Fading of artificial borders

by Susantha Hewa

The Galle Face protest is growing into the biggest unconventional pressure group the country has ever seen. It has also become, an incipient monitoring mechanism comprising people who have been badly let down by a democratically elected government sliding towards a stubborn and oppressive regime. That the government and its ministers ignored the grievances of many segments of society, teachers, farmers, workers and ultimately the entire society and bulldozed all reasonable opposition shown to its rash policies is history.

If the way they showed their rhetorical skills on TV is any indication, the Ministers holding key positions seemed to thoroughly savour their impudence stemming from a sense of ‘unassailable’ immunity insured by parliamentary privileges and power. Flaunting their “two-thirds majority”, they used to slight all appeals to reason, professional advice, criticisms and the cries of suffering and disappointment of the citizens. Despite the imminent danger, the country was facing, they grew condescending towards people with the smug assurance that they are well protected while the people are too scattered and estranged to unite. As usual, the masses had to helplessly watch their insolence on the TV screen. Of course, social media has been helping them to vent their mounting disappointment and anger. However, the taciturnity of the government has brought the people of their shells to stand together.

Democracy is the best form of government we have had so far but if it is being appropriated at will by the ruling clan to serve their own interests at the cost of disempowering an entire population and fleecing them with impunity, such democracy should be purged of any flaws to prevent injustice of such a grotesque scale. Of course, the democratic way to oust a repressive regime is to vote them out at a General Election. However, when the society is in no doubt that their sufferings result from a democracy made susceptible to every kind of manipulation by sneaky politicians to amass unearned wealth and turn the whole country to a virtual wasteland, people are forced to push the boundaries of what is left of democracy. The more or less sudden and unexpected Gall Face phenomenon is a spontaneous eruption of the society’s displeasure resulting from an awareness of a democracy misused. What is behind the slogans of the agitating crowds is a demand for a democracy which cannot be violated at will by uncouth rulers who have contributed to bring the country to the present pathetic state.

As our experience has shown time and time again, it is only when politicians find themselves in the Opposition that they appear as the ‘true’ representatives of the people. The country’s history shows that after every election, the elected ones have turned their back on the voters at their earliest convenience while the rejected ones stand up for the people against, more or less, the same ‘violations’ that they had committed to warrant their rejection. In that sense, “General Elections” may more relevantly be called “General Rejections”, for it is rejection rather than election that seems to have made our ‘representatives’ pine for us all these years.

If the slogans at Galle Face are any indication, today, people seem to be utterly disenchanted with the whole caboodle of politicians, who have played the dual role of oppressor and saviour alternately every five years or so for more than seven decades.

The sum and substance of the slogans emanating from the new ‘village’ is, in simple terms, the setting up of a decent and civilized society where social justice prevails; a society in which parliamentary democracy will not be appropriated by uncouth rulers as a license for amassing ill-gotten wealth and an instrument of oppression. Few would have thought a few weeks ago that of all places, the Galle Face Green, which is at the heart of Colombo, would be transformed into a ‘village’, which links hundreds of thousands of people hitherto been separated by culturally constructed ‘identities’, which had served the rulers handily to prevent people realizing that sovereignty is with them and not with politicians. Today people are roused by their deprivations and loss of dignity and telling the rulers, both past and present that they are determined to gain their legitimate power which has been hijacked by each successive government.

They are being convinced that there is an urgent need to bridge the increasing gap between the “House of Representatives” and the masses and to put in place all possible mechanisms for preventing the Parliament from drifting away from the community giving unlimited power to the ruling party to have its own way, even though it can clearly be inimical to the people whom it is said represent. The present crisis is a textbook example of the mismatch between the will of the people and that of the government. To say that every patently rash move made by the regime has the blessing of 6.9 million people is tantamount to saying that all those people are in some idiotic trance for five years devoid of thought and feeling till the day of the next General Election (Rejection) where they suddenly come out of their spell and say “NO”.

Today Galle Face has become an agitation site which embodies the most important political awakening of the people in Sri Lanka. The principal factor drawing people in their numbers to the new ‘settlement’ is obviously the pain and loss of all hope coming from unprecedented privations. This is further accentuated by the show of characteristic conceit of the ruling party members who have been overconfident about their immunity supposedly guaranteed by the people’s ‘inability’ to protest against plain injustice. Thirdly, people are tired of being helpless bystanders of a farce in which a government determined to have its way touting its two thirds’ majority at every turn to stifle all legitimate dissent.

No matter what the final outcome of this movement is going to be, the merging of people driven by desperation by an unparalleled combination of political and economic decadence has the potential to generate changes beneficial to the entire country and the future generations. For one thing, it has empowered people by breaking the monopoly of the electronic media as the sole shaper of public opinion. Today social media is doing an commendable job in helping many to know and share anything happening on the ground without depending too much on the electronic media. For another, they also get to know the part of any story which gets shrouded by some electronic media for obvious reasons. Ironically, even the media partial to the government are being forced to show at least a diluted version of the parts of any news item that get censored so as to boost whatever is left of their credibility. Today the masses have turned the tables on their so-called delegates by graduating from being passive TV viewers to makers of news, a status that they eminently deserve in a truly democratic society.

The Galle Face green makes history as an inventive and enduring platform for the disillusioned masses to put up an unflagging resistance against their callous representatives. It has turned the routine mechanism of protests, where the intended outcome at its best is a symbolic display of power, which will not continue beyond a day. However, the holding of a public space as a continuing agitation-site that enables people already thrown to the streets for their bare survival to regularly take turns to sustain and replenish the spirit of resistance is a wholly new and exciting idea. Here the protest is not merely symbolic; they are set to outstare their agents.

The apparent absence of centralisation, roadmaps or most importantly, a pecking order, which are the conventional strengths of all projects and movements seem to be challenged by the movement’s spontaneity which is sensitive to changing circumstances. Considering the progress of the campaign, it has an underlying self-discipline and order, which has prevented the detractors from labeling and dismissing it as ‘herd instinct’. This emerging self-discipline, which is evolving on its own without a central authority seems to be the strong suit of the programme. Perhaps, this is why it has become difficult for the hecklers to suppress it by resorting to the hackneyed tricks in the book, one of which is to label whatever is unpalatable to them as ‘political’.

It is laughable that politicians, whose main business is politics, deftly use the word “political” to brand as dangerous, any project which appears to go against their interests. When “political parties”, “political programmes”, “political decisions”, etc., which are ‘proper and respectable’ when they work in your favour, suddenly are made to appear dangerous and conspiratorial when they come from anybody who ruffles your feathers. The lack of conventional ‘leaders and organizers’ to the mass protest is one more of its assets. As far as we can see, what is evolving is a form of ‘authorless authority’, so to speak, which eludes conventional schemes of disruption.

Among the gains, the crisis has opened the eyes of the people to the futility of changing pillows for the headache. Weeks ago people came to the streets asking for the basic amenities, but today with no light at the end of the tunnel, they are demanding fundamental changes that will put an end to bad politics tainted by deceit, corruption, nepotism and unashamed hunger for power. This will, hopefully, free the parliament of its unintended role of providing a stage for the Opposition to whitewash its past sins and appear at the next election as the natural saviours. Whatever the final outcome, the series of events has already begun to clear most of the cobwebs from the eyes of the people. The fake borders, which have served the politicians, are dissolving. The more democratic a society is, the better it is for the people as well as their leaders.