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UNP: R.I.P
The
Western Provincial Council elections are also now over,
and a clear pattern of government coalition victories
has emerged in the five provincial council polls
completed thus far. The councillors thus elected, often
with huge majorities and massive numbers of preferential
votes, are a motley crew on all sides of the political
spectrum. These specific results are, therefore, not as
important as the reality that this country has a
political leadership and opposition that is replete with
anti-social elements and criminals of all hues.
The
democratic process at its best is underpinned by a
sophisticated and nuanced system of checks and balances
through which the opposition ensures that the government
in power is accountable and transparent. The opposition
sets the terms and substance of the national debate on
issues of the greatest national importance. Its aim
should be to keep the government honest and sensitive to
public needs and aspirations. The opposition should
expose corruption, mismanagement and waste, highlight
issues of national concern, and support the government
where there is common cause and urgent need.
Yet,
this kind of opposition, like altruistic and accountable
government, is a pipe dream in
Sri Lanka
today. The opposition lacks a clear alternative agenda,
has no strategy to hold the government accountable
except on ad hoc issues if and when the fancy catches
them, and demonstrates little commitment towards the
public’s rights and aspirations.
Parliament should be the location of serious and
sustained discussion on the relative merits of the key
choices available to a nation. No one in Sri Lanka can
claim with any degree of conviction that this happens in
Sri Lanka today. The shenanigans of MPs in the House
make us the laughing stock of the region.
We
have often taken the government to task in these
editorials for its failure to deliver, its culpability
in fraud, corruption, human rights violations and so on.
To be fair, however, the opposition too has a crucial
role in this process of good governance. It is they who
should hold the government accountable, and keep them
honest. Alas, the current opposition in Sri Lanka has
done none of these things. Its infighting and trivial
bickering appear unending, and has taken priority over
national concerns.
The
structure of the major political parties in Sri Lanka
remains feudal and hierarchical. Party leaders are
demigods who cannot be removed without literally years
of secret machinations and backdoor plotting. Downward
accountability is non-existent. Parties become the
private property of leaders who rule as if they had the
divine right to do so, and heaven help those who do not
toe the line. This narrowly hierarchical and
non-accountable system permeates the broader political
arena as well.
The
present government can and does get away with
corruption, suppression of the media, gross human rights
violations, irresponsible fiscal management, nepotism
and all-round abuse of power at least in part because
the opposition is ineffective, unconcerned, and
apathetic. It is as if both the coalition in power and
their opponents in parliament are in cahoots with each
other to defraud and debilitate the public.
The
present Leader of the Opposition is a disaster of
Guinness Book proportions. Everything he touches seems
to turn to dust. Losing every election he puts his mind
to is perhaps less significant than the fact he is not
being held accountable, nor is there any attempt to
analyse what went wrong. The SLFP-led coalition does not
have to work hard to win elections any more, because the
UNP has made a fine art of losing them!
Politics is all about being persuasive, about convincing
the voter that the option you have to offer is better
than your opponents. This Leader of the Opposition
appears to see the position as a sinecure that does not
carry with it onerous responsibilities and obligations
towards the citizenry. He has steered the UNP to its
current malaise where its internal problems have taken
precedence over key national concerns.
But it
is not only about the jockeying for power within the
party. The opposition lacks vision and momentum; there
is no cohesion in its ranks. Positions on key issues
such as the ethnic crisis have degenerated to populist
slogans and war-mongering. There is no sustained
engagement on gross human rights violations and the
systematic erosion of media freedom. The government does
as it pleases, and the main opposition party appears to
be biding its time until some auspicious moment appears
for it to intervene.
The
tragedy of our times is not that the government and the
opposition differ and disagree on what should be done to
address the crises we are facing, but that between them
there is no fundamental disagreement or divergence.
Hence, the public political debate is impoverished and
the electoral exercise becomes one of simply seizing
power by hook and by crook.
Ranil
Wickremesinghe wants to retain the party leadership at
all costs. The public is paying the price of his
obsession. The implosion of the UNP may be an internal
affair, but its repercussions are not: the resultant
vacuum in national politics, the inability to hold this
government accountable for its acts of omission and
commission, the non-provision of a real alternative for
the voters to choose – these are some of the most
glaring consequences of the opposition reneging on its
role and responsibility towards the citizens of this
country.
Yes,
the government does as it pleases, and the opposition is
pleasing the government very much right now. The danger
is that if this state of affairs continues the people
will lose all faith in the system and principle of
democratic governance. We have experienced during the
last 40 years the heavy toll of such a rejection of
democratic norms in the rise of the Tamil militancy and
the two JVP insurgencies. We cannot afford yet another
catastrophe, even as we continue to suffer the
consequences of this 40 year history of violence that
was spawned from the abject failure of our democratic
institutions and practices.
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