New political culture,an unattainable dream?

Heart and mind are so central to life. Politicians in power cannot be heartless or mindless and sensitive only to what affects them personally. What does your mind go after.. what does your heart go after? Where your treasure is, there your heart also will be.

by Fr. Augustine Fernando

( June 27, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) During the presidential and parliamentary election campaigns there was the big promise of a new political culture. Though the fear that was widespread in Sri Lanka till the dawn of 2015 is now no more, the culture of the robber barons introduced to Sri Lanka in 1978 persists. The Rajapaksas took advantage of the culture that prevailed, added to it their despotic ambitions, resorted to abuse of power, abuse of state resources, voluminous swindling, shameless flamboyant living, high handedness and flouted the rules of civilized conduct and lowered Sri Lanka’s politics to abysmal depths of corruption dragging down the legal system and making the public administration their sycophantic arm. Sri Lanka has for a long time been wanting of politicians who would place the country before their private ambitions and base appetites prioritizing their sensualities. The politicians’ personal entrenched enslavement to the appetites of their senses make them forgetful of the mission for which they were elected, leads them to misuse of power and cheating and deceiving the people in so many ways. Many resort to looting of the state resources and amassing money for them to indulge in their lusty and sordid lifestyle which has led them even to depravities of the uncivilized. Politicians’ personal flaws obstruct and hinder the development of the Country.

POLITICIANS’ SHENANIGANS

What is obstructing the coming about of a clean and new political culture that is beneficial to the people are these enslavements. The weaknesses the politicians naturally gravitate to become notably prominent especially in presidents, prime ministers, high profile ministers, parliamentarians and public officials when due to their faults, mishaps, foibles, indiscretions, events and doings that have taken place in hiding trickle down the grapevine and get to be known. Some elected representatives and officials while simulating to attend to one’s official functions actually care mainly about their own interests as for example when they unnecessarily go abroad when our Country’s ambassador at his post (the Government is expected to appoint qualified, competent and reliable persons to such high office) could attend to pertinent affairs. Thus they turn out to be irresponsible. This kind of political behavior has become quite common. They are elected to attend sessions of parliament and not to play truant like ill-behaved schoolboys and indulge in selfish shenanigans. ROGUES IN POWER ? Ministers of the present government say that they do not know where over a thousand motor vehicles used by the last regime have gone. Some of them were office holders of the last government. If there had been no record of responsible individual persons to whom expensive vehicles were allotted for official work, if there is no record of the fuel used and the travelling done, that itself shows the poor quality of responsibility of Rajapakse and his regime’s administration of ‘home affairs’. Why cannot the present Government hold them to account? It is said that some ministers of the government remain in collusion with those of the last regime. If that is so they show themselves to be corrupt. It is also openly said by many, among whom is Lal Kantha, M.P., that among the cabinet ministers are those who should be in jail. Citizens could never expect good governance with a bunch of rogues in power. This terrible indictment is a premonition that holds little hope for a new political culture. Those who are part of the government engage in practices that are detrimental to the common good. For example, Members of Parliament get hold of government owned low lying lands, especially close to urban commercial centres or habitable areas, fill them under the pretext of ‘land development’ and sell as housing blocks at exorbitant prices causing floods that damage the urbanized areas. MPs also have indulged in deforestation and caused environmental havoc in Sri Lanka, engaged in the drug trade, banking billions of dollars abroad and laundered black money.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Heart and mind are so central to life. Politicians in power cannot be heartless or mindless and sensitive only to what affects them personally. What does your mind go after.. what does your heart go after? Where your treasure is, there your heart also will be. Equipment costing billions of rupees were left neglected without it being installed because of the lack of due attention on the part of irresponsible, incompetent and careless politicians and bureaucrats. Their heart was elsewhere. It is not that the elected politicians do not know of what is called ‘conflict of interest’ when they represent the people and rob them at the same time; it is that in the absence of politeness, ordinary good manners, honesty and integrity, their roguish appetites overtake them. The people who feel let down come to know that attention to important matters of state are procrastinated, obligations and duties neglected, time wasted, and government funds squandered, official position misused and the people to be served are left in the lurch. When these things happen regularly and even in times of distress like the tsunamis, floods, landslides, natural and other disasters, they add criminality to tragedy. Some people think that madu waliges are not enough to punish them and that following the culture and style of former Sinhala kings they should be made to sit on the point of a crowbar the size of a tall arecanut tree!

‘KINGS’ : COLOSSAL WRECKERS

The ruins of the statue of a young pharaoh inspired the poet Shelley (1792-1822) to pen the sonnet that he called ‘Ozymandias’, the Greek name for Ramesses II who ruled Egypt for sixty seven years from 1279 to 1213 BC and whose military conquests and huge monuments and buildings have been wiped out by the sands of time: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.” The ruined statue’s remains articulate Pharaoh Ramesses’s arrogance and passions which have outlived him and which the sculptor’s ‘hand .. mocked’. Shelley is both ridiculing and pitying the pharaoh who crowed about his power. This poses fundamental questions about the important matters that should be foremost in the minds of the political leaders of nations wielding power. Personal moral defects and flaws that distort the vision and understanding of matters and affairs of a nation affect many Sri Lankan politicians in power and deprived of power.

BRUTALIZED MINDS AND HEARTS

Prominent human defects and failures which in a culture influenced by religions is generally called ‘sin’ get manifested in so many ways. The worst effects of sin are not always manifested in physical deceases and bodily effects and defacement. It is manifested in the disoriented and distorted and hardened faculties of the mind, unworthy loves, selfish goals, very low ideals, a slavish spirit, even brutalized attitudes of mind and heart. What is more important? To complete monumental projects to perpetuate one’s name irrespective of whether they benefit the people or not and to dominate and boss over everyone or to serve humbly and show compassion and loving kindness to the people, especially the poor and helpless over whom one is placed? Our country too has seen far too much of the spirit and type of the arrogant despot, the fraudulent dictator and the corrupt politician rather than the benevolent, just and compassionate representative of the people committed to the common good. Finally it devolves on the people to discard and get rid of the satanic characters: the morally and socially corrupt politicians, the wreckers of human relationships still clinging to power or trying to come to power. Before the next elections come, the people should organize themselves and go in search of honest and righteous citizens and unequivocally demand of party leaders to call upon them to shoulder the responsibilities of high political office and bring about what the people desire, the new political culture which should not remain an unattainable dream.