Columns

That pithy village idiom, long beloved of those who view politics and politicians with a bitterly jaundiced eye, ‘unuthekai, munuthekai’, is greatly apt for Sri Lanka’s current political environment. Thistranslates roughly into saying that one set of political rogues is only equaled by the other set of political rogues.

Smaller political parties who have used this scathing indictment as a poster cry against the two main party voting blocs are also no better, as the post January 2015 political trajectory shows.

The sorry tale of the bond scam
Certainly the moral high ground on which the ‘yahapalanaya’ (good governance) campaign of Maithripala Sirisena came roaring into power just a few months ago has all but dissolved.Nothing shows this better than the convulsions of the United National Party (UNP) over the alleged Central Bank bond scam.

This week, many were unpleasantly galvanized by the revelation that the parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) had reportedly found the Central Bank governor to have been directly involved in a financial transaction involving his son-in-law. This is in stark contrast to the UNP committee of (unheard of) party lawyers who absolved the Governor from blame.

The dissolving of Parliament by President Sirisena prevented the official tabling of the report. But it is grievously wrong to think that the matter has been laid to rest. Indeed, the whole sorry tale speaks to the arrogance of the UNP party leadership and its former ministerial advocates of good governance who are wont to casually dismiss the controversy as of scarce importance.

The manipulation of propaganda on this was so extreme that it extended to even the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the constitutional petition filed with much fanfare by three good governance activists impugning the alleged bond scam. Thus, though the dismissal was reportedly on a faulty formulation of the legal question involved in asking for leave to proceed on an alleged violation of fundamental rights, this was used by the Central Bank Governor to loudly if not absurdly proclaim that he had been substantively ‘absolved’ by the Court.

Conducting a rude political sideshow
At one level, this speaks to the ill wisdom of rushing to court on these matters without good consideration of the constitutional issues involved. At another and far graver level, this fiasco bars former UNP Ministers handling economic policy in particular from holding forth on financial accountability in the coming elections.

A rude political sideshow was conducted on Rajapaksa corruption rather than a clean-cut legal investigation and prosecution. If, as was alleged, such an effort was being blocked by compromised officers in the three primary agencies of the police, prosecutorial and the judiciary, then a strong hand should have dealt with these individuals. Instead, what we saw was a media circus. Indeed, in general, there has been perfunctory regard shown for the law despite rhetoric regarding the Rule of Law, starting from the ill judged dismissal of a politically compromised Chief Justice through executive fiat rather than through a decreed constitutional procedure. This is on par with the UNP’s apparently irresistible compulsion to appoint political committees to look into alleged legal wrong doing, which as pointed out in last week’s column spaces, have no legitimacy in law and amount to mere media spin.

President Sirisena has also done himself little good by his desperate convulsions to save the Sri Lanka Freedom Party including awarding ministerial positions to well known political rogues and appointing a former Prime Minister tainted by a drug dealing scandal to an advisory position. At the turn of the year, the peoples’ confidence reposed in him after the electoral win was so great that he had an unprecedented opportunity to singlehandedly turn the corrupt political tide around. This opportunity was squandered through pandering to pro-Rajapaksaha rdliners in the party. We see the result of those unwise moves now as the former President gathers his communalistic cheerleaders around him and prepares for a pushback.

Dampening of popular idealism
Whether this effort will be successful or not, is not the question. What manipulators in the circus that passes for the political process here wanted was a dampening of the heady popular idealism that came to the fore in January. This idealism had at its core, a strong rejection of the gross corruption, racism and communalism which had formed an integral part of the Rajapaksa Presidency. This was a battle cry which had immediate support from across the country, even from once pro-Rajapaksastrongholds.

It is therefore unforgivable that public cynicism regarding the Rajapaksa corruption has replaced public determination to punish those responsible. As described by a colleague who joined keenly in the good governance struggle five months ago but has now returned to the old disinterestedness, ‘what is the point of all this. The same mistakes are being committed, perhaps not to the extent that the Rajapaksas ravaged the country. But did we change the political leadership at such cost just for this charade?”
This is a profound betrayal of the peoples’ trust given against such huge odds, as the UNP must be firmly told.

Unpalatable choices before the voters
Much of this is due to a basically faulty political strategy which focused on regime change in January this year, glossed over by good governance as an appealing popular slogan. What we were left with ultimately was a stripped down 19th Amendment and shameless compromises in regard to the constitution of the Constitutional Council when government advocates declared that the body could sit without its minority quota of independent members. Meanwhile the Right to Information (RTI) Bill and the National Audit Bill, which would have transformed the political culture as opposed to abstract constitutional principles, were discarded.

True, it may still becontended that the looming Rajapaksa evil trumps all other evils. Butthe issue that confronts us in the coming polls essentially reduces itself to an unpalatable choice of which roguery will cause more harm to the country. Let us be very clear about that.