Inviting anarchy

Tuesday 21st February, 2023

The Opposition seems to have lost the plot. The Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe regime has almost succeeded in sabotaging the local government (LG) polls, which were originally scheduled for 09 March. The Election Commission, which told the Supreme Court that it would hold the polls, has thrown in the towel, and the people have pinned their hopes on the judiciary. The SJB and the JVP-led NPP remain locked in a duel, as it were, with their leaders taking swipes at each other at the drop of a hat instead of joining forces to take on the government with might and main for the sake of the hapless public.

SJB Leader Sajith Premadasa and his JVP counterpart Anura Kumara Dissanayake are apparently labouring under the delusion that united, they will fall, and divided, they can stand. Their political battles have got down and dirty and debilitated the Opposition much to the glee of the SLPP and the UNP.

All it takes for tyranny to flourish is the pusillanimity of the democratic Opposition, which must be robust enough to lead a countervailing force against dictatorial regimes that usurp the people’s sovereignty. One may recall that Sri Lanka’s democratic process suffered an irrevocable setback in the mid-1970s, when the SLFP-led United Front (UF) government extended the life of Parliament by abusing its two-thirds majority. The UNP was too weak to resist the UF regime’s arbitrary action at the time, but was able to make the most of the situation and secure a sweeping victory with a five-sixths majority at the 1977 general election. It set aside the democratic process to compass its ends, and the country witnessed a protracted bloodbath, which left thousands of youth dead. The SLFP-led Opposition was too weak to stop the UNP behemoth, which forged ahead, crushing everything in its path. The country is sliding into a situation similar to that which prevailed under the J. R. Jayewardene rule, which undermined the people’s franchise by postponing a general election and rigging polls.

The SJB held a protest march in Colombo yesterday against the government’s determined bid to deprive the people of their right to vote, and came up against a wall of cops, so to speak. The police have changed their tactics, and now deploy thousands of anti-riot squad personnel who go all out to disperse protests. The JVP also holds separate protest marches, from time to time, only to stop at heavily-guarded police barricades. Neither the SJB nor the JVP nor the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) nor any other Opposition party has been able to pull off anything similar to the People Power protests that led to the ouster of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, last year. Lulled into a false sense of security by the Opposition’s failure to put up stiff resistance much less pose a threat to its rule, the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government has chosen to test the people’s patience further by subjecting them to untold suffering and suppressing their rights and freedoms in every conceivable manner. It is making a huge mistake.

Last year’s popular uprisings came about because public resentment burst forth initially as leaderless protests. The JVP and the FSP politicised the waves of protests and surfed them to gain some political mileage. There are signs of another tsunami of public anger forming, and the day may not be far off when it makes landfall, plunging the entire country into chaos. The police and the military will be no match for People Power although President Ranil Wickremesinghe has warned that he will go the whole hog to prevent the country from being plunged into anarchy. If mass protests erupt all over the country simultaneously, there is hardly anything the police or the pro-government Generals will be able to do to bring order out of chaos or protect their political masters.

Anarchy is the last thing the country needs. But the government does not seem to care. It continues to provoke the public by visiting unbearable suffering upon them and depriving them of an opportunity to express their protest through the ballot. Anti-politics is on the rise, as is obvious, and it behoves the Opposition parties to sink their political differences and close ranks to infuse the irate public with some confidence and hope by frustrating the government’s plan to do away with elections. At this rate, the people will be left with no alternative but to mobilise themselves and stage a protest like the March on Versailles in Paris to settle their scores with the rulers, who have made their lives miserable.