Mr. President, can you hear the people?

 President Gotabaya Rajapaksa

“But yesterday, the word of Caesar might have stood against the world, now lies he there, and none so poor to do him reverence”

– Julius Caesar, Shakespeare –

Saturday, 7 May 2022

It must be dawning on the political novice Gotabaya Rajapaksa, our Alice in Wonderland like President, ex-soldier turned mandarin, that two years is a very long time in politics. 

And what a two years they have been! 

Henry Kissinger, that shrewd observer of men and matters, once quipped that power is the great aphrodisiac. True, we are a minnow among in the scheme of things, a small country with no real power and only a little money, yet, even in the tiniest manifestation of power, there is the sex appeal. One may think that our shows of power or wealth suggests pathos, a small nation trapped in a self-deluding fantasy, but to those living it, every moment is real; within this 25,000 square mile area, there is the crudity of power, the vulgarity of wealth, the thrill of hope and the bitterness of disappointment, aplenty. 

The swearing in of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was staged in the historic city of Anuradhapura. Unlike in more settled societies, this important event has no fixed venue, it depends on the whim of the newly elected President. Even the presidential abode invokes ambiguous emotions, an incumbent President who declines to occupy the Presidents’ residence is admired, an act of renunciation! 

The exact opposite also happens, not so long ago we had a President occupying both the President’s House as well as the Prime Minister’s official residence! For collectors of Third World trivia, the one refusing to occupy the Presidential residence, and the one who occupied both official residences are brothers! However, the abstemious President brother looks up to the indulgent ex-President brother (now Prime Minister), the architect of the novice President’s meteoric career, from an insignificant immigrant in America, to the Presidency of Sri Lanka!

Anuradhapura was an elaborate ceremony, abounding as usual with pomp and pageantry, replete with symbolic gestures. In the excitement, no one asked what these symbolic gestures, symbolised; ‘power’, ‘wealth’, ‘wisdom’, ‘integrity’, ‘justice’? Hope springs eternal, a noble cause begins, a great journey commences; in the absence of true substance, the symbolic will suffice. The great helmsman will steer the ship of State with sure hands, the mere fact of election endows the man with abounding wisdom and skills! But first, the investiture; religious figures bless the new President, children parade, there are traditional dances, cultural pageants, more religious functions, speeches resounding with bombast and of course the festive table is laden with local delicacies. The family was delirious. That was just two years ago.

What followed was a weird interregnum, before the disaster. 

No sooner they had the necessary majority in parliament, the new government brought in an amendment to the country’s Constitution (20th). This amendment, in addition to the further empowerment of the already powerful presidency, allowed for dual citizens, in other words, persons who had taken citizenship of other countries by swearing allegiance to those countries, to hold high office in Sri Lanka, the country they had forfeited. It is difficult to conceive of a more humiliating constitutional amendment. That the amendment received more than two-thirds of the votes of the parliamentarians, who despite all the woes of a Third World country, had remained faithful to their motherland, is reflective of a country gone very wrong! Their endorsement of the 20th Amendment, denied themselves! 

The whole purpose is patently obvious, enabled by the amendment, another brother who was a dual citizen of the United States of America, now walked into the Parliament, as an appointed member, soon to be put in charge of the country’s finances! A low type of cunning, mastery of the “paisa” ruse, was declared to be a sign of intelligence. Glim talkers, wheeler dealers and shadowy corporate fixers were taking charge of the economy. From the low, we were going lower!

And, Alice was sauntering further in to Wonderland.

It is obvious that the President’s mind had been deeply influenced by his early years spent in the Sri Lankan army. The form and formalities; discipline, privileges of the various ranks, uniforms, boots, amulets of an army would have been dazzling for a person like him. Armies are not famous for their intellectual accomplishments, nor are they nation builders or an economic factor like farming or manufacturing. Depending on their circumstances, countries spend large amounts of money on their armies hoping that they will provide security for the country. It is for their non-political approach, efficient organising and the discipline, that armies win praise. 

Needless to say, an army can exist only because the country produces enough, or earns enough money to maintain one. An army is not a country, and a country is not an army. The overwhelming majority in any nation are civilians, doing a million different things, living very different lives. In the eyes of the civilian, the world is complexed as well as nuanced. The average citizen is actuated by need or fancy, not due to ‘orders’ from ‘superiors’.

The President seems to have thought that he had found the way forward for a country stranded in an economic mire; appoint retired army officers to various positions in the government structure! Even in traffic control, that most mundane of police duties, a ‘stiffening’ by army officers was observed. There was another pool from which the President readily drew his appointees to crucial positions in the State machinery. This was the self-styled “Viyathmaga”, a collection of motley loyalists, who unblushingly called themselves “intellectuals”. Many of them opted for ambassadorial appointments!

While the men in charge indulged in tomfoolery, dark clouds were already gathering in our economic sky.

A better advised leader would have demurred at charging into unknown territory. Palm oil is one of the most lucrative crops in the world, presently contributing hugely to expanding economies like Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. There are controversies on its impact on the environment as well as in certain conditions, the water tables. As usual in such controversies, there is no unanimity among the experts, with conflicting opinions, the issue remaining unresolved. We banned the planting of palm oil totally, adversely impacting our export income. Plantation companies which had depended heavily on palm oil, suffered enormous capital investment losses.

What followed was an even greater disaster, the banning of the import of non-organic fertiliser. The dire consequences resulting from this ill-advised adventure have been written about in every forum, we need not labour the topic here anymore. Someone was tinkering with our vital agriculture sector, without a clue.

Obviously, all our economic problems did not begin in the last two years. They have been building up beginning from 1948, when our leaders became the decision makers. The storm warnings have been sounding for years, with particular urgency in the last two years. In the eye of the storm, there was a strange complacency; a political establishment living in a make-believe world, imbeciles out of touch, were paying no heed to the gathering tornado.

Not only the politicians, but our awkward besides inept bureaucrats too are guilty of many acts of omission and commission. Because the critical searchlight is generally focussed on the politicians, these so called officials escape scrutiny, hiding their corruption, political allegiances and fundamental incompetence from the public. One has to only compare the amount of money spent on any government institution, with its true productivity/efficiency, to realise the truth. It will be a wonder if a letter from a citizen is ever replied by a government department. The country carries a public service which would have been an embarrassment even in the 19th Century; to expect results from them in this 21st Century is like waiting for Gnnaakk’s occult to deliver.

Although the nation seems not have realised then, right from the beginning we have had the misfortune to be ruled by men inadequate to the task; deceitful men, motivated by greed and vanity mainly. Retaining the hold on leadership has been their primary concern, thus we see that the SLFP (PA) has had only two or three families controlling that political party in the past 70 years. The UNP is a mirror image, perhaps four families; father to son or uncle to nephew, the leadership passes. As to be expected, this inbreeding has only resulted in a most corrupt and self-serving leadership, mimicking a role they are unfit to play. Diminished and disparaged, Sri Lanka has now become a country drifting hopelessly in an ocean of debt. In these 70 years, many of our neighbouring countries have achieved newly industrialised country status, some even joining the First World. 

Not only for the politician rats now trapped by the surging wave of public anger, but for the entire rotten structure, the bell has tolled. The people await their deliverance.

As for the underserving President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a supine creation of his crafty elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, the time in the public arena is surely over. All the elder Rajapaksa’s bluffs and tricks cannot put Humpty-Dumpy together again. While it lasted, Mahinda played the nation’s psychosis to a tee. He was honest, patriotic, cultural; phoney postures belied by his own actions, as well as that of his immediate family. They indulged in things Western with gusto, rugby, car racing, designer brands, foreign citizenship and most tellingly, becoming that strange phenomenon, servants of the people who prosper, serving the people! 

Many a decision by Mahinda Rajapaksa has resulted in the draining of public money, a criminal waste. A consummate actor, even in casual conversation, the mask remains firm. Our average tele-drama actor overacts, is melodramatic and unnatural. Not Mahinda, he is the ultimate political fraud. An actor’s success depends on the discernment of his audience; Mahinda’s followers were completely taken in by the manipulative “good cop, bad cop” act he plays using his brothers. Mahinda would refer to his President brother in the third person, like a distant figure, a person whose opinions were independent and inscrutable. Of course, Mahinda knew the truth, there were no thoughts; without him, the novice was a mere chimera, created for public consumption.

Wither President Gotabaya Rajapaksa now? 

As the Bard said, only two years ago his word might have stood against the world, but today the multitude is repeating ‘Macbeth’ in one voice, “Out, out, brief candle, life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more, it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Mr. President, can you hear the people?