Which party is to ‘go home’, or stay?

As far as the distraught masses are concerned, today, Parliament has lost much of its import. People have begun to treat it and, its members, who are supposed to represent them, with scorn and disgust. Not unjustifiable, because our parliamentary democracy has manifestly failed to live up to its reputation, among other things, as a mechanism for upholding the will of the people. The last couple of months have seen a drastic erosion of people’s faith in parliament, which has been increasingly overshadowed by an all-powerful Executive Presidency. The recent ‘card games’ of appointing ‘new’ ministers and the disgraceful crossovers have done little to stop people from seeing the Parliament as anything better than a symbol of futility.

Some detractors of Aragalaya say that it has outlived its shelf life and it’s time the protesters closed up shop. However, such glib remarks seem to ignore the unprecedented economic and political breakdown which triggered it. Undoubtedly, in our country’s 74 years of post-independence history, there hasn’t been a period where a regime has been so despised by the general public for its lack of accountability, patent show of defiance, mocking disregard for public opinion and for its persistent reliance on deceit to tide over the problems. The fact is, in slighting Galle Face Aragalaya, its cynics show their acquired readiness to accept the ‘legitimacy’ of the corrupt politicians, backed by an equally corrupt bureaucracy, and the slick racketeers, who plunder public wealth with the blessings of those in power. The Aragalaya, has attracted people from all walks of life and won the admiration of the voiceless masses, but those who are still enamoured with the glories of dynastic rule keep paying lip service to it till they get the slightest excuse to cast aspersions on it. This time around, the appointment of a new Prime Minister, through which the ruling cabal has earned some time to resuscitate its survival plan and save face, seems to have provided this excuse.

People’s protests rarely last more than a day or two because they are either suppressed or made to lose their steam by appointing committees, which are often delaying mechanisms used till the problem at issue gets crowded out by more urgent problems, which are not in short supply. Often, the ruling party has conveniently put the issue behind them and is seated in the Opposition by the time people take it up again. However, this time round, the reasons for the protests are too deeply felt by too many people to be put on the back burner. Further, the first causes have spawned more urgent issues disrupting the day-to-day life of increasing numbers of people in society. Aragalaya detractors advise the youth to “go home” to avoid making the campaign seem another ‘joke’, but do not want to admit that our so called representatives have made much of our democracy look a farce in the eyes of the general public. They concede that our politics is bad, but how about protesting? Well, it is much worse and annoying when it goes beyond its symbolic function!

The government’s decision, in April 2021, to go organic, overnight, proved to be a fatal error which ruined the lives of the farming community. When the wider society was beginning to feel the pinch of this agricultural mess, other issues like sugar and garlic scams, potentially lethal gas-cylinders, dearth of essential items and soaring prices, power-cuts and endless queues for gas and fuel had already combined to make life unbearable for an overwhelming majority of the populace and forced them to come to the streets in protest. The emergence of Aragalaya at Gall Face is the culmination of all this. It has been kept alive for more than 50 days by many who have sacrificed much to stop the country from sliding back to its sense of complacency and political numbness. The Gotagogama activists are trying to give the simmering aggression of the angry masses languishing in queues for days, a creative and potent expression, thwarting every attempt being made to stifle it. If the distressed people had had any more faith in waiting for the next election to send an incompetent regime “home” as a permanent solution to their problems, they wouldn’t have resorted to alternative ways of exercising their sovereignty to demand the President and the 225 MPs to “go home”.

That the constitution has no provision for recalling bungling rulers is no news, and obviously, none of our lawmakers, particularly, those who happen to be in the ruling party now, would be unhappy about it. However, it is the grit of those who could find their collective voice against the politics of insolence, breaking, so to speak, a ‘constitutionally correct’ silence of the society that is prodding an otherwise cautious main Opposition to display some unusual concern for bringing about people-friendly changes to the Constitution. Were the agitators to call it a day, not many people would want to be much hopeful about the Opposition’s continued interest in supporting pro-people amendments. As our representatives have been demonstrating time and again, “they are all friends”. As such, it is perhaps a little premature, if not uncivil, to ask the campaigners of Aragalaya to “go home”, unless you choose to ignore the ripples of progressive thinking they have been able to create in society.

Today, the queues are longer and the people waiting in long lines are looking more gaunt and aggressive. A few days ago, reportedly, around 40 petrol stations were closed presumably, to instill discipline in the ‘misbehaving’ people in queues. One should not embarrass the government by asking whose lack of what brand of ‘discipline’ caused the dearth of fuel in the first place, not to mention the dearth of all other essential items. Curiously, Hitler is reported to have told Hjalmar Schacht, Germany’s leading economic expert at the time, whom he had appointed as Minister of Economics, “Inflation is lack of discipline, lack of discipline in the buyers and lack of discipline in the sellers…”

We don’t know how the present day economists would receive Hitler’s insight into the so-called correlation between lack of discipline and inflation. However, given the present regime’s fondness for creating a disciplined society, one could have better appreciated the authorities’ concern for the discipline of the buyers, had it taken an equal interest in that of the sellers, as well. Intriguingly, it is only the ‘indiscipline’ of the hapless citizens who virtually wage war to buy the essentials that seems to worry the authorities. As for their concern for the ‘discipline’ of the well-heeled big-time dealers, one has to only recall how the sellers of cooking gas, who had fiddled with the gas ratio for extra profits, were allowed to get away with murder, so to speak, to get an idea about how keen the government is on maintaining discipline incidentally, in a country where there is strictly “one law”.

In such a context, what is important is not which party “goes home” first, but the consequences of one event or the other. If “going home” of one party or the other can pave the way for a more proactive, pragmatic and participatory political mechanism in place of the present one, which, among other things, has blatantly elevated the representatives to the level of absolute masters and reduced the people to underlings, it would be the most desirable outcome of the “who is going home, first’ standoff.

Susantha Hewa