Columns

Who would have thought that one would live to see the day when two of Sri Lanka’s biggest national festivals would be celebrated in such unexpected ways at an unexpected place called Galle Face Green, preceded by a religious event of much significance to the Muslim community.

Though an Easter Sunday service may not be held today at the same venue now renamed Gota-go-gama by the present occupiers, there were Christian clergy commemorating Maundy Thursday.

These traditional New Year and religious activities performed in this venue signified one unthinkable and fortuitous achievement of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa Government.

That was the coalescing of the country’s multi-ethnic, multi-religious society and a demographic cross-section of it in one place in support of a movement that suddenly gelled after scattered protests by disparate groups against a government they perceived had let them down in many ways.

What has been happening at this place opposite the Presidential Secretariat amounts to a resounding rejoinder to the ultranationalist forces that had egged on Gotabaya Rajapaksa to don the mantle of a modern-day Hitler.

Such persuasion came from the saffron-robed, well before Mr Rajapaksa could claim the presidential seat and more recently from a state minister later elevated to cabinet rank only to lose it with the rest of his colleagues in a clean sweep of ministerial rubbish.

Whether the choice of such a model to emulate was a sign of the crass ignorance of world history and the havoc and horror Hitler’s Nazism spread across Europe and farther afield or this is what the sponsors of a Mein Kampf philosophy believed is the best for Sri Lanka, is better left to psychiatrists to ponder.

But such thinking that even called for recruiting the military to help rule the country shows the mind-set of those who belonged to the inner circle of the President or considered themselves advisors to the country’s politically inexperienced ruler.

How a highly-placed monk who has undertaken to preach the teachings of the Buddha who taught non-violence and non-discrimination and equanimity or ‘Upekkha,’could extol the virtues of Hitlerite militarism and racial bigotry beggars belief.

Such utterances should have been condemned and dismissed right at the start and Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s articles of faith in his election manifesto clearly carved in stone, as it were.

Those articles claimed to treat all communities alike and pledged justice for all, to eschew nepotism and enthrone meritocracy in the selection of persons for high office.

Had they proved to be true, not mere electioneering and political gimmickry, the President, his family and his government would not be facing the rising antagonism that has manifested itself opposite his secretariat and elsewhere in the country.

Such hypocrisy as the public increasingly began to call it, was topped by arrogance. President Rajapaksa appointed Galgoda-atte Gnanasara Thera as the head of a task force to study the drafting of the “One Country, One Law” concept into law, knowing only too well his reputation, his lack of respect for the law and its institutions, his religious bigotry and the disrespect many true believers of the Buddha dhamma had for him because of his disreputable past.

Added to that, the President, a former military officer, began promoting tri-forces personnel to higher ranks on several occasions and at convenient opportunities. Such promotions might have been justified had they not involved increased salaries and perks.

On the one hand, public servants–teachers and others in the education sector and health workers–crying for enhanced salaries were being denied their due for lack of money, but there was enough to pay the forces.

So the public began to see two parallel developments. Buddhist monks–some of them of dubious virtue and physical prowess–and the military being specially cared for while employees in other sectors were neglected.

The pledges made in “Vistas of Splendour” appeared to an increasingly distraught and suffering public as nothing more than political rhetoric. Many believed this was drafted by a coterie of academics and so-called intellectuals, several of whom supposedly belonging to a collective called Viyath Maga.

That was another mistake President Rajapaksa made, the over-reliance on persons who paraded as experts and persons of knowledge while discarding perhaps contemptuously the opinions and views of more experienced individuals.

No ruler can be perfect and endowed with vistas of knowledge and learning. It is understandable that such rulers, especially those without political experience needs to rely on others learned in their subjects and with sufficient expertise to provide back-room guidance.

But those with experience in the battle fields of Nandikadal, for instance, may not necessarily be experts in the paddy fields of Polonnaruwa.

There are two good examples of the president relying on bad advice and faulty opinion. One concerns economic policy that goes back as to the first days of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency. This was the tax cuts, slashing of VAT and other levies that left the country struggling to meet its dues.

The other was the sudden, overnight ban on chemical fertiliser that drove Sri Lanka’s farmers to the wall while the then Agriculture Minister gloated over a new “green” revolution when the result was in fact a growing food shortage and spiralling prices.

The fact is that on both issues more experienced and knowledgeable persons advised against such rash policies and called for a return to the status quo ante.

But such entreaties to the executive were as futile as playing an aria to a deaf elephant or to an arrogant leadership that clung to ill-advice.

Recently I listened to a media interview with the current Finance Minister, Mohamed Ali Sabry, who divulged that for one year or more the cabinet was urging that Sri Lanka seek IMF assistance to deal with the country’s fast depleting foreign reserves and rising inflation caused partly by excessive printing of money by the Central Bank.

But the cabinet consensus was ignored by officials that dictated the government’s economic policy. That troika consisted of Central Bank Governor Nivard Cabraal, Finance Ministry Secretary S.R. Attygalle and Presidential Secretary P.B. Jayasundera, according to Minister Ali Sabry.

How three officials were able to make economic policy, over-ride the obvious thinking of the cabinet and drive the country to the point of bankruptcy is indicative of the bankruptcy of Sri Lanka’s policy-making apparatus and governance through ignorance.

Thankfully, all three of them are no longer in their positions of power and influence. But they left or were asked to leave after the damage had been done and history was made leaving Sri Lanka a bankrupt nation–at least for some time to come–for the first time in our post-independence years.

Is it any wonder then that the huge public multi-racial, multi-religious gatherings of people of all ages are protesting against a dysfunctional government that has deprived their parents of providing them with food and other amenities and the youth of furthering their education here and abroad?

Also for the first time in our history, Sri Lankan migrants from a wide spread of countries and cities around the world have joined in the protests calling on the President and his family to quit. That too is not surprising for they too feel the hurt of their relatives and friends in their country of birth.

Moreover, there are youth committed to continue their education abroad but cannot find ways of paying for their studies because their parents, relatives or friends are unable to remit the money from home.

Of those 6.9 million who voted in November 2019 expecting vistas of prosperity and splendour, how many still believe in those messianic prophecies, it is hard to say.

But those out there at the new Galle Face village, like much of the population don’t seem to share the optimism of Dr Pangloss in Voltaire’s novel “Candide”. They expect a longer wait–perhaps in the next samsara.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran
Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London)