Better Times And Worst Of Fears

By S. Sivathasan -December 1, 2014

S. Sivathasan

Can hopes of better times and thoughts of the worst subsist? Prospects for a good life were wished for and openly expressed in Sri Lanka. But ever since a good consensual opposition candidate was announced fears that were latent among the powers that be, surfaced and stalked the land. They have now reached desperate proportions. What sparked them? The possibility of a regime change becoming more real after a winnable candidate in Maithripala Sirisena came to the fore. With multi party endorsement he is on the threshold of victory. A realignment of forces is seen as spelling disaster to those entrenched for long.

Office is an Opportunity

In a healthy democracy an electoral victory is an opportunity for serving the country. A second win was a doubling of opportunity for the incumbent President. Retirement thereafter was what the framers of the constitution in their wisdom prescribed. The limitation after the second was to save the people from having more of the same or worse in the third. This limitation in the US remains untouched over the centuries. Chile has laid down a single term for the President. In Sri Lanka the first term was uneventful as the national question was never resolved. Destruction unlimited visited upon one ethnic entity pleased the other. In the wake of that pleasure and accompanying euphoria a second term came the President’s way. How did the need for a third term arise?

In the two terms making nine years, the people in their mass have encountered and experienced everything unbecoming of a President. Voters of every political hue and from all ethnicities were and are resolved on regime change. Growing disillusionment in the first term has turned into uncompromising antipathy. Complete alienation of Tamils in the first instance, now pervades the whole of the polity. What originated years back has escalated to illimitable proportions. When a rule becomes unrighteous it takes tyrannical forms. In this country it has assumed all the features of a well riveted sordid hand. Hence the people’s resolve to overthrow it. But the UPFA seeks asininely to entrench itself further.

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