COLD HORROR ON THE CUSP OF HISTORY     

Wijith DeChickera notes that between a mercurial elite and elated mobs, there’s a chink where authoritarian challengers have slipped a wedge

I may be wrong about the response of many to the recent nomination of former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa as presidential candidate for the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). But the announcement last month was greeted with champagne by some elites and coconut arrack by the hoi polloi.

Since it was not really caviar to the general – most middle class society and middle path citizens had mixed feelings – it may turn out to be haute cuisine for Colombo or something that will leave a bad taste for Sri Lanka after all.

It has given us food for thought.

Once we stop biting our lip nervously and swallowin disbelief at what the spin doctor orders, cold harsh reality sets in. In the clear light of day, our deepest darkest fears seem foolish in the bright sunlit uplands of the democracy – warts and all – we still enjoy. But as a polity that has come a long way since 1977, it is our duty to take stock of evolution in our ideas about national leadership…

In 1982, ‘presidentialism’; 1994 – an end to bloody tyranny; ethno-nationalism in 2005… have our liberals forgotten their history?

The overwhelming sense that our most recent experiment with democratic republicanism in 2015 has failed cannot be easily denied or readily quelled. That we seem to be precisely where we are because we were gulled by the good guys is the mood of the moment.

Whether it was the fault of corrupt personages, picayune characters playing to the gallery or precious constitutions treated as scrap paper to light a fire is neither here nor there. We’re ready – or so it seems – for the brave new world of an iron hand in a velvet glove all over again.

There is frustration that the reforms project has yielded sundry (19A, RTI etc.) – too little, too late perhaps for all our hope, trust and investment. Don’t let’s embark on transitional justice and other nonstarter chimera! Then there’s a fear that we’ve lost our place in the sun to soft realpolitik on one hand and hardcore terrorism on the other – and that it’s time for governors who know what’s what and are willing to ‘just do it.’

And there’s also latent fury that having been deceived by sleek plutocrats, it’s time for a born-again socialist to play ‘Terminator.’ This is where the voter with a memory (1971, 1987-89, the first five months of 2009) will have to draw the line. No one is squeaky clean.

Benevolent tyrants are par for the course in the first blush of especially Third World nations’ early postcolonial days. But authoritarian governance in the present world milieu is bound to make us slaves at home and pariahs abroad. At least at the diplomatic level – even if a despotic regime in our strategic island may be welcome news for older empires and rising neo-imperialisms. And there’s the little matter of our not so long ago experience with near military dictatorship.

However erudite our cool urban voter may be, historically yon rural periphery – the mass voter – has always voted for persons and personalities over plans, projects, programmes and principles. And history is not simply what happened but what those voters can or choose to remember.

Resilient as we are in times of war, insurgent terrorism or natural disaster, the poor, illiterate, easily swayed and politically naive kingmakers have dreams, short memories, growling stomachs and a chauvinistic chink in their psyche; the elite rich their illusions of becoming another Singapore or Malaysia. It’s a despot’s dream recipe.

Therefore, our present history in the making is an Orwellian nightmare from which the rational islander is trying to awaken.

We have seen how ‘good governance’ descended into a farce with no deus ex machina save an independent judiciary to spare us of its worst perils (but some folks still trust them because they speak English and enjoyed a right royal education). Now would-be saviours of our nation are allegedly criminals, culpable of a plethora of sins from abduction and murder to grand larceny – but they’re whitewashed.

So here we are as on a darkling plain surrounded by the sounds of pain and anguish as to which way to march forward.

On the left – the reactionary forces of the past who have abandoned all pretence of progressiveness and liberalism, and are looking to survive the presidential poll with compromise candidates; and regroup at the next general election. On the far right – a voice from the reign of terror, promising a brave new world with a vengeance. The centre – moderates, minority protectors, merchants of peace and justice – cannot hold.

Let’s all of us consider the lessons of history. Or be condemned to repeat them with a new twist. We can see ignorant armies – alliances, backroom deals, cabals on the make or take – clashing by night. Every effort then (even lamps in daytime) to find an honest politician who doesn’t take him or herself as seriously as they take their country!

For we stand on the cusp of history and we’re bound by enlightened self-interest to discern who gives us the least creeping sense of horror – cheap charlatans or executioners in pseudo-democratic disguise?