Is Our Nation At Crossroads For Crucifixion Or Resurrection?

By Anura K. T. De Silva –SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

Anura K. T. De Silva

With over 2000 years of a Monarch system and over 4 centuries of colonial rule, most people have been led to believe that only an authoritarian government employing rigid disciplinary methods could govern an already oppressed human society. However, because people have an innate desire for freedom, the forces of liberty and oppression have been in continuous conflict throughout history. Sadly, politically frustrated people, even in our nation, who recently responded just like the times of Hitler voted to return to old authoritarian rule without understanding its repercussions. 

Ceylon in 1931 was regarded as the oldest democracy in Asia in terms of universal suffrage but gradually became a paper tiger by mostly conducting regular elections in spite of repetitive oppressive regimes since independence. It regressed into a hybrid regime in 1977 and returned to democracy in 1989 for a period of 20 years, after which it regressed into a hybrid state again between 2010 and 2014. 

In 2015, a coalition of various opposition parties won a landslide electoral victory, which led the country back to democracy. But petty issues among childish leaders cost them the unique opportunity to embrace stronger democratic attributes in par with Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan. As a result, Sri Lanka has experienced undemocratic interruptions since their re-transitions to democracy in 2008 and 2015, respectively, after going through hybrid hiatuses. Hence, there has been many warning signs that our democratic gains remained fragile and need to be consolidated to avoid repeated regression. 

Hence our nation has been suffering from democratic fragility that a recent incumbent even attempted to seek a third term by changing the constitution to scrap the two-term limit. It was only since the 17th and 19th amendments that took steps to reduce excessive powers in our institutions. Hence, any attempt to abolish or partially dilute the 19th amendment will only push our nation to the brink of regression on a slippery slope towards undemocratic rule. As most people didn’t taste the true benefits from the 19th amendment coupled with the blunders of “yahapalanaya” and a struggling economy, some even questioned the value of democracy during. We have now reached a folk if our representatives would strengthen the prevailing democracy or weaken the democracy by voting for the 20th amendment to the constitution. If that occurs, our nation will deteriorate into a low performing undemocratic nation, much like the nations of Afghanistan, North Korea, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc.  

Today, the elected government is attempting to dismantle even the limited powers that was devolved with the 19th amendment to rule the people authoritatively rather govern our nation in the name of development. It is true that democratic governance requires skills and is more complex than autocratic governance as democratic governance requires dealing with diversity of thoughts and idea, diplomacy and dialog than division, conflict and monolog. Hence, democratic governance should not be attempted by weak leaders who believe governance can be performed by increasing their positions of power even to adopt authoritative rule. Effectiveness in governance requires a good framework, solid structures, free and independent institutions, effective processes, systems, clear roles and responsibilities. Without these, it will be not long before the emergence of peoples’ power movements. Overthrowing dictatorships will show indisputably that the human race can neither tolerate nor function properly under tyranny.

It has become a sad reality that while our constitution divides and excludes communities and citizens, those we elect at each general election gathers excessive powers and leads to destroying themselves while a few loots the national coffers. As a result, people have been blaming each other and have become a socially divided nation with confused masses grouping emotionally based on language, culture, religion or/and caste in the name of nationalism, with nationalism often converted to chauvinism by the politicians. Economically, we have over 75% of the population living on subsistence agriculture. For them, political movements have had little if any importance.  Our Governance is lopsided as it exploits the people undemocratically with excessive powers and unaccountability. It has failed repeatedly to perform its primary function to serve and protect the people. The Executive still remains above the law of the land and to demonstrate the newly attained powers of immunity, the present Executive abolished all judicial cases against him before the people even fell asleep soon after the election results were announced. The Legislature is dictated by divided political mobs than as a unitary parliament with independent voices of the people, while the judiciary remains as a subservient branch of both the Legislature and the Executive. Therefore, not only our electoral process dysfunctional, but the entire government from the foundation up as there is no commitment or accountability to protect and serve all citizens. Hence, we truly need to turn things upside down and do things differently than replacing the same types of cronies with wolves in different clothing.  We truly need to reform our constitution and start with a clean slate that contributes to an improved quality of life for all the people. More than any time before, it is we the people who need to build a new constitution of the people, by the people, for the people, in a bottom up process to ensure the individual powers of any branch of the government will not be greater than the collective powers of the people. 

Our current predicament

Instead, we are faced one more attempt to amend the only article in the constitution that has some teeth to minimize abuse of power by the Executive. Recently, the aggravated citizens sent a message that they were not happy with the ‘yahapalanaya’ and wanted ‘change’. Since election, the new government seem to be interested in moving away from self-governance by starting from militarizing the agencies and now to grant all powers to an authoritative military leader. They are progressing faster than Hitler, who grabbed absolute powers by pledging to restore prosperity, create civil order (by crushing industrial strikes and street demonstrations), eliminate the influence of Jewish financiers, and make the fatherland once again a world power. 

Even though some of the voters who expressed their frustrations at the voting booth may be aware of the historical outcome of such authoritative dictators from foreign nations, and colonial rulers and Kings from our own history and how they ruled (than governed), they are probably now contemplating if they wasted their votes. Very soon, we may realize the damage of this crucial mistake as no change in faces or change in political labels can fix a structurally dysfunctional system that is now attempting to turn the people’s democracy on its head and could even be worse than how the colonial masters and Kings ruled.

It is true that we need to rebuild our foundation and restructure the pillars of our failed nation to address the multidimensional crisis we face from many fronts. But sadly, it is much challenging for a nation of people with tempered patriotism who think with nationalist emotions to be objective. Nevertheless, we need to build a new nation that can not only establish a strong and levelled foundation for all citizens to participate in, but enable progressive values, free and independent self-governing institutions and systems of governance to become the engine needed to build a brighter future. Therefore, we will need to establish new norms towards becoming a strong democratic nation by transforming from inequality to equality and equity, unaccountability and irresponsibility to accountability, responsibility and transparency in governance, disrespect among the people but respect, tolerance and nonviolence, dependent and disharmony to independent, exploitive and hopelessness to self-reliance and solidarity of the people, unfairness, discrimination and injustice to fairness and Justice, conflict and war to peace and harmony, weak human and civil rights to strong individual dignity, destructive environment to creativity, widespread crime, fraud, corruption and hatred to empathy and generosity, exclusivity to inclusiveness and become an enabling and vibrant nation we all deserve, far away from the widespread poverty, fear, favor, threats and divisions to name a few of our social ills.  

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