Sunday Times 2
Elections: Only way out of impasse
View(s):Whither Lanka? This question is the most asked by all in this country but defies an answer.
But there will be only a few who do not have their own solution. Pundits in the newspapers and on TV shows all have their solutions and some of them can be categorised into vast blocs of political opinion because their solutions are on their party lines.
Even though this may be not the best methodology to find a solution to a complex problem that has defied resolution for years, it is perhaps the only way because Lanka is still an independent democratic multiparty republic.
It may not be the best way in the era of Artificial Intelligence—just broken out—and with minister Bandula Gunawardena attempting to browbeat public opinion with his own logic.
Democracy is not a computer product. It originated in Greece over 2,500 years ago, evolving through the centuries, subject to human wisdom and idiocy to what it is today.
It was best expressed by Winston Churchill: The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter and also quipped: democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Sri Lanka’s present government is one without two legs to stand on; an unelected president as the leader elected through a constitutional process sans legitimacy and supported by a parliament whose prime minister and entire cabinet of ministers resigned after tens of thousands besieged their offices and homes when people were deprived of the basic necessities for survival.
Thus, if this country is to remain a democracy, the solution is to hold presidential and parliamentary elections as early as possible.
Elections though resulting in periodic change of governments have not been able to bring about resolution of the issues of the minority communities. It is now apparent that elections, legislation, armed conflicts and foreign interference with force of arms—even backed by billions of dollars—are no solutions.
Trust and confidence between the majority and minorities is the only way out. Chauvinism and majoritarianism in the South resulted in 30 years of terrorism in the North which reignited terrorism in the South.
All that is now history. Do we have leaders—on both sides of Elephant Pass—whose sincerity to national reconciliation is believed and accepted by the people to lead the way?
To forge the need for national unity among the people, the political environment should be conducive for trusting not only political leaders but your neighbours as well. As a schoolboy in the mid-1950s, we recall that such an atmosphere existed, until the Sinhala Only Act shattered it all.
Trust, confidence and transparency are all obvious requirements for an atmosphere of truth and reconciliation—not taking the people to be asses and utterings of fantastic lies knowing well that even the people know them to be lies but accept them for political partisanship. This is demagoguery as H.L. Mencken, an American journalist defined it: A demagogue preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
We say this because last week Cabinet Spokesman and Transport Minister Bandula Gunawardena made the fantastic claim that some trade unions that were on strike were responsible for the death of an 18-year-old Katubedde Technical College student who fell off the roof of a moving train. Another person had died after falling from a train travelling between Wellawatte and Bambalapitiya while a third person had fallen off a train at the Bulugahagoda station and was injured. In all instances, the minister held the railway unions that were on strike responsible.
Reports said the minister had said that the sudden trade union action was an act of ‘Train Terrorism’ and declared the Railway Department an essential service.
We wonder whether the minister is blissfully unaware that this dangerous practice of commuters travelling on roofs of moving trains, footboards, and between bogeys occurred during rush hour was a widespread practice even before he became the minister of transport and also after he took office. It is an inherited Indian legacy of Indian Railways.
Despite the grim tragedy of the young student, cartoonists could not help but be amused yesterday at this ‘Train Terrorism’ declared by the minister.
It is this kind of propaganda that is counterproductive to building trust between the government, the people, and among themselves.
The minister should be well aware that in most countries even though trains and tube trains are jampacked, they do not start moving until all doors are closed. The hard fact is that our trains that are imported from India do not have the facility of doors closing automatically before they start moving. Under these circumstances station officials, guards and drivers should be warned of not permitting trains to take off with passengers outside the body of a train—roof, footboard, etc. It will be a hard rule to implement because of the insufficient number of trains required.
Meanwhile, we have read of the ‘Odysseys’ of Minister Gunawardena in Indian-built trains and rail tracks built by India from Tissamaharama to Jaffna and even on the single-track Colombo along the Kelani Valley. Odysseys in VIP trains may be a thing of joy to the minister but the Odyssey of Odysseus returning home after winning the Trojan War was by no means easy having displeased his gods. In a democracy, the voice of the people is the voice of the gods.
(The writer is a former editor of The Sunday Island, The Island, and consultant editor of the Sunday Leader. He can be contacted at gamma.weerakoon@gmail.com)