| by Tisaranee Gunasekara
“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress”.
Fredrick Douglass (Speech on 3.8.1857)
(September 29, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Constructing physical infrastructure projects, together with selling/leasing land to foreigners, is the leitmotiv of Rajapaksa development. In its name untold wealth is pumped into building highways and overhead bridges, ports and airports. In its name national heritages (such as the Sinharaja forest) are endangered. In its name mammoth debts are incurred and questionable dependencies on foreign powers formed.
A regime which regards physical infrastructure development as an expressway to prosperity should prioritise the creation of an efficient and safe rail transportation system – logically. Yet, as the recent horrific accident in Alawwa demonstrates, the opposite is true. The triple-train crash may not have happened had Sri Lanka not been burdened by an ‘old and obsolete’ signal system. According to the Minister of Transport, the 40 year old system needs “immediate modernisation before a major accident occurs” (Daily Mirror – 21.9.2011).
Clearly an efficient railway system does not figure in the Rajapaksa Grand-Plan to turn Sri Lanka into a hub of many miracles.
(A digression: The regime will give Rs.150,000/- to the family of the French tourist who died in the crash and just Rs. 20,000/- each to the families of the dead train operator and assistant!)
The regime’s failure to replace the dysfunctional rail-signal system is symbolic and symptomatic of a strategic malaise. The Rajapaksas’ development-drive prioritises the facile while ignoring the foundational. For instance, the first step in any realistic effort to clean-up Colombo would have been to resolve the city’s sewage problem, as a matter of urgency. Colombo’s sewage system is aged, overloaded and increasingly malfunctioning. Beautifying the city without grappling with this core-issue is like putting a 24-carat gold facial on an old and decrepit person. The futility of this facile-beautification is evident in the unsuccessful attempts to clean Colombo’s canals and turn them into transport-alternatives and tourist-attractions. Citizens were exhorted, and rightly so, not to dump garbage into the canals even as the defence authorities turned a blind eye to the key pollutant – the innumerable sewage lines which empty into the canals. The canals will continue to be unclean and odorous, until the sewage lines are provided with an alternate destination!
The lopsided vision and unbalanced approach to ‘development’ are creating outcomes which could have been comic had what is at stake been less fundamental. Sri Lanka is going to build the world’s 5th tallest tower in Peliyagoda (a Chinese firm will handle the construction). But a project to expand the Sapugaskanda oil refinery is in jeopardy because the regime lacks the necessary counterpart-funds. 100,000 trees on Matale hill-slopes are being felled; “a senior official of the plantation company admitted that … the trees were being felled and sold in order to obtain the necessary funds to pay the salaries of the estate workers” (Daily Mirror – 22.9.2011).
What sort of a parent would spend lavishly on expanding and refurbishing the family-home while scrimping on basic necessities for the children and jeopardising their future well being?
A Myth-laden Narrative
“The stories our leaders tell us matter…because they orient us to…the worldviews they hold and the values they hold sacred”, according to Professor of Psychology Drew Westen (The New York Times – 6.8.2011). The Rajapaksa narrative is premised on three myths: the myth of perennial national-insecurity, the myth of miraculous-development and the myth of Rajapaksa-infallibility. Their purpose is to create a suitable politico-psychological environment for the success of the Dynastic Project.
The myth of the ‘eternal terrorist’ enables the regime to militarise society and maintain defence expenditure at exorbitant levels – even at the cost of development. For instance, the Wildlife and Agrarian Services Minister mentioned “the need to withdraw Army and Navy detachments deployed in the Wilpattu National Park” because tourists object to this ubiquitous military presence (The Island – 18.9.2011). The militarization of Lankan society (by a Rajapaksaised military) may impede development and bankrupt the nation; yet it will continue because a garrisoned-Sri Lanka is the final-guarantor of Familial Rule.
The myth of miraculous-development helps inculcate illusions about ‘jam tomorrow’ in the South. It also enables the regime to pass off corruption, waste, mismanagement, inefficacy and the destruction of human and natural environments as developmental necessities. For instance, Hambantota will need $1.1billion in new facilities alone, to be ready for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, according to the Commonwealth Games Federation.
That is 110 billion rupees which can be spent on a new rail signal-light system or a new sewage system for Colombo or modernising the Sapugaskanda refinery or paying plantation workers without degrading the environment. The myth of Rajapaksa infallibility discourages people from thinking, questioning and resisting the irrational and the unjust. For instance, post-war the Navy is expanding building bases in areas none existed during the war (sometimes using land forcibly taken from local communities, such as in Panama in the East). According to the Navy Commander, this is to “bridge security gaps that existed during the separatist Tamil Tiger insurgency” (LBO – 28.8.2011). If the Sea Tiger could be defeated and the war won without those camps, why would a post-war Sri Lanka need them, with such urgency, at such cost? But a South, dazzled by the Rajapaksa narrative, is oblivious to such logical-inconsistencies. Still.
Currently the Rajapaksas are popular. But public opinion is a mutable thing. For instance, at a 2007 Marga opinion poll, 70% of respondents expressed willingness to ‘accept devolution close to a federal system as a part of a three-tier system which brings government close to the people by giving adequate power to political institutions at the local (third) and the community level’. Thus, greater devolution (up to federalism) at the national level and enhanced decentralisation within the devolved unit was the choice of the majority in 2007. Four years later, federalism is a political obscenity and public support for a political solution based on enhanced devolution has waned. Until the Rajapaksas began to rule, the Sinhala fundamentalists who equated devolution with separatism were languishing on the political fringe. But under Rajapaksa rule, this devolution-phobia has become a mainstream political-value. Thus during the early years of Rajapaksa-rule, the masses were still moderate, still rational, still resistant to devolution-phobia. But today, after four full years of official propaganda sowing fundamentalist antipathy to devolution, Southern opinion has swung the other way.
This pendulum swing on devolution is an augury. Someday public opinion can change in an anti-Rajapaksa direction. Thus, the need to keep official-propaganda at a fever-pitch and impede the free-flow of information, terrorise the media and oppose, tooth and nail, any Freedom of Information Act.
The myth-laden Rajapaksa narrative would not be sustainable in an open society. The Rajapaksas, astute in matters of power, understand this reality and the consequent need to block information channels to the Sinhala-public. The Rajapaksa desideratum is an uninformed-public willing to give the Ruling Family a universal and a timeless carte blanche. How else can the pro-Rajapaksa consensus in the South be maintained? How else can a public-consciousness be created, which accepts that only a Rajapaksa can succeed a Rajapaksa? Or see in a thuggish or a corrupt sibling or a vapid offspring the only desirable future?
Post a Comment