Aragalaya to Alimankada with PM’s first mistake

The Galle Face protests, dubbed an ‘Aragalaya’ by the left intellectuals, who gleefully interpreted it as the inexorable unfolding of the ‘process’ dictated by ‘historical materialism’, ended up in its very Hegelian antithesis. Surely, Ranil Wickremesinghe is the last ‘Aliya’ (the Elephant, the symbol of his party) of the free-market politics of JR JayEwardenE. He is the antithesis of the Aragalaya ideology. And yet, the Aragalaya made him the single-handed power behind the throne of the equally isolated Gotabhaya. He is today a patron of the ‘Aragalaya’ which is sheltered, fed and feted by Colombo businesses and Western NGO groups!

In converting the ‘Aragalaya’ into an Elephant Pass (‘Ali-mankada’), Gotabhaya achieved the one political master-stroke. As the government was already at the IMF and the World Bank, to redress the bankruptcy that Basil Rajapaksa and his economists had refused to acknowledge, Ranil was probably the perfect person for regaining the confidence of the Western Shylocks. The lost election had shorn him off his visible links to shady financial associates. To that extent, he is a cleaner man and destiny has given him a final chance to vindicate his remarkable political career.The new PM should have formed a Cabinet without the use of the same old pack of discredited MPs loathed by the public. He should have asked the President to demand that each party (other than the UNP!) get rid of a proportionate number of ‘National List MPs’ to clear up twenty seats. He could use the empty seats to appoint recognised professionals with administrative experience into the Cabinet. That would have enabled Sri Lanka to have, for the first time in history, a group of technically competent people with good track records of administration to run the country.

Instead, we see essentially the same old faces back in power.

The old elephant has made an elephantine mistake in formulating the new Cabinet. The PM should have insisted that just as the SJB, the JVP, TNA etc., remain out of the Cabinet, so should the SLPP. The respective parties should have been ASKED to nominate various suitable experts, men and women. The PM and the President could have selected those individuals that they felt were optimal for their team.As the GR government has established a reputation for gazette notifications that are annulled with equal ease, the new PM can easily cleanse his current list of appointed ministers and go for new names. It is still not too late.Let us ask how the political crisis unfolded to get some insight into what is relevant.When three Ministers, Gammanpila, Vasu and Wimalawansa (GVW) revolted against a midnight fuel contract given to a dubious US company, they hardly expected to trigger the fall of the SLPP itself.  They, like the bureaucrats of SriLankan who were happily leasing new aircraft, probably thought that Lanka’s red balance sheet will soon get corrected ‘when tourism revived after the end of the pandemic. Their protest was against Basil Rajapaksa, the Finance Minister who ran every ministry.They, like the majority of the Cabinet ministers and party leaders, believed that ‘going organic’ was ‘good in principle’, and that the ‘initial teething problems can be solved’, so that they would soon have food ‘free of agrochemical toxins’.  Given their adeptness at rackets, the MPs claimed to ‘save money’ by banning imported fertilisers, and looked forward to new racketd from the organic fertiliser bids.

Some of the well-fed upper-classes busy themselves in ‘environmental’ NGOs, while others, depending on their political colour, engage in various forms of ‘Chinthanayas’ or in political ‘dialectics’. However, there was remarkable consensus among these groups to ‘go organic’, just as there was clear scientific advice against it. The agricultural scientists were easily dismissed as ‘paid agents of multinationals’.  Even those who claimed to talk with the Gods, be it the late Ms. Senanayake or ‘Gnanakka’, strongly supported the banning of agrochemicals. Powerful news media as well as Chamal Rajapaksa, the head monks of influential temples, Christian and Hindu prelates, all supported it. A ‘Hiru Govi Sangramaya’ heralded the expected dawn of the shift to ‘hela govithena’ done without the use of agro-chemicals  (see Island, 13-March-2020; http://archive.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=220219).Furthermore, President Gotabhaya had got rid of the main-stream technical advisors and got himself a ‘ViyathMaga’ made up of intellectuals espousing various types of untested ‘Vikalpa’, a Sinhala word which could also mean ‘crazy ideas’.  But the President’s error of judgment was in falling into such traps, debilitating the nation’s food security, while oblivious that his country was already in an economic free fall.  So, the call for GOTA to go home was a natural and logical one, since even the misdeeds of his Finance Minister are the responsibility of the President.

However, the farmers who rose in protest were angry at all the MPs and wanted all 225 out. The public sentiment of disillusion was such that ‘THEY’ were all declared to be ‘crooks’.  The banning of agrochemicals, selling of organic manure, biofilm-biofertilisers, nano-urea,etc., were all rightly judged as rackets by the common man.The Galle Face protest was launched by Marxist leaders to take advantage of the farmers’ discontent, and the division in the ranks of the government caused by the GVW trio. The urbanised middle class, inconvenienced by the lack of medicine, cooking fuel and petrol, willingly joined the protest that was launched, copying the model used by anti-vaccine groups in the West.It was this hijacked protest of the farmers that became known as the ‘Aragalaya’, ‘GotaGOgama’. The Aragalaya ignored the limited, realistic objective of the GVW trio, which was to get rid of Basil Rajapaksa’s domination. The Aragalaya ignored the general belief among the public that ‘all 225’ must go as they are ‘all corrupt’. The Aragalaya‘s demand that ‘Gota must Go’, was very similar to the unworkable demand of the anti-Vax anti-mask Truckers’ Convoy that set up a ‘Protest Village’ in Ottawa and demanded that ‘Justin Trudeau must Go’. The Truckers’ Convoy was tolerated for about a month. Then the Canadian authorities took steps to freeze bank accounts of the protest leaders, passed emergency legislation and called in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, with the armed forces waiting in the wings.

Gota’s government could have used the law against misuse of public spaces to control the protest but failed to do so, once again establishing its inability to govern. That SLPP thugs would eventually move in, only to be attacked with disproportionate violence by the hidden hand of the Aragalaya, was an expected outcome.The unexpected result, i. e the ‘black swan’ of the escalation was the rise of Ranil within the political isolation of a President, humbled by bankruptcy and political violence. The President had to resort to the standard constitutional steps of offering the premiership to every appropriate candidate in forming an interim government. This was when the leadership qualities of contenders would be tested. Ranil was the clear winner, while Sajith proved as pusillanimous as ever. His conditions for acceptance, if they had been taken seriously, would have taken weeks of haggling and are inappropriate when the ship is on fire.PM Wickremasinghe can still reconstitute his Cabinet by cleaning out national list MPs, and bringing in unsullied professionals. He still has the upper hand, but perhaps not for long. Instead of launching 21A and such ad hoc constitutional amendments, he should call for the recently drafted constitution, formulated by a panel of eminent lawyers and scholars, and legislate it. After that, the country should go for elections in accordance with the new constitution.

CHANDRE DHARMAWARDANA

Canada