THE MIRIHANA CATALYST – AN APOCALYPSE FOR THE FIRST FAMILY

  by Anura Gunasekera                                                             

As this is being written hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, in defiance of a sudden curfew ordered  by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa,  are roaming the streets of  towns and cities all over Sri Lanka, demanding the ouster of the man himself. They have been supported, in a unique display of solidarity  by the “Sri Lankan” diaspora, in cities in  US, UK, across Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.  The Rajapaksa name, once revered by the Snhala-Buddhist majority, is now being publicly reviled across continents. The Rajapaksa’s very successfully weaponized ethnic disharmony and  ethno-nationalism    to secure political power. But the purple “Kurakkan Satakaya”, that ostentatious Rajapaksa family brand,  has  strangled the nation. Within two years of the new Rajapaksa dispensation, its appalling mis-governance has compelled a divided people to unite against a common enemy, the First Family. It seems incomprehensible that the  family, diabolically clever at leveraging public sentiment, could have been so insensitive to the seething  discontent within  the same polity.

The “Terminator” has   lost his invincibility, his ability to inspire dread,  and stands pathetically exposed for the man he has always been; an average military man of   limited intellect, ignorant in the ways of  governance, macro-economics, both  internal and external  political realities,  completely out of touch with the pulse of an agitated  nation  and the suffering  of the people who elected him, and incapable of solving  problems which do not respond to para-military reprisals.  Recall his recent response to the farmers’ opposition to organic fertilizer, that he could, if he wished, use the army to compel the farmers to comply with his diktat!

This is the man that Dr.Dayan Jayatilleke, political analyst and, during the Yahapalanaya regime,  an  ardent proponent of a Rajapaksea revival (remember his ecstatic  “Nugegoda Rising”- Colombo Telegraph, 19/02/2015-  and DJ himself reading out the absent Mahinda Rajapaksa’s message) described, in a writing of around March 2017, “ as a man who could lead the country towards a fair and just society in which ethnic and religious factors can be transcended in a new fusion……..a decorated warrior who knows how to defend his country at the risk of his life……a man with a modernizing vision and capacity…..fighter and builder…..any country needs and should be proud to have”.  He has  been proved wrong on all counts but, if an intellectual like Dr. DJ could have been   so misled, one should not fault the 6.9 mn ordinary citizens for having embraced  the same misconceptions.

Interestingly, Dr. DJ now writes (Island-03/04/22- Roundtables as Political Change Agents) “ Always remember the objective; removing the incumbent autocrat and the regime, centered round the ruling clan; the target is not the rival party nor its proponents. The target is the democratic removal of the ruler and his parasitic and paralysis inducing clan”; a complete  volte-face, gradual and long in coming but, nonetheless,  refreshing.

This is also the man that the  leading members of the Sangha lionized  as a “Hitler “ who could transform the fortunes of the country whilst ushering in a new  order.  Unsaid but implied was that it would also be an essentially Sinhala-Buddhist hegemony, the  Rajapakse  concept which also  resonates with the majority of our polity.

The  Sangha, schooled  in the Dhamma but possibly ignorant of History,  were perhaps  unaware that the real Hitler  died by his own hand,  even as his enemies closed in upon his last refuge.  Historically, almost inevitably, autocratic, tyrannical  leaders,  have come to brutal or ignominious ends.   Apart from Hitler, recall Mussolini, Franco, both  Duvaliers, father and son, Pinochet, Shah Reza Pahlavi, Marcos, Ceausescu, Idi Amin, Gaddafi and Saddam, as just a few examples. The  president urgently needs to engage in a capsule history lesson of the last seven decades. Perhaps someone should educate him  about Hosni Mubarak and the “ Arab Spring”.

The protests were first launched by desperate farmers, in response  to the moronic presidential directive to convert to organic farming overnight.   With the fuel crisis, power outages, disruptions to public transport, dismantling of livelihoods, shortages of staples  and  the unbearable increase in the cost of living, demonstrations  spread to all parts of the country, engaging  citizens of all social and economic levels. However, the agitation was  allowed to continue.

The Mirihana  affair changed all that.   The origins of the shift of an angry, yet non-violent  protest,  to actual violence is unclear. However,  whilst  damaged vehicles were still smoldering and  clearly before even an investigation had commenced, the president’s media division announced that responsibility lay with an organized “extremist group”, giving credence  to the now popular view that the violence was orchestrated in order to justify   the repressive measures which followed.

So, no sooner the sacrosanct personal abode of the ruler was besieged, the Public Security Act was invoked, an emergency declared,  a curfew  imposed and social media shut down;  a response typical of all autocrats, who are deeply sensitive to any assault on their personal authority and, in times of strife, apprehensive of any sign of personal danger; hardly a  response worthy of a “decorated  warrior” or a “fighter”.

“ Gota Go Home” is the  a demand resonating across Sri Lanka and in other countries as well, articulated in Sinhala, English and Tamil. However, the solution to the problems that the man’s irrational decisions have exacerbated is not that simple. The current economic woes of the country are the cumulative result of irresponsible fiscal  management across successive regimes. For decades we have been living beyond our means. The earlier Rajapksa regime compounded the problem,  engaging in  massive infrastructure projects with minimal prospects of even long-term returns, and  nominal   trickle-down benefits to ordinary people.

President GR, immediately after assuming office, provided sweeping and unwarranted tax concessions to a small segment, depriving the state of revenue. The Covid pandemic contributed further to the decline in the GDP; the organic fertilizer decree brought agriculture to its knees; the nation’s finances  were  entrusted to brother Basil, touted as a genius despite clear evidence of lack of basic intellect.   Assisting him was Nivard Cabraal, originally a common or garden accountant from a modest city hotel,  labouring under the delusion that he is an economist,    who famously declared that excessive printing of money does not cause inflation! His criminal mismanagement of the rupee/dollar relationship  has been, time and again, cruelly exposed  by genuine economists, whilst his refusal to engage meaningfully with the IMF, when crucial,   denied the country of a possible life-line until it was too late; the controversial bond repayment of USD 500 million in January, emptying foreign reserves,  was the last nail in the coffin. The fallout from the Ukraine-Russia conflict did the rest; that is a fatal  combination of ungovernable externalities and internal idiocies.

As much as an incompetent and obdurate president, the servile cabinet and parliament  are also to blame. The government group, a collective rubber stamp, having first empowered the president with the safe passage of the 20th amendment,   ignoring financial discipline and the enactment of law,  legitimized every whim and fancy of the ruler.  In parliament today,  the same lackeys, now mock-repentant,  sanctimoniously called for reforms to provide a solution to the problems  that they themselves created.

The pundits of the “Viyath Maga” and the luminaries of the “Eliya Maga”,  many of them  leading entrepreneurs, professionals and co-called intellectuals,  who enthusiastically endorsed  the president’s   delusional “Vistas of Prosperity” must also accept their share of responsibility. Perhaps the president’s personal soothsayer, “Gnana Akka”, should also shoulder the blame, for having negotiated divine approval for his irrational strategies!!

What is the solution to the crisis?  The president’s invitation to the opposition, to join  an interim administration and to assist in the rehabilitation of the economy has been rejected. The cabinet and ministers have resigned (??)  and the president has reappointed a few, assigning them different portfolios. However,  National List appointee Ali Sabry, in a demonstration of morality absent when he accepted the Ministry of Justice  despite being the president’s personal lawyer, has resigned from  the Finance portfolio within 24 hours.

The same empty heads on different bodies,  still in servitude to an  all powerful president,  will not  usher in essential change,  which must be implemented through an empowered parliament, possible only if the 20th amendment is repealed and the 19th amendment further strengthened; a complicated and  time-consuming process but that which  will enable independent commissions, oversight committees and councils, now either inactive or incapacitated, to function effectively and restore accountability and  public scrutiny to executive action. The president, despite the  havoc he has significantly contributed to, still misses  the point and  must be compelled by some means to relinquish the untrammeled power assigned to him by the 20th amendment.

Of course, the simplest would be for the president to heed the nation’s call and resign, as provided by the Constitution, paving the way for a complete political restructuring. A new cabinet with the old faces with GR as  president, wielding  the same power,  will   be a complete farce and is quite likely to  lead to renewed citizens’ agitation. It is clear that the Rajapaksa family and its minions are now anathema. The failure to devise realistic strategies for the immediate, mid-term and long-term solutions for the current problems, and to convey them effectively and convincingly to a maddened  public, could result in the ongoing protests catalyzing in to total anarchy.

Apart from funding internal fuel and  medicine needs, import of basic foodstuffs, raw materials for industries and meeting  bi-lateral and multi-lateral loan repayments,  the country  must  meet a USD one billion international sovereign bond repayment in full by July 2022. If we fail  to meet these commitments or  to restructure  debt repayment, the country will enter a state of “disorderly default”, a situation in which we will be shunned by all international aid and donor agencies and governments.  Sri Lanka will become a pariah state.  Bear in mind the once prosperous Lebanon,  now the global archetype of total failure.

A few days  ago, social media activist Anuruddha Bandara was allegedly abducted by a group claiming to be from the police, and was later found at the Modera police station. His crime- posting a message on social media, with the slogan, “Go Home, Gota”, the same  cry  resonating across the country and continents in recent days. Had not the legal fraternity come to his aid  in an incredible show of force,  Bandara could have disappeared, like so  many dissenters did in similar circumstances in the past. His quick  retrieval and the subsequent operation of due processes, is evidence that black operations of suppression of dissent, so brutally efficient  when the present president was secretary of defence, are no longer as effective. That in itself is an encouraging sign.