who are loyal to the family (the party members) will have any say in the functioning of the Sri Lankan government. The senior officers and employees in the government have to be necessarily loyalists of the ruling family to survive and prosper.

The unfortunate fact is that all these self interested family acts are being done in the name of democracy and where elections take place at periodical intervals as a matter of routine. One would not know as to whether such situation has arisen due to the quality and herd like mindset of the average voter or any skillful manipulation of the electoral process. In any case, the concept of democracy remains diluted and misdirected, when the whole government goes under the control of the family members.

What is striking is that there is enormous similarity between what is happening in Sri Lanka and what is happening in several states and the central government in India. In India, in many states, sons , daughters, grand children and nephews /nieces are given important positions in the government by the leaders of the political parties. Most political parties have become family centred entities and those who are part of the family and loyalists of the family can only be the active members of the party. The family members indulge in enormous corrupt activities in variety of ways and use the ill gotten money to keep the loyalists in the party fold well fed and for organizing the political meetings and for bribing the voters during the elections. They lead luxurious personal life style like the feudal lords of the past.

Such manipulation of the democratic process by the coterie of family members who form different political parties has made the democratic process a farce.

The situation is that most sections of the country men are not part of the political parties or political families but remain as distant observers. They go during the polls to vote for whatever reasons and then they have no say in the happenings, though everything is done by the political families in the government in the name of the people . In India , they call them as aam aadhmi (Common men).

In any case, it appears that the political families have taken strangle hold over the government and everything happens in the government, only if it would not come in conflict with the interests of the family members of the ruling political parties.

While there seem to be no immediate way out to restore the democracy to its intended glory, perhaps we can provide a new name for this family controlled government . Such new name would ensure that the true concept of democracy

will have its identity , that is different from the present form of democracy which has gone into the control of political families.

Can anyone suggest a suitable name ? Perhaps, this decision can also be left to the political families