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Soothing rhetoric that ‘we are all one’ has always come very easy for Sri Lankan politicians. This velvet glove of ‘oneness’ hiding a far uglier steel hand of majority rule was discarded during the short-lived Gotabaya Rajapaksa regime (2019-2022) when a new President declared without demur that he was a leader of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority, later permitting nakedly communalistic constituents of his ‘Viyathmaga’ base to run riot in the political space.

Blind unthinking rage

The end result of that disastrous Presidency is now history though its bitter after effects will never quite leave generations of Sri Lankans painfully destined to witness the nation being beggared due to the miserable follies of a ‘war warrior’ leader. A staunch National Peoples’ Power (NPP) supporter (once a Rajapaksa loyalist) confessed to me last week that even if the ‘NPP regime does not live up to a quarter of the expectations that people placed in it, at least it defeated the Rajapaksas. I am overjoyed at that.’

This is exactly the explosion of blind unthinking rage that leads to a repeat of history, it must be warned. And informed by that soberly realistic past, we may be forgiven for declining to be swept up in the general ecstasy over President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s promise last week that his NPP regime will not allow ‘a resurgence of divisive racist politics in our country…similarly, no form of religious extremism will be permitted to take root.’

That was in the Statement of Policy to the 10th Parliament last week where he acknowledged that the ‘…nation has endured immense suffering due to ethnic conflicts. This soil has been soaked with enough blood, and rivers have flowed with the tears of countless people. Mistrust, suspicion, and anger among communities have grown to alarming levels.’ His guarantee however that ‘no one will be allowed to use nationalist or religious rhetoric as a means to gain political power in this country’ is a tad ambitious.

The NPP’s litmus test

There is nothing that the President or any other person can do for that matter if the Sri Lankan citizenry fall once more into the vicious trap of majority-minority politics that enabled political dynasties particularly of the Rajapaksas, to enrich themselves and blood the country dry. That said and rhetoric apart, the President and his Government must do far more than issue appealing promises, open closed roads in the North or shift one or two military camps which should have been anyway done far earlier.

This is the easy part. The litmus test of the NPP regime lies elsewhere. Months into the ‘system change’ that was trumpeted, the signs could be more encouraging. One cause for concern is the borderline offensive response by NPP front-liners when citizens’ groups questioned the reasons for the absence of representation of a member of Muslim ethnicity in the blushingly new Cabinet. To be clear, this is not to argue for ethnic representation per se, either in the Cabinet or in any other body for that matter.

Boasting token representation on the basis of ethnicity in any context is counter-productive if the representative in question is incompetent, insensitive, uninterested or a political puppet as we have seen in multiple instances. The NPP Cabinet spokesman tried to project that truth when he pointed out that despite having a senior Muslim Minister in the Gotabaya Rajapaksa regime, the Muslims of Sri Lanka suffered the most during that time.

Insufferably condescending responses by Ministers

Those discriminatory actions ranged from refusal to allow the burial of their covid 19-dead to race riots at the time. But that Rajapaksa reality is scarcely a justification for the manner and nature of the Government’s astoundingly insensitive approach to legitimate fears of a minority community. The NPP has blandly explained that members of the Cabinet were chosen on the basis of their capacity and suitability and ethnic considerations were not a factor thereto. This answer is self-defeating to put it mildly.

Is it the position of the NPP that there is no competent member of the minority Muslim polity amongst their ranks? That does not augur very well for the multi-ethnic composition of the NPP itself or indeed, for the votes that the party received from citizens of Muslim-majority areas particularly in the North and East. Meanwhile two key NPP Ministers have advanced a familiar if not unpersuasive argument that ‘we are all Sri Lankans’ to urge that such questions should not even be raised in the first instance.

Listing actions by these Ministers to meet the needs of the Muslim community such as introducing Cabinet papers to allow Muslim girls to wear the hijab in schools, is no answer. This is an insufferably condescending response, to put it bluntly. In fact, the explanations given by the Government in this regard is far worse than the initial fact of the absence of a Muslim minority Minister in the Cabinet. Neither does it suffice to say that the Muslim community has other key representatives in the Government.

Constitutional lessons
of the past

Sri Lanka’s perennial tragedy has been the betrayal of public expectations by its leaders, not the lack of fortitude by citizens. Following the extraordinary mandate given to the NPP in last month’s parliamentary elections, including from the Tamil and Muslim minorities, many challenges lie ahead. These encompass far more than a disgruntled fracas over the composition of its Cabinet. The new regime has talked of constitutional reform but with no specifics, apart from a campaign promise that the Office of the Executive Presidency will be abolished.

To that end, the unhappy fate of the Constitution Bill of 2000 hurriedly referred overnight to the Supreme Court by the Kumaratunga Presidency remains an example of what to avoid. The Bill tried to replace the Executive Presidency with a ceremonial head of state assisted by two vice presidents from two different communities and a return to the Westminster system of parliamentary government. The appointment of members of the Cabinet, (by the President acting upon advice of the Prime Minister), was subject to ensuring the representation of all communities.

Though some provisions of the Bill were put before the people, the country remained unaware of its contents. When the draft became public, it was met by a storm of protests by citizens’ groups, monks and the opposition. Though legal challenges to its constitutionality failed in the Supreme Court, public agitation resulted in the government withdrawing the Constitution Bill from Parliament. The Constitution Bill was sought to be passed with indecent and tumultuous haste.

 The sin of political hubris

If a wiser process had been followed, the Bill might have gained public acceptance. A wider consultative process would have enabled a healthier constitutional balance of powers and averted many of the disasters which later befell the country as a result of extreme Presidential authoritarianism. Even though medicinal patches were sought to be pasted in the form of the 17th, 19th and 21st Amendments on this constitutional wound, these were manifestly insufficient.

Decades later, as the NPP treads the treacherously thorny path from political promises to political reality, its Ministers chuckle that the Opposition has been fragmented with pitiable remnants remaining. We heard similar arrogant boasts in 2015 (the ‘yahapalanaya’ or good governance regime of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe coalition) and in 2019 (the Sinhala-Buddhist mandate of the Rajapaksas) both of which agonisingly imploded. If President Dissanayake and his NPP Government remain open to learning anything from history, it must be that overwhelming peoples’ mandates are far from permanent.

On the contrary, political triumphs are the very stuff of impermanence. The fate of this long-suffering nation hangs on that sober realisation.