Sri Lanka At The Point Of No Return After A Mere 65 Years Of Independence?

By Nethra Goonerwardena -February 4, 2013

When we were in our youth, life in our physically beautiful country seemed worth living. We had just emerged after nearly 450 years of colonial rule and we had our country back. There was hope in the air of a fresh start whereby all Ceylonese would be given a fair deal. All of us could sniff the air of freedom and look forward to a meaningful future. Bliss indeed was it then to be alive and young. Our national university was one of the best in the developing world if not in the world at large, our politicians listened to and sought advice from the educated segment of the country, our institutions were functioning as they should as there was respect for our Parliament, Judiciary, the Public Service and our Press from all citizens including our political leadership. Talking of the latter, those who entered politics then were educated and people of reasonable means. Those who aspired to high office utilized their personal finances to manage their election campaigns and conquests. Today, in sharp contrast, men and women of no means, for the most part, enter politics, become millionaires overnight, and, to add insult to injury, they and their offspring flaunt their ill-gotten wealth in the most tasteless fashion imaginable!

The destruction of our national institutions that began with S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike (1956), continued with Sirimavo Bandaranaike(1970) and that almost ended with J.R. Jayewardene(1977), is virtually complete today under Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Our political rot began as soon as we set about the process of our post-colonial state formation in 1948. The key task before our leaders was national integration. We started with what we thought was a project of undoing the harm done us by our colonial rulers. What we ought to have done was to put right the shocking errors committed by the colonialists and their local collaborators and keep intact the good that was done by them, not throw away that good along with the evil. In a sense, our national integration project was doomed from the start. Under the first independence government headed by D.S. Senanayake, we disenfranchised the plantation Tamils because our Kandyan ‘elites’ thought they should be disenfranchised. These plantation workers had kept our economy going whilst suffering near awful living conditions and receiving a pittance as wages. Our Kandyan ‘elites’ and the non-elites alike, disregarding the dignity of labour, considered it below their station to do an honest day’s work and refused to work on the tea plantations, which is what made it necessary for the import of this indentured labour from southern India in the first place. The political need to disenfranchise these plantation workers arose from the fear that they would vote en bloc for the Left as theLanka Sama Samaja Party had by then either successfully unionized or were about to unionize them. Instead of bringing together all our different ethnic groups and building a united country, we thus began on a note of division that has dogged us to-date and played havoc with our nation-building project post-independence.

The next significant error of Sri Lanka was also committed by the government led by D.S. Senanayake. That error was the ‘disenfranchisement’ of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike from the United National Party (UNP) leadership. Bandaranaike, the Leader of the House of Representatives, Minister of Health and Local Government, was heir apparent to succeed the ageing Senanayake. But a combination of tradition (handing things down from father to son, in this instance from D.S. to Dudley Senanayake) and political intrigue led to his being sidelined. Before he could suffer from the ultimate insult of being dumped politically, Bandaranaike quit the UNP and in 1951 formed his own party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). From all accounts of those close to the UNP leadership of that time, it was widely known that Bandaranaike’s arrogance and cocksureness were key aspects of his personality that made some of the UNP stalwarts of the time wary of handing over the leadership of the party to him. There might also have been a degree of envy on the part of the less enlightened members of the ruling party that contributed to this fateful sidelining. Whatever may the reasons be, this sidelining of Bandaranaike has had dire consequences for Sri Lanka. Read More