The same old, the same old? No more!
View(s):I am taking a chance writing this. In fact, a risk: Today is the seventh day of the new year… Tomorrow the people of our nation will vote for a new era!? By the time you read this, the election result will be known. But I do not know which way the poll will swing. Thus I write in principle. Never mind whom the country plumps for, these values must no longer remain thin on the ground. Change is something we can all embrace. Winners, losers, voters, citizens, and all: National interest never had a better chance!
No more fears
No matter who won, no one I know voted for a Sri Lanka in which the same old fears would dominate the polity. If MR won, it is incumbent on him to make good all his promises of safety, security, stability, for all Sri Lankans. If MS won, we would expect all parties in his to-be short-lived coalition government to keep all their promises of a return to the rule of law and order over the rule by law in which justice was once so arbitrary, selective, unpredictable.
No more tears
No matter who won, no one I know voted for a Sri Lanka in which the same old tears would be cried by the same old people. If MR won, we pray his opponents would be spared the customary recriminations (purges, penalties, punishments) as much as we hope all those marginalized demographics under his first two administrations will experience relief. If MS won, we trust that all the vulnerable people of the land who were so clearly identified in the run-up to the polls (poor, oppressed, deprived of justice) would receive respite in practice as much as they did in theory.
No more corruption
I am sorry to say that I suspect some self-seeking, self-serving, selfish punters polled in anticipation that the corrupt status quo would continue to meet their short-term, short-sighted ends. But if MR is in for a third term, we sincerely appeal to his better nature to honour the offer he made in the last-ditch desperate attempt to win this election when he said his third term would be devoted to a war on corruption as much as his first was a war on terrorism and his second a war on underdevelopment. And if MS is in, we wish him the best of luck – and more – in keeping the vultures within and without at bay; human nature being what it is: power tending to corrupt, absolute power absolutely.
No more cost of living worries
Sadly this might be a pipe-dream – no matter who won! That said, and fixing fundamentals apart, those who believe in good governance and those who say they do have a cardinal opportunity now to eliminate the waste, bureaucracy, corruption, mismanagement, etc., which add to the burden. Can both cost of living and quality of life be improved if a serious attempt is made to eradicate systemic corruption? It will take a politician or a group of politicians with outstanding courage and moral fibre – who would rather be remembered honourably by history, than thanked brokenly by their cronies and sundry hangers-on – to cleanse the Augean Stables. Notably, I know only one statesman in the upper echelons of Sri Lankan political leadership today who will understand the concept, much less subscribe to it with unimpeachable integrity. He did not even stand for public office.
No more crime
Surely we have all come a long way and fallen far short of the ‘righteous society’ we once were, and sometimes still claim to be. If MS won, we would all want him and his national government to return the republic to the rule of law and order, rather than continue to selectively enforce rule by law. If MR won, we could not really expect the powers that be to distance themselves too much from the drug, ethanol, and casino lobbies. Or could we? Here’s a perfect opportunity for whoever’s in to break with the past and make a clean start again, having made a clean sweep of it.
No more petty partisan politics
If MS is in, the “achchaaru coalition” (as someone witty has christened it) will need every dash of salt and pepper to keep the national government from being a pretty pickle. If MR is in, is it too much to ask that a politician of his stature would return to the cut and thrust and parry of parliamentary politics and eschew the clout and thuggery and press of dirty-tricks? Political messiahs who value and deserve their reputation must no longer be mandated by crooks, criminals, cliques, claques, covens, and the like.
No more business as usual
Whoever is in, it is high time to leave the family at home… and focus on duly appointed or democratically elected representatives of the people as the backbone of politics, the bulwark of a free republic, and the bastion of one of the oldest democracies in our region. (Isn’t it just so, dears?) Time past also for constitutional reform that will re-establish separation of powers: executive, legislature, judiciary.
No more war talk
MR’s plank was keen on credit for winning the unwinnable war. Someone on MS’s common platform wanted her fair share (an estimated 65 per cent of it) of the kudos. Let us say to all and sundry: NO ONE “won” the war – WE ALL “lost” a generation or more of people to its shock and horror. Let us stop talking about it as something to take political credit for when it cost us all SO MUCH in terms of life and limb and liberty. Shall we?
No more Sri Lanka v. the rest
Is the day dawning when our beloved and blessed isle and all its bounty can be truly recognized in the eyes of the world without the aid and assistance of sycophants and propagandists?
No more race and religious hate
Is an era emerging – and/or even re-emerging from the mists of our early independence’s halcyon days – when we can all (“irrespective of caste and creed”, as the cliché goes) begin to live together again in peace with justice and harmony?
No more holding back
Is the time coming when we can put the spectre of our recent past behind us and believe in a “suba anaagathayak”, a “surakshitha deshayak”, a “maithree yugayak”, for all?
By now, you would know which way the winds of change are blowing. Or be resigned to a “the more things change the more they might stay the same” attitude. As for me and my household, we are off to vote tomorrow. Which, for you, today, is yesterday’s yesterday. May all beings be happy, saved, freed, in the new age now.