Seeing light in the middle of the tunnel

Putting the country back to work, largely means clearing up of perceptions. The perception now is that Sri Lanka has gone mad, turned banana republic. Other than politics and cricket, nothing very much happens in this island.

This perception is keeping businessmen from doing their work, investors from getting here and putting up shop. Other than that, it is a healthy thing to have politicians battling themselves and wasting their energies on each other , rather than on the country's affairs.

Less politics is the best thing that can happen to a country — less government usually means more economic growth. To that extent, it will be nice to have politicians electioneering 24 hours of the day, 365 days of the year, keeping their hands off the country's vital areas such as economy, at both it's macro and micro levels.

Unfortunately, perceptions do matter, and a country that is seen to be in disarray doesn't sell well with investors here or abroad. But what frequent elections can do in one sense is to keep a country's politicians on their toes, preoccupied with pleasing the masses — which is one way of making sure that they do not mess up too much with the country's affairs.

So, we see at least one sanguinary aspect of the constitutional brittleness that resulted in frequent elections. This happened in India, before the Vajpayee government finally managed to consolidate itself and rule India amidst the frequent — I almost said — coitus interruptus…… ( Coitus interruptus will be the going term here, probably, with G. L. Peiris and the knee- jerk state media engaged in a verbal duel over the merits of "cohabitation'' between a PA President and a UNP parliament.) Interruptus can step in and mar this conjugal bliss, or the cohabitative bliss, as it happened when Rauf Hakeem turned his back on the Madam. 

But a good thing about short lived coalition governments is that it prevents parliamentary autocracies from maintaining their corrupt hegemony over the people's affairs. It also means that there is less government.

Less government is certainly bad in terms of providing infrastructure for investment, and in terms of providing necessary safeguards and cushions for the underprivileged in a poor economy.

In this way, Italian style musical – chairs coalition governments may be best suited for country's such as Italy, which are economically in a different league. But, if there is less government, and a nation grows due to the fact that it's engines of commerce are allowed to manage the economy without interference, there is bound to be some trickle -down ( ugh, awful word) which will help the people at the bottom end of the indices pyramid.

Of course the fact is that this theory is greatly impeded in a country which is at war. A war needs to be managed, and stable governments are supposed to be able to do that. But even a war is mismanaged in this country by government's with long life spans, because politicians are fond of seeing the war budget as their own private kitty.

So, even as far as the war is concerned, it might be better to have short-lived coalition governments rather than long lived administrations which have converted the war into their own private money machine.

It may be a terrible optimist, therefore, who sees some good in the current chaos, but count me in as one. At least, there are some sanguinary aspects in keeping coalition governments in power, so that the opposition can always keep the government of the day in check so that the government of the day doesn't have time between innings to mess up a country's affairs beyond redemption. For instance, one year of a PA government is enough. One year of a UNP government that follows might be enough too. If only the Ceylan/Solo U man and others like him can mind their business without crying too much about instability and skewing the economic perceptions, we just might even make it, among all these madmen hurling insults and epithets across the parliamentary divide.