Columns

Come Saturday Sri Lanka’s voters will trek to the polls to elect the country’s new president. Less than a month later — on December 12 — the United Kingdom, far less united than the name suggests, will vote to elect a new government.

While racial and religious differences and personal acrimony at the top of the totems have marked the recent political history of both countries, their electoral politics differ so much in style and substance.

Having followed in the last few years the struggle for power and the internecine battles in Sri Lanka’s governing circles and the emerging politics with amusement,  I have done so with greater relish watching the curious twists and turns of British politics marinated in the last few years in a convoluted Brexit mix.

In recent times, the manoeuvres of President Sirisena and the antics of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, egged on by an opinionated adviser who seems to fancy himself as a modern-day Kautilya, landed both in the law courts. Both fell flat on their faces which did little to improve their looks.

Sri Lanka’s presidential campaign developed into what might be called “up the ante” strategy. When one of the principal candidates makes a pledge, it is improved upon by another. So when one proposes to provide subsidised fertilizer another promises to give it free to farmers. The first then pledges to give it free too, and then to all farmers instead of only paddy growers.

If one candidate promises to raise the daily wage of plantation workers by Rs 1000, the other ups the ante and promises Rs 1,500. Nobody really explains where the money is coming from to meet all these pledges. At the same time, they promise that various taxes would be reduced to benefit individuals and the private enterprise.

Goatabaya Rajapaksa and his attorney Ali Sabry at the National Muslim Collective event

So there we are increasing salaries, benefits and other freebees while reducing government revenue and at a time when Sri Lanka is faced with a loan repayment problem.

It is scant wonder that Sri Lanka produces such promising politicians. But then how much the implementation of all these pledges would cost and how many years it would take remains under a cloud — they are what is called unmentionables.

On the other hand, here in the UK, there are several independent institutes that do policy analyses and the fiscal cost of various political party and government pledges so that one does not have to listen to so-called erudite lectures by ‘pundits’ like Bandula Gunewardena.

One such oft-quoted institution is the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), a respected, independent body. In fact I just saw an IFS study on next month’s parliamentary election here titled “What are the challenges for the UK’s economy.”

So when Prime Minister Boris Johnson utters a lie or what Winston Churchill euphemistically called a “terminological inexactitude”, as Johnson often does and is quickly found out, the public turns to such independent institutes or the media to expose him.

On the day the election campaign officially opened last week, Johnson, speaking outside No 10, his official residence and office, began by saying he never wanted this election. That is not how we remember the recent history of the Brexit debate that was intensified since he took office some months ago and promised to withdraw the UK from the European Union by 31 August- do or die!

While Boris Johnson has a history of being rather economical with the truth I was intrigued by some remarks made by President’s Counsel Ali Sabry at a meeting of the National Muslim Collective Forum in support of presidential candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

According to a news report, a highlight of the meeting was the “continuous applause” the two received for the various statements they made.

Over what might have been a considerable continuous din, Ali Sabry seems to have managed to rise above it to engage in some remarks on international affairs which make one wonder whether we are living in the same planet.

Ali Sabry reportedly referred to “one person who transformed countries.” Is that necessarily an achievement to be proud of? The question is surely whether they were transformed for the better or not, whether in this transformation people suffered, were imprisoned, killed and the freedom of speech and dissent were denied and so with other democratic rights.

In support of this one-man show Counsel Ali Sabry cites Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia and Gen Park of South Korea as the great ‘doers’.

If Ali Sabry’s thesis of one person transforming nations for the good is to be accepted then Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Robert Mugabe and a host of African dictators who seized power by coup d’état or other foul means and enslaved their people must be included under Ali Sabry’s political philosophy.

While the president’s counsel has sought to lionise Lee Kuan Yew, Mahathir and Park he has avoided any mention of Kim Jong-il, Ferdinand Marcos, Suharto, Pol Pot and the military leaders who seized power in Thailand, Myanmar and Pakistan to name a few.

Is it his legal training that has made him avoid citing evidence that does not buttress his case or is it just plain ignorance?

I have neither time nor space to discuss Ali Sabry’s political idiosyncrasies. So let me look briefly at the other side of the political ascendancy of Korea’s Park and Singapore’s Lee.

Ali Sabry seems unaware of the very salient fact that Gen Park came to power through a military coup at the beginning of the 1960s and ruled with an iron fist until his assassination in 1979. This brief comment is to enlighten Ali Sabry of the military dictatorship that one of his heroes ran in South Korea.

As for Lee Kuan Yew, he was indeed a clever man determined to build a post-colonial city-state. But Ali Sabry cannot brush aside how he used the judiciary and political power to deal with dissent and crush those politically opposed to him. He intervened in every aspect of Singaporean life.

“And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters – who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think” Lee told The Straits Times newspaper on April 20, 1987.

“We have to lock up people, without trial, whether they are communists, whether they are language chauvinists, whether they are religious extremists. If you don’t do that, the country would be in ruins,” he said in 1986 while imprisoning and cruelly abusing Catholic Church social-justice workers who were certainly opposed to his practices and whom he also claimed but never proved were Communists.

All three leaders Ali Sabry mentions were dictators/authoritarian rulers. By bringing them to the fore and holding a mirror up to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, is Ali Sabry asking the presidential candidate to rule like those three did, if he becomes president.

By doing so, is he not actually urging Rajapaksa to adopt the political ways of the three Asian leaders? It would be far more useful if Ali Sabry sets aside his law books for a time and read more into the political flip side of the three wise men he seems to admire. That might be more useful to the Muslim community and certainly even more to Sri Lanka.