Is it time to change, at least now? | Sunday Observer

Is it time to change, at least now?

23 July, 2022

“We shall never change our political leaders or the way our Governments do business until we change the way we decide who should represent us in those governing bodies.” –Claus of Meckenheim

The Sri Lankan Parliament just elected the country’s 8th Executive President by a majority vote following guidelines given in the Constitution. Though the necessity for this process was a result of the months long protest campaign by the people who felt an urgent need for a change, many of the protesters are not ready to accept the type of change delivered by their representatives in the Parliament.

This phenomenon was explained by the biologist Thomas H. Huxley in the 1800s: “The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.” Political and social changes can rarely be achieved overnight. It is a process of gathering knowledge through which an increasing number of people would become aware of the nature of the system they are living in.

Representatives

We have been conditioned to accept democracy as the best form of Government. This means that we accept the situation in which people of the State, elect representatives to form a body which presumably would lead them to prosperity and happiness by governing the affairs of the State through a truly democratic way.

Our journey through ancient kingdoms to British aristocracy came to an end in 1948 giving birth to a plutocracy where the country was governed by wealthy elite under the covers of a democratically elected Parliament. Currently the process seems to be working in the reverse order where rejecting elitism is popularised and getting elected through a so-called ‘democratic process’ is the easiest way to become wealthy.

One of the main feel-good factors of democracy is that each and every voter is made to feel knowledgeable and empowered. However, in reality, they do not even realise to what extent they have been misled by the candidates until they start seeing all the corruption and abuse of power by the elected officials.

Political equality is at the heart of democracy. No citizen or a group of citizens can be more powerful than another. But the moment citizens elect a group of people to rule their country it creates the two groups, rulers and the ruled.

Rulers and their confidants and sponsors become more powerful than the ruled, violating the fundamental condition of equality expected in a democracy. For democracy to work positively for all the citizens, all the participants of the process must have the proper understanding of both micro and macro needs of such a system.

Requirement

While and individual participant’s ability to think independently and put the country first before their selfish needs would be the minimum requirement at micro level, all the participants being well educated about who and what they are voting for should be the minimum requirement at macro level.

A critical analysis of those two factors would be a good starting point for anyone interested in understanding why democracy has not helped Sri Lanka much over the years. It is not enough to include the word in the name as we have done by calling our country ‘Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka’. Even North Korea calls itself ‘Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’ and it is not difficult to find out how one family has ruled that country as an exact opposite of a democracy.

Most democracies in the world follow the model introduced by the founding fathers of the United State of America with the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution in 1788. The fact that there have been only 27 amendments to that Constitution over the last 234 years shows how comprehensive and far thinking the framers of the document have been.

In comparison the Sri Lankan Constitution, ratified in 1978, has already had 21 (or 22, depending on whether the new Parliament would ratify the last one) Amendments in the 44 years of its existence. Either the original document had so many deficiencies that had to be addressed by those Amendments or the rulers used the 2/3 majority power, whenever they had it, to introduce these amendments to satisfy their individual needs.

Constitution

Whatever the reasons may have been, it shows that we have not understood how comprehensive and sacred a constitution of a country should be. Though the Constitution of the US may have been the model for many other countries people in those countries should also try to learn about US foreign policy which has been known to support dictators of some countries, regime changes to position puppet leaders in some other countries and openly support States that are proven to have sponsored criminal activities and blatant violations of human rights and democratic norms such as killing journalists.

Over centuries the rest of the world did not see much of a difference the way US conducted their international relations, though some decisions regarding certain domestic issues may have been different based on the party that was in power at that moment. The ideologies of the two parties contained enough overlapping since both did not want to deviate from the vision founding fathers had for the country.

Bipartisanship was the priority for the good of the country irrespective of the party that was in power. It worked almost like a multiparty democracy. Thanks to Donald Trump, the rest of the world got a chance to see that it was not the case anymore.

What we see in Sri Lanka today is the cumulative effect of all the Governments in the past together with the deterioration of the social and cultural values accepted by most people. Similar deteriorations can be seen around the world where unceasing conflicts among classes, religions, races, within countries and armed struggles between nations.

Politics used to be characterised by the ideological divide between the left and right, defined largely in economic terms. In the twenty first century it is shifting toward a politics based on identity. Identity politics speaks to the feelings of humans. The identity of an individual with an underappreciated past, particularly one that has suffered some form of marginalisation or disrespect may be linked to emotions of pride, anger, and resentment based on the kind of recognition that one receives (or not).

Politicians

Politicians promoting national pride and superiority have been able to motivate populist and/or nationalist voters in countries such as India (Hinduism), Hungary and Poland (anti-immigrant), England (Brexit), US (MAGA/White supremacy), and Burma and Sri Lanka (Buddhism).

These are some of the things people in Sri Lanka might have to understand if they try to analyse why they are going through the kind of suffering they are experiencing now. We have elected politicians whose development plan was to make the country self-sufficient in chewing-gum and bracelets and who have distributed cloths ‘to observe Sil’ or a food basket, to the Parliament. We saw some members of Parliament accusing others of being sold to the highest bidder.

If we as citizens are willing to sell our vote to the highest bidder, then can we expect anything different from the ones we send to the Parliament to represent us?

As prof. Noam Chomsky has said: “Major efforts have to be undertaken to bring the general public to understand the real reasons for their plight, and the possibilities for radical social and political change to construct meaningful popular control of all institutions – in communities, in the workplace, in the larger society, and on to the international order.”

The writer has served in higher education sector as an academic over twenty years in the USA and fifteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected]

Comments