Columns

It is all over bar the shouting and predicting the day when an egg will cost a thousand rupees under an NPP government. But to that a little later.

But right now, one must dig out those great economists, thinkers, and dregs that hovered around the last leader and his cabinet, raucously singing hallelujahs to the only man in Sri Lanka who could save this sacred country, who would have returned to their bolt-holes by the time this appears.

Those great thinkers that our self-elevated leaders encouraged the voters to plant in parliament so that our new gathering of the people’s representatives would be as intellectually vibrant as the conventicles of Socrates in ancient Greece seem, however, to be missing from the winners’ lists.

Take, for instance, the intellectual power of the then cabinet, criminals and others of their ilk included, seated in that august assembly regurgitating their accumulated knowledge. What a glorious scene of intellectual exchanges it would have been.

Even the waters of Diyawanna Oya would have gurgled and churned at what would have been the first time an intellectual tsunami had swept into the assembly, stirring the thought-provoking verbiage with wave after wave of muddy water.

Our leaders of not too long ago might believe in their hallucinations. The voters entertained no such illusions as Thursday’s election results showed.

Many would remember the words of Marx, who said that history repeats itself first as tragedy and second as farce.

The problem with those who led the country was that they refused to learn from history, believing they had learned enough and needed no tutoring, like the lessons they offered to others.

So their belief turned tragedy into farce. When the presidential election was lost by a long shot and the voters simply ignored the self-opinionated leaders and their henchmen and voted for fundamental changes in the political system, they should have opened their ears and eyes more than their mouths and, more importantly, their minds to the heartbeats of the people who had suffered long enough.

Instead, they cobbled together political bits and pieces from here and there, changed the name of this agglomeration, dropped the well-established symbol of an elephant, and urged the voters to send the experienced and educated people to parliament. Did they really think a name change would be mistaken as the new policy and attitudinal transformation of a brand new party when the voters could see the same faces and mouths making the same noises and mouthing cooked-up stories?

And what was the result? Just take Colombo, the conclave for decades of the right-wing political and business elite, the heart of the Rightist and increasingly neoliberal UNP and its stronghold in yesteryear. Most of the UNP inner circle and decision-makers were headquartered there.

It must not be forgotten that the UNP was the first to govern independent Ceylon and then ruled the country for several decades thereafter.

However its leaders failed to note that times had changed and that it was not the old rulers versus the trade union/working class struggle that marked the political history of the past.

Today a new generation has emerged and grown up tired of the old aristocracy, its worldview, and its authoritarian approaches.

The progeny of the aristocratic ruling class ignored or forgot Marx’s words about history. They would well follow Trump, but Marx was hardly their friendly preacher.

Yet Marx was surely right. When Junius “Tricky Dicky,” as the leader, resurrected the UNP and in 1977 produced the biggest electoral result in the country’s political history, winning 5/6ths of the seats, never mind for the moment what else he did, leaving some of the blackest patches this country has known, which can never be erased.

But in the 45 years or so since 1977—the political zenith to which JR Jayewardene raised the UNP—the once-respected party has hit its nadir.

And last week was the pièce de résistance. The UNP contesting under a new name lost every single seat in the capital, Colombo, which has been its stronghold.

Look at the other side of the record sheet. The Anura Kumara Dissanayake-led NPP scored a resounding election victory, gaining a 2/3rd majority, which I doubt the NPP inner circle seriously expected.

Within a five-year gap, while the UNP was battling internally, AKD and his dedicated followers were building the party and spreading its tentacles to create a people-centric political movement, which has paid off despite the attempts of a scared opposition to frighten the people with half-baked stories and concoctions, which have not succeeded, as two election results have shown.

If in the United States, an unsavoury character, also with a criminal record, like some of those in our last cabinet, was elected president by stirring racial and religious conflicts or promoting violence that would further create divisions at home. But here, the AKD-led NPP which was urging social, racial, and religious cohesion won two districts in the minority Tamil-dominated heartland, Jaffna, and a multiracial Vanni district.

I wonder whether there has ever been a majority Sinhala-Buddhist party from the country’s south that has been able to make inroads into the minority-Tamil cultural heartland and electoral seats against the resident Tamil majority there as the NPP has done.

That surely is an unprecedented achievement that should be acknowledged and applauded, especially by those who decried and despised the NPP’s progressive policies.

(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.)