Sri Lankans are notoriously overdependent on politicians. Not even a primary school prizegiving is considered complete unless it is ‘graced’ by a politician. This kind of servile mindset has led to the deification of politicians, and the emergence of them as a separate class of sorts. Even, today, when the country is beset with the worst-ever economic crisis, which has given rise to socio-political upheavals, many people expect politicians to save the economy although it is a highly-specialized task that should be left to technocrats, and politicians can only play a supportive role.
Sri Lanka has been home to many bogus messiahs in the garb of politicians. Numerous are the false dawns people have witnessed over the decades. Nothing is stupider than to expect a messiah to arrive on the political front, revive the economy, and put an end to people’s suffering, but Sri Lankans continue to wait for Godot.
Social upheavals
Sri Lankans have witnessed unprecedented social upheavals, of late, which have brought about some positive changes, though. Economic and monetary reform processes, which got underway thanks to the Gota-go-home protest campaign, are devoid of politics to some extent; aggressive protests have also compelled the overbearing politicians responsible for bankrupting the country to agree to political reforms and, more importantly, leave the task of reviving the economy to a team of experts drawn from the Central Bank and the Finance Ministry.
It was a systemic change that the youth, engaged in a protest at the Galle Face demanded prior to the appointment of Wickremesinghe as the Prime Minister, but the change their protests have yielded is incremental. The need is for a far-reaching transformational change, which cannot be achieved without radical social reforms.
The social aspects of the present crisis have gone unnoticed to all intents and purposes. Everybody is talking about economic, political and legal reforms. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recommended structural reforms, and wide-ranging policy changes, which are bound to upend the current tax system, among other things. Taxes, which the incumbent government did away with in late 2019 is being restored to the pre-2020 level, and fuel prices have already increased exponentially. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has stressed the need to privatize the loss-incurring national carrier. Several other state ventures are expected to face the same fate. While such changes are being effected on the economic front, arrangements are also being made for political reforms.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa himself has undertaken to abolish the 20th Amendment, which enhanced his executive powers, and restore the 19th Amendment in the form of the proposed 21 Amendment to the Constitution. Political parties have also realized the need to cooperate to revive the economy although they have not yet got together to form a national unity government. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has emphasized the need to bring about a new political culture, but stopped short of revealing how the task is to be accomplished.
It is not only problems on the political and economic fronts that have stood in the way of national progress in this country. Sri Lankans are without a work ethic, as such. Public service is characterized by inefficiency, lethargy, delays, bribery and corruption. Not even most private sector workers are self-motivated. Social reforms are essential for Sri Lankans to undergo an attitudinal change, which alone could enable them to meet the challenges that the modern world throws up. They have also earned notoriety for indiscipline, which has led to chaos, especially on roads. But who will take the lead in introducing social reforms, without which the people cannot be prepared to accept and be part of the change that the country has to undergo if national progress is to be achieved?
Politics as cow dung
As a smidgeon of cow dung is to a pot of milk, so is power politics to any social movement. Hence the need to prevent politics from polluting a campaign for social reforms, which have to go hand in hand with political and economic reforms if the much-discussed systemic change is to be achieved, for the systems that need to be changed are not only political; they are social and economic as well.
There have been some social reform movements in this country, and they have achieved success to varying degrees, but they have lost steam with the public losing interest in them; most of them became mere appendages of political forces, or had divisive ethno-religious agendas. The National Movement for Social Justice (NMSJ) founded by the late Ven. Maduluwawe Sobitha Thera, was somewhat different. It did not have a political agenda, and made its cause attractive to all Sri Lankans, but it also ended up being used by politicians.
A deep-rooted misconception among Sri Lankans is that progress, political, economic and social, is unattainable without political power, and, therefore, most of those who try to change the country for the better, take to politics or get too close to politicians. This is what happened to a group of Buddhist monks who came together to cleanse politics and bring about a new political culture. They went so far as to enter the parliament to achieve their goal, by contesting the 2001 general election from the Jathika Hela Urumaya. But they failed in their endeavor; they only brought themselves into disrepute by sitting with a bunch of incorrigible politicians, who manhandled some of them during fights on the floor of the House. Even the NMSJ happened to close ranks with some political forces, whose goal was to recapture power.
It may be argued that there was a pressing need for a political movement to bring about the 2015 regime change, and the NMSJ was right in promoting the then Opposition, which alone was capable of challenging the then powerful Mahinda Rajapaksa government. But the change of government did not help the NMSJ’s mission.
Those who benefited from the NMSJ’s popularity and influence, promising to abolish the executive presidency, only took action to reduce some of the executive powers of the President by introducing the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. The government they formed was a far cry from what was promised to the people before the 2015 elections. A disillusioned Ven. Sobitha became critical of the yahapalana leaders, who had reneged on their promises. He even took on the then President Maithripala Sirisena, who secured the topmost post with the help of the NMSJ among others. He was utterly disappointed at the time of his untimely death.
The unprecedented economic crisis has made Sri Lankans wake up to the need for making a course correction, at long last. They are holding protests and carrying out a social reform campaign via social media, parallel to their efforts being made to cleanse politics, to bring politicians down a peg or two, pressure the government to help sort out the economic mess without interfering with the experts engaged in saving the economy. But the people need to be mobilized in an organized manner and their power harnessed properly if the much-needed social reforms are to be achieved. This is a task for a real social reformer, sans a divisive political or ethno-religious agenda. One can only keep one’s fingers crossed.
