Now that nominations are in and planted, there’s a month to go before the fruit of our voting on them can be ripened, plucked, and harvested. In the short run-up to nominations, and in the long haul before elections, the clarion call has been – and will, no doubt, continue to be – for clean politicians.
‘Clean’ politicians – wait a minute, is that animal or mineral or vegetable? No such creature, the echo in the corridors of power lament; and the ranks of Tuscany forbear to cheer. Still for all the cynicism, anti-corruption pacts and fronts and leagues of extraordinary gentlemen (more on the lack of women nominees, later) have been the cynosure. Is it all in vain? Could it be that the all-gullible polity – note: you, folks – are about to be gulled again, by the nicest possible politicos who ever threw their respective hats in the ring?
After all it has happened before, please note; and indubitably will again.
In terms of our political culture, the very proponents of that Dharmishta Raajya (a ‘Righteous Society’) eventually turned out to be the most reprehensible, if insidious, despots – think of the landslide of 1977, and the so-called ‘Republican’ Constitution of 1978, and all its progeny.
In terms of our mercantile sector, our captains of commerce and industry – evidently without exception – are keen to not only have their cake (and an increasingly larger slice of the pie, to boot) but insist on force-feeding their constituents and stakeholders bread and circuses. Just think how far a cry from ostensibly ‘good’ corporate governance and CSR road shows their actual business practice is – in far too many cases to make compilers of annual reports and all that padded up triple bottom-line reporting sit pretty or comfortable!
In terms of media – and privately-owned media, at that – just think of how the most strident calls to “Challenge/Combat/Crush Corruption! (etc., etc., ad nauseam ad infinitum) stumble and fall by the wayside in the light of the failure of the self-appointed ‘voice’ of truth and justice to speak out in a timely and critically constructive manner…
No. We have been gulled once too often in the past in virtually every arena from the forum to the factory to the office-floor. We will not be gullible yet once again. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us. Fool us umpteen times since universal franchise, shame on our political culture and our relatively sophisticated civilisation that has been practising “the art of the possible” since the time of Parakramabahu up to another aspirant to the purple, also from Polonnaruwa.
Now don’t get me wrong, fellow citizens and voters. Clean politics is long past being the need of the hour and the lament of our nation. But already, as you would have noticed from the lists, nominating the most suitable candidates is the foregone opportunity of the moment that has forlornly passed. It would have been incumbent on – and insightful of – the leadership of all political parties throwing their tokens in the ring, come 17 August, to cleanse their own Augean stables at nominations time. If not by virtue of principle, then purely by the expedient of being better able to please the punters and garner their preference votes. But with a few striking exceptions, the overall effect of the names that will appear on the ballot papers in one month’s time reads like a tired litany (or part thereof) of “the usual suspects”.
And at the risk of displeasing the party (now a coalition) of sea-green incorruptibles who insist they can do no wrong, striking up ‘a rainbow coalition’ to keep the corruption of the erstwhile regime out smacks more of one-upmanship, gamesmanship, and showmanship than a fresh commitment to genuine good governance. Where are the promised investigations and prosecutions of a campaign past? When will justice be done by the marginalised and oppressed you undertook to champion? Why should we trust you that ‘Yahapaalanaya Plus’ will be any the less effete under a new national unity government of convenience than it was under an old national unity government of conviction? It’s just the big fat cats offering cheese on a bait when starving civilian rats will not bite plain old cheese anymore.
Well, that’s “the big picture” to me at least, folks. I’m old enough to remember the egregiousness of war and the enthusiasm and vigour with which we all (well, almost all) hailed a messianic executive. I’m young enough to want to live in a future dispensation that doesn’t return us to the rottenness of the state of despotism that the same leadership descended into – by design or default, it doesn’t matter. We didn’t believe the naïve but self-serving propaganda about “zero civilian casualties” then, and there’s no reason why we should believe the hype about “there was no loss to the state from the bond scam” now. So for the sake of transparency (to say nothing of your credibility and credible political survival), let the Governor go – even now – as you engineered His Late Majesty’s exit – even then.
Thus, I’d (you also, I’d wager) like to see politicians of all hues and stripes and bents and shades in this rainbow ‘walk the talk’ (that is, practise what they preach for us to see) and ‘walk the walk’ (that is, continue doing so even when – especially when – no one is watching; like in a hundred days after the polls are over and the results out). For now, while the cynosure is on nominations and campaigning for clean politicians and the attendant paradigm shift in our political culture, it seems (to me at least, folks: sorry if I’m repeating myself – but so are they… and so are you?!) that the focus is on ‘talking the talk’ (making the right noises in public and for the media) and ‘talking the walk’ (leveraging a new kink in the national psyche: that desire for clean politics; whatever that animal, mineral, or vegetable – or fruit – may be).
In summary, let me make a few observations on how we – the people! – might arrogate, and must appropriate, our true role as stakeholders in this “we have come to a pretty polls pass, again” polity. We – the people: supreme! sovereign! We – the people: oh-so-subtly wooed! oh-no simply suckered! We – the people: sophisticated enough through years, no decades, of deceit and deception by default and design to know better than to trust in the realpolitik-driven nominations of men and machines and movements! We – the people: sidelined by the machinations of realpolitik! And not for the first time…
Doubt it that the pick of the crop offered for our electoral processing is but a product that is fit for treasons, spoils, and stratagems? Does it strike you not that if the original Rainbow Grouping of pre-8 January looked precarious, this revamping of the renascent Rainbow Warriors is even more fraught with strange bedfellows? The rainbow is looking mighty kaleidoscopic with a Noah’s Ark that has the SLMC bedding down with the JHU – and liking it! (Or lumping it?)
On the one hand, it might well be that ‘good governance’ is gaining genuine traction among politicians of all stripes intent on making a real change. On the other, it may just be that when opportunity knocks, you grab the bird by both horns (if you will pardon the mixed metaphor – not inappropriate to pen a portrait of the Rainbow Coalition with majoritarian and minority ethics pushing and shoving for elbow room).
Now you might notice I have not said anything so far about what’s left of the original coalition to end all coalitions – the “grand old party” of the Left… Well, least said, soonest mended, perhaps. But their card never was “no more bookies, no more crookies, no more druggies”. It couldn’t be, or afford to be. Not when so many of their major league players are no more than former political opponents converted overnight to the enemy camp to stave off exposure vis-à-vis corruption and/or a shocking recognition of who could butter their bread while the sun shone (more mixed metaphors, like the UPFA has been becoming since the early 2000s).
Could you therefore kindly take a gander yourselves at the nominations lists, and spot the lacunae and lamentable inclusions in the blue corner? A known slayer of opposition supporters here… An illustrious brace of proud braggarts and public brawlers there… Not nearly enough women to reflect the gender divide in our national demographic or represent the dominant mood of equality of the sexes that should be sweeping our nation also by now… That costermonger, that other carpetbagger, that chauvinistic windbag… These are the relatively nice guys! (Someone’s muttering “Hobson’s choice?” in the background…)
Of course, with due deference to the zeitgeist of the ‘good governance’ that has tapped a rich vein of national credulity, all party general secretaries under the guidance of their mandarins and political masters have attempted some reforms of their respective nominations lists. Which, to be fair by us – if the political parties take us as seriously as they take themselves and their newfound mantras – is nowhere near ‘good’ enough for ‘governance’ with a difference. Or ‘good’ enough for ‘governance’ that stays the same the more it changes. Now give us – one of us, at least – representing some of the people, for sure – a stab at some criteria we think are relevant for truly good governance as we encompass it. Here goes:
Clean
The incumbent justice minister, in critiquing the opposition’s candidates, has gone so far as to say that they comprise murderers and rapists. Not even the time-honoured “alleged” was prefixed to his unblushing charge. And we all know from experience what happens to alleged murderers and alleged rapists. (Usually, they’re lionised and let off the hook… and renominated without so much as a blush of shame or a cringe; but a new wind is blowing through the republic these days…) You know who’s not been nominated, this time round, so go figure whom I’m on about. But one gets the feeling from the expressed rationales for the celebrated disinclusion of “the four horsemen of the apocalypse” (‘apo, epaa!’) – none of whom are noted for their gentlemanly demeanour – that their respective parties’ general secretaries were more concerned about how their four enfants terrible were perceived by the public now, rather than their character then and always.
Then there’s this uncomfortable business about relative merits. Good governance will claim that their candidates are squeaky-clean. Even when they get caught with their hand in the cookie-jar, they get a lovely new whitewash because we’re all so desperate to believe that human nature changes and can be changed.
Hear my case. Don’t let’s get carried away by odious comparisons and contrasts. Good governance’s candidates must be good, and demonstrably so, and not simply better than the best or worst of a bad lot. That said, no one – but no one – is ever pristine. Some might beat their wives in private or their dogs in public, or vice-versa, while being paragons of virtue in parliament. Some will have a skeleton in some long-forgotten suburban nightmare of expediency. Some may harbour strange kinks; fetishes; fantasies of power, money, or other lusts. Let’s all keep in mind that representatives of good governance are merely mortals who embody better governance than their fallen and disreputable peers. There’s a sensible way to welcome and champion change, now, rather than get all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed – and burned – once again. That’s to say something like, “We didn’t entirely trust you then, given your track record of a decade on the wrong side, but we’ll vote you in to get Him (HM, the ex-king) out. We don’t entirely trust you now, because of your doings or lack thereof a hundred days and despite your protestations of decency for public consumption, but we’ll vote your fellow travellers in to keep Him out.” Let’s call it ‘realpeoplepower’, to correspond to and counter your sense of ‘realpolitik’. Let’s hope you won’t change your mind and stance again if He wins big at the polls, and you have to protest then despite your protestations now that you had no choice; you were under pressure; it was in the best interests of everyone concerned, etc. That would be stretching even our sense of charity and credulity a speech too far!
Let’s give you a snapshot of some other constituents; not just the people illustrated above, but the easy-to-like, good-to-see types (who’d challenge the big fat cats). Could we perhaps vote someone in who may be a tad rustic or a tad non genteel or a tad country-style of being, yet may have something of character about them? Or that ‘avere aged silly’ who’s not too reliant on the plans of those bright sparkly blokes like their former provincial peers, who make the rounds playing curious? The sceptic in me still thinks that professionals are where the real governance and governing lies. The type with redeeming features, the sort of men and women (okay, mainly, men) of integrity, virtue, and honour. The whole ball of wax that leaves no room for gurney tales of abuse. Look, if we need to be shoring up some brave souls, let’s leave the I don’t-care-a-whit avant-garde behind!
We can’t carry on kidding ourselves that we might glean any insights from looking to the ex-government’s underlings. For good or ill, they’ll appear on the landscape of culpability in the event we quicken any knack for trying to identify better candidates. Many are last-decade flames and the furnace of recrimination is nothing to write home about across the phases of lapdogs! So yes, imagine this scenario where we commandeer great weekend projects. That’s a graphics-heavy display of bit chips and decent-thinking mavericks from all walks of life.
Just think of the unified, united front we’d be presenting for the long run. That will count for absolutely something in the annals of Sri Lanka’s history. Something on the bleeding edge of common ground that no sector can safely be permitted to compromise. I can ramble on but suffice it to say there are many among those operating under fresh signage who truly believe that they can pray to different gods and still climb to the top of every hill. But remember that the wheels of change may turn slowly but will turn indeed. Wouldn’t it be better to get off the treadmill instead of disillusioning ourselves?