The establishment seeks little self-correction. This, someone may say is the nature of the establishment. In this country the calls for reform of the establishment have gone so far as to suggest total systemic change. What it systemic change? A revolution? A total rejection of our post-independence democratic experiment?
The establishment is aware that change is necessary. It is why in characteristic style, patchwork change has been sought. The mistake is that the pillars of the establishment think that patchwork change is the answer because they are under the illusion that patchwork change is real change. Tinkering with the Constitution and so on is not enduring — and when systemic change is being asked for, how does it hold as solid transformation?
The people of this country asked for apolitical actors and subject experts to take over. This may have sounded a novel idea, but it was seen as an imperative. The economy collapsed miserably under the regular politicians. The sentiment was that it is dangerous to ask the same people who put the vessel in grave danger to steer it clear of the iceberg.
TECHNOCRATS
But the establishment is either fearful of change, or wasn’t listening. The danger in that is that sans any real change, the system would come close to an implosion. What cannot be achieved with available means may then be sought by revolutionary means. Does the establishment want to risk that?
It seems that if the establishment continues to ignore the clear signals for change from within, revolutionary impulses would intensify. But until it happens, the pillars of the State seem willing to turn a deaf ear.
What is being asked for, however, is not even revolutionary. When the country is in dire straits and when there is a Prime Minister appointed with the single stated intent of negotiating the ship clear of imminent danger, it is obvious that business as usual is not an option. It is why civil society and the dissenting protest groups have asked that there be a solution in the nature of an interim-administration that is severely reliant on technocrats and subject experts.
In countries such as Singapore, this is the default position. Though there is nothing to say legally that all MPs in Singapore should be subject experts, the administrations are carefully chosen to reflect the reality that subject experts and technocrats are necessary for a society that was not enormously wealthy, but that succeeded by dint of hard work.
PATCHWORK
There are other countries that have recourse to such expertise in different ways. Cabinet Ministers in the US are not elected politicians. In Sri Lanka the National List was supposed to be the means by which this standard was achieved, but the list has been made a nonsense of. The appointed MPs are not experts — they are mostly the same ‘machine politicians’ that served the major political parties.
This elementary change that has been asked for can hardly be called major systemic change considering the predicament the country is in. But the fact that the establishment chose to override even this request though under the most pressing of circumstances means that there is a certain pattern that the powers that be have got used to. They have lurched from one crisis to another with patchwork solutions. That has been the default position since independence.
It is presupposed that this time too they could get by with the same approach — not least because it is ‘difficult to teach old dogs new tricks.’ But on several counts, this sort of approach is dangerous to the very system in which the pillars of the establishment thrive.
Several struts of the establishment are close to coming loose. There can be no blanket reliance on the Security Forces anymore, and the MPs who had their houses set alight learn that the establishment is far from safe.
This of course is why there is a scramble to get Constitutional amendments passed in a hurry. But out there on the streets these all are seen as measures that are not just merely ad hoc but also irrelevant to the larger reality.
In the first place many of the victims of the current circumstances in society feel that contemplated changes i.e. Constitutional amendments, do not address their immediate concerns such as the shortages of essential commodities. When surgeries are postponed regularly due to the shortage of medicines, and when there are alarm bells that rabies injections have run out — it is clear that the system has more or less imploded.
The people are not hopeful about the luxury of moving conditional amendments. In simple terms they want competent people at the job, and this is not too much to ask for. If it does not happen the polity would ensure that competent people are brought into positions of power.
Can that be done Constitutionally? Not if there is no leeway being afforded by the current crop of politicians.
Therefore, there would be the quest for alternatives, and that is another way of saying that what cannot be achieved through routine means would be sought through resort to any other means.
The political establishment does not seem to believe that such ‘deviancy’ is possible. But this is the same as not going to the IMF on time in the belief that the country’s finances could be sorted out because the ‘system is resilient’.
Of course the system was not resilient, and all the prognostications about a healthy financial outlook were deeply flawed. Similarly, the smugness that seems to be manifest in the establishment seems to be misplaced.
If there is delivery of essentials it is a different matter, but it seems increasingly clear that this is a tall order. As a result there is bound to be louder and more insistent calls for the current order of things to change.
OUTCOMES
But already opportunities for that sort of change have been missed. Why is the establishment being so delusional and self-destructive?
One reason may be that in the past establishment figures have had the last laugh when the system was teetering on the brink. But all those previous instances were politically charged but not so socially volatile.
By and large, even in the throes of violence, societal dysfunction was not as deep going as it is now. So is the current complacency among the pillars of the political establishment due to the fact that there is an instinct of self-preservation?
The establishment may feel anxious and threatened and may be whistling past the graveyard, to use the Americanism for a false sense of confidence. This posture of faux confidence is not a sign of competence or assuredness.
Deep down, establishment figures may be extremely nervous of the possible outcomes in the near future.
But they are risking everything on the assumption that the establishment is inherently self-preserving and resilient. But the establishment is resilient as long as there is a social contract that is in operation. To put things mildly, today that contract is frayed to a point at which it is almost no longer tenable.
Even among the establishment there could be a movement towards social change. History is replete with examples, and it cannot be forgotten that the ‘El Libertado’, the larger than life Simone Bolivar was of noble stock, for instance. But some establishments are inured from positive external influence, probably due to the fact that there is a serf-class that has always kept the establishment aloft.
This serf-class is fattened and lazy and are always at the mercy of the establishment. But today the lines between them and the mass of people who have to bear the brunt of today’s crisis are blurring, and the establishment is very probably not aware of the fault-lines these changes have already been causing in society. It may be a very optimistic calculation that the establishment is going to coast through this time around, despite everything.