The Phenomenon Of Mahinda Rajapaksa

By Sarath De Alwis –June 4, 2015

Sarath De Alwis

The memories of men are too frail a thread to hang history from – John Still – The Jungle Tide

Deciding whether politicians are nice or nasty is neither here nor there. To understand politicians, we must attempt to understand the activity of politics. The epochal change of 8th January has taught us a lesson. When people remember together, they recall less than what they would remember individually.

Our construction and deductions of recent events such as the Central Bank bond scam, failure of transparency advocates to declare their professional fees, winner of the commonwealth rule of law award, allegedly engaged in land grabbing in his new incarnation, selection of obscure party loyalists as the country’s new envoys are not propitious signs of good governance. In fact they make a significant impact on our collaborative inhibitions. It reaffirms the conventional wisdom that “few things are more destructive than political dreams of perfection.”

Seen through this looking glass we seem to have exchanged a despotic President Tweedledee for a condescending Tweedledum as Prime Minister.

The Presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa was sharply compartmentalized between the formal and the informal. The formal governance was through the bureaucracy of handpicked apparatchiks. They were nominally accountable to the legislature but effectively insulated by the overarching mastery of the executive presidency.

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