‘Highly inflammatory; approach with maximum care’

Sunday, November 27, 2016

For far too long following the change of power last year, many have responded to the policy and practice of the Unity Government with the plea to ‘tread softly in case the Rajapaksas return.’ The logic (if that is the appropriate word) in this thinking was asinine at its core.

An outrageous condescension in governance

In other words, if citizens remain selectively silent when the Government goes grievously wrong, the condescending presumption was that somehow, the problem would disappear and the ‘unwashed multitudes’ will not get agitated. Now, as the ‘rainbow revolution’ teeters on the verge of diminishing itself to a mere ‘pappadum’ crunch with gloss and satisfying shine but offering exceedingly little nutrition as it were, the danger signals are very clear.

Underlying realities were disquieting from a very early point. This approach of ‘keeping selectively silent’ fed off and reflected an outrageous condescension evident at the heart of the Government itself. 

Its conception of almost every pillar of legal reform, from corruption to transitional justice to constitutional reform was informed by that same thinly patronizing tone.

So we had manifest absurdities. Sri Lanka’s transitional justice reform largely left out ordinary people of both the North and the South save and except a ‘consultation’ process, cynically designed not to have any practical impact on the actual outcome.

Chattering travelers on the gravy train

Naïve comparisons sought to be drawn with this exercise and post-apartheid South Africa was almost more than what even the most even-tempered could take without exasperation. The post-apartheid reform process was driven by South Africa’s citizenry from one end of the country to the other, not by ‘cocktail groupies’ in the plush neighbourhoods of Cape Town or Durban.

In contrast, what took place from last year in Colombo invited disquieting reminders of the 2001-2003 peace caravan which had soon disintegrated in tatters. The gravy train was in town once again, stuffed to the brim with chattering travelers eager to engage in democracy experiments that had failed calamitously elsewhere. Those who had confined themselves to writing on asteroids or the like during the Rajapaksa years were suddenly transformed with slippery ease to right to information pundits and rights arbiters.

Most unforgivably, anti-corruption investigations became a source for amusement for the general public. Lacking a thorough overhaul of the judicial process, politicians and anti-corruption activists paraded in matching t-shirts in public, assuring the people that everything was proceeding just as it ought. The culmination of this extraordinarily nonsensical exercise was President Maithripala Sirisena’s very public denunciation of the Director General of the Bribery and Corruption Commission recently, leading to her resignation and leaving the credibility of the process in shreds. Now there is frenetic anxiety over constitutional reform in regard to which citizens have been left completely in the dark despite ambitious plans to hold a referendum next year.

Who is indeed responsible for the counter-terror draft?

And it was precisely this flawed reasoning which led to a new draft law on counter-terror, conceived secretly and presented with a flourish before a receptive Cabinet. The Law Commission’s draft at least reaffirmed important safeguards such as the right of a detainee to have immediate legal counsel. This was rudely thrown out in favour of a secretive deliberative process resulting in the worst draft national security law since independence.

So when the question is asked as to how this draft emerged in the first place, the pointing finger should turn not only towards its architects, including those who insisted on footnotes as the case may be. Instead, there are multiple points of accountability, and not only within Government, I might add.

Fundamentally the draft’s existence was enabled by a post January 2015 environment in which many seemingly good governance voices were key partners, which tolerated the intolerable, abandoned the first principles of the public trust on which last year’s electoral wins were based, agreed to unconscionable compromises and collectively sought to hush critical voices.

Any future law reform is ‘highly inflammatory’

In truth, the bogey call of the ‘Rajapaksas may return’ effectively played into the end game of cynical manipulators within the government. The point is not that this eventuality may not arise. Indeed, it may well be manifested in one frightening avatar or another, particularly if the current incoherence in managing affairs of State goes unchecked. But if a stoutly independent stance had been maintained and so many had not been co-opted into government in dizzying droves, the chaos of the ‘yahapalanaya’ accountability project may not have been evidenced quite so egregiously scarcely two years into the election wins.

Yet we never learn from history. Or perhaps the lessons are clear but that the end game for some is never really about the country itself. Regardless, suggested law reform specifically impacting on civil liberties from this point onwards needs to be approached with a sign reading ‘highly inflammatory; approach with maximum care.’ For what must be remembered is that however excellent a Constitution may be, this is useless if judges are weak and draconian laws facilitate equally draconian administrative practices as illustrated in good measure by the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

Consequently, this week’s unfolding of yet another ‘consultation process’ in regard to government-led media regulation is not reassuring. As the perceptive should realize, the mischievously framed ‘them versus us’ dichotomy pitting mainstream media against social media, actively propagated by some publicity hunters for their personal advancement, has now been gainfully employed by interested dealmakers to make a case in regard to the State regulation of both.

Recognising the self-evident

And there is no exclusive claiming of the moral high ground by one against the other. The use of ‘fake news’ during the recent Presidential election in the United States by a classically opportunistic narcissist now turned President-elect is a good illustration thereof. Thus we have the mournful reflections of outgoing President Barack Obama on living in an age where ‘people get sound bites and snippets on social media masquerading as news’ and where, lacking a ‘baseline of facts, everything is true and nothing is true.’

A crippling blow has been delivered to liberal activism in that country. But it does not take a Donald Trump in the White House to recognize the perils that exclusivist and elitist decision making may pose to a nation.

Only the foolish will remain sanguine in the face of such threatening realities.