Rape of democracy

Monday 29th July, 2024

Mahinda Rajapaksa, as the President, provided unwavering political leadership for defeating the LTTE and ending decades of terror, much to the relief of all peace-loving Sri Lankans. But what he did to the country afterwards has been rightly likened to a person raping a damsel in distress after saving her life. He received a sobering knock from the public in the 2015 presidential race. The people gave him another chance which he, ably assisted by his family, squandered big time. The man who made Prabhakaran take to his heels had to head for the hills in 2022. The save-and-rape tradition, as it were, continues.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe prides himself on having provided political leadership for a war of sorts on the economic front—not without reason. His efforts have yielded some tangible results; shortages of essentials and winding queues near fuel stations, etc., are now things of the past, and the country’s foreign exchange reserves are improving thanks to some unpopular yet essential measures he dared adopt. Most of all, he intrepidly saved democracy in 2022 by ordering a crackdown on the hordes that were rattling the gates of Parliament, which they were all out to march on and perhaps set ablaze. But today we hear agonising screams of the damsel of democracy as well as Justitia.

The Provincial Council and Local Government elections have been made to disappear, and the ruling party politicians have even arrogated to themselves the power of interpreting the Constitution and refused to implement a Supreme Court order that IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon be suspended and an Acting IGP appointed. They abuse parliamentary privileges to issue warnings to the judiciary, which they falsely accuse of straying into what they call the preserves of the Executive and the Legislature, and their acolytes threaten to summon upright judges before parliamentary committees.

Nobody would have been surprised if support for the suppression of democracy, especially the attacks on the judiciary, had come from the SLPP leaders, but, worryingly, Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena has chosen to lead the government’s charge against the judiciary from the front.

Even those who have known Gunawardena for decades as a democrat must have taken a careful look at his visage on television, last week, to see if he was sporting a toothbrush moustache, which became a visual representation of the Third Reich. It must have pained those who admired Gunawardena for his contribution to safeguarding democracy in the past to see him being economical with the truth for the sake of the government.

One may recall that Gunawardena gained national prominence by standing up to the dictatorial J. R. Jayewardene regime, in which Wickremesinghe was a minister. He took up the cudgels for the people’s franchise and won the Maharagama by-election in 1983 against tremendous odds. President Jayewardene scrapped the 1982 general election for fear of losing his five-sixths majority in Parliament, and held a heavily-rigged referendum instead, after undertaking to hold by-elections in the electorates where the UNP would lose. He had to hold 18 such by-elections, four of which were won by the Opposition despite large-scale rigging and violence unleashed by the UNP. Anil Moonesinghe, Richard Pathirana and Amarasiri Dodangoda won the Matugama, Akmeemana and Baddegama electorates, respectively. Forty-one years on, Gunawardena is stretching the truth and uttering mistruths in defence of Wickremesinghe, whom Richard Pathirana’s son, Ramesh, is also backing.

If President Wickremesinghe had stuck to the economic front, and leveraged his contribution to managing the country’s worst-ever economic crisis to shore up his image and recover lost ground, while respecting democracy and refraining from plunging headfirst into unholy politics, perhaps he would have been able to regain enough popular support in the current presidential race. But old habits are said to die hard. Politicians take leave of their senses when power goes to their heads.

All those who have chosen to usurp the powers of the judiciary, and make democracy suffer to further their sinister political ends, ought to realise that the dustbin of history is where tinpot dictators are destined to end up.

from The Island https://ift.tt/qswZnFb