Rain exposed Sri Lanka’s political follies

By Our Political Editor

(May 24, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In the agricultural nation of Sri Lanka rain has always remained one of its great blessings. In the ancient civilisation the ordinary farmer who did not have the educational qualifications and the sophistication that modern Sri Lankan have knew how to manage rain. Pride in the management of the rain belonged to this civilisation, both for those who lived in the south as well as in the north.However, now the rain has become a curse. The incapacity to handle the rain has led to man-made flooding and displacement of the people. Last year the curse of the rain was felt mostly by the refugees and the displaced persons in the north and the east. This year that curse has spread to the south and never before in the history of Sri Lanka has such a large number of people had to go into camps and depend on the handouts from the government to deal with the rain.

It is not that nature has suddenly turned against Sri Lankans. Nature itself is as benevolent as ever. It is, in fact, the country's political system that has turned against its own people. The nation no longer belongs to the people. It does not belong to anybody any more. Even to participate in managing the rain is no longer in the capacity of the people. Everything has been appropriated, or to say more appropriately, misappropriated by a political system that is the most unwise political system ever seen in the land.

The politically destructive nature of the executive presidential system manifests itself in everything now. It is a system that makes the management of society impossible. In a megalomaniacal dream of attempting to place all power in the hands of one person it to remove that power from everyone else. Even the all powerful president is powerful only in his glory but not in his actual capacity to act and to manage. The incapacity of the political system to manage is seen even to manage one day's rain.

The people have been made powerless by a system that has claimed all power into an imaginary of one man taking over everything. It is simply imaginary nonsense as that man has no power in the real sense at all. It is simply not possible for any man to have power in that way. To manage the rain as well as other natural resources the power needs to be managed and management of power requires the participation of the people. For the people to participate it is essential that they feel that it is their land in which they have the right and the capacity to participate. It is this that the present system has so maddeningly taken away from the people.

Today it is not a question of who has the power of the so-called executive presidency. The person may change but the system of misappropriation remains. It does not give power to a new person it only takes away power from everybody else. Nobody feels safe or feels that they have the right to intervene; no one feels that it is their duty to intervene. It is this psychological and internal transformation that has made Sri Lanka a land that belongs to nobody.

Today the executive president legally appropriates everything. He is the owner of the police, the Attorney General's Department, the judges, the civil service, the electoral services and he is the owner of everything. That is in the abstract and the political imagination. In reality none of these institutions any longer belong to anybody. Nobody takes responsibility for the actions of these institutions. The community's running depends on the sense of appropriation of the persons who are in charge and the rights and the duties that these persons perform. Today no one believes that they have either the duty of the right to act. These duties and rights belong to this abstract person called the executive president. This system is now nonsensical as is manifest in the very event of even the management of the rain.

The wisdom that belonged to an ancient people has been washed away in one day's rain. If there is anything to learn and it the society has the capacity to learn even at this late stage it is that this nonsensical political system must go. The nation must once again be returned to the people. They must have their right to participate. They have must their rights returned to them in order to meet the responsibilities of their part in the management of this society. Mismanagement in Sri Lanka starts with the constitution. There can be nothing more sad than that.