{"id":57823,"date":"2016-08-21T00:21:43","date_gmt":"2016-08-21T06:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=57823"},"modified":"2016-08-20T16:56:26","modified_gmt":"2016-08-20T23:56:26","slug":"the-wages-of-vengeance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/08\/21\/the-wages-of-vengeance\/","title":{"rendered":"The wages of vengeance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editorial\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

August 20, 2016, 8:08 pm<\/span><\/p>\n

Power: one either has it or does not have it. Power: one either wants it or eschews it. Politicians are all about power, whatever they may say in manifestos, whichever way they read mandates, whatever rhetoric is used to prove otherwise and however solemnly the relevant pronouncements are made.<\/p>\n

If the above was not the case and if the voters of this country truly believed that politicians embodied the dictum \u2018practice what you preach (and vice versa)\u2019 President Maithripala Sirisena would be constantly reminded of the Dhammapada verse he appeared to be so fond of when he announced his presidential aspirations and indeed the day he assumed office.<\/p>\n

Na hi verena veranisammantidha kudacanamaverena ca sammantiesa dhammo sanantano.1<\/p>\n

[Hatred is, indeed, never appeased by hatred in this world. It is appeased only by loving-kindness. This is an ancient law.]<\/p>\n

The truth is that outside of the rhetoric we have not exactly been blessed by righteous rulers. The politicians know this and the people know it too. Claims are mouthed and listened to by way of custom. Only the politically na\u00efve would take them seriously.<\/p>\n

As such, when the President reads the riot act to dissidents in his party it is futile to expect anyone to whisper, tongue-in-cheek, \u2018More yahapalanaya Your Excellency?\u2019 But it\u2019s not new: remember J.R. Jayewardene obtaining undated letters of resignation from UNP MPs and Mahinda Rajapaksa\u2019s not-so-veiled references to \u2018files\u2019? These things happen, then. What\u2019s more, given a political culture where all words and actions are framed by expediency, it is probably the case where those who flout all norms of democracy in its very name actually believe they are affirming them all.<\/p>\n

For example, even as the Sri Lanka Freedom Party appointed the gun-toting former Mayor of Hambantota as Organiser for Beliatta, the party\u2019s Secretary General, Duminda Dissanayake said \u2018we will not endorse political thuggery\u2019. Interestingly, the image of this worthy brandishing a pistol when encountering a group of UNP MPs (then in the Opposition) was frequently waved to highlight the highhandedness of the previous regime. \u2018Compassion\u2019 (instead of hatred) as per the above Dhammapada quote? No, because selectivity in application spells hypocrisy. Rewarding those opposed to the Rajapaksas, regardless of their wrongdoing track records and even the fact of being rejected by the voters, while zealously hounding his loyalists us a far cry from \u2018Na hi verena verani\u2019. Similarly, one is not strengthening democracy when one issues dire threats to those who hold opposing views. Instead it amounts to an endorsement of the kind of thuggery that Rajapaksa\u2019s successors vowed to end.<\/p>\n

Cut-outs are back (so forget diverting otherwise used for such self-aggrandizing projects to help CKDu patients). Charity will not begin at home; there will be tamashas, the crooks within will be protected, a bloated cabinet will continue to burden the people and exacerbate inefficiency, and word and deed will always be drawn from political expedience. The Rajapaksas and their loyalists cannot complain of course. The people, on the other hand, cannot but conclude \u2018same old, same old\u2019 except of course crookedness, white vans and other serious blemishes notwithstanding the previous regime got some things done.<\/p>\n

The war, for all of Chandrika Kumaratunga\u2019s grand claims (\u2018I finished 75% of the war\u2019), was brought to and end. True, reconciliation was not exactly obtained, but at least the ground was cleared for such processes and need we say that Checkpoint-Sri Lanka and Bomb-Scared-Sri Lanka are things of the past? There was significant infrastructure development, even in the midst of the corruption that is said to have marked that regime. Fingers, today, are not being pointed only at the Rajapaksas, but where is the \u2018development\u2019?<\/p>\n

Sooner, rather than later, the Government would have to stop whining about the kind of country it had inherited (to govern) and stop blaming non-delivery on the previous regime. Let\u2019s edit that piece of advice. It\u2019s ok to whine, it\u2019s ok to vilify, it\u2019s ok to exact revenge, it\u2019s ok to quote your favorite verse(s) from the Dhammapada even if you don\u2019t understand or if you are uninterested in following precepts you claim to abide by, and it\u2019s ok to white-van (metaphorically of course) your political opponents, but get moving on the business of running the country.<\/p>\n

Vengeance is a time-consuming affair. Moreover, if getting the people you love to hate out of the political equation is not complemented by change felt, appreciated and acknowledged by the general public, a price will be exacted, if not by your detractors by some other force \u2013 perhaps made of in part at least by current loyalists (we have after all the Rajapaksa-Sirisena example). One can buy and sell support, but the marketplace of power is full of intangibles, the search for and calculation of which can distract to one\u2019s detriment. It is far more sensible to get the job done instead of chasing political ghosts.<\/p>\n

As things stand, the Government appears obsessed with a single name and a single term, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Good Governance respectively. The more the name is uttered even as wrongdoings similar to those under his tenure are committed by those in power today, the more it lifts the man, politically. The more the term is uttered even as its basic tenets are compromised at every turn, the less convincing those who utter it appear. As pointed out above, the Government will gain very little by the rhetoric but can gain much by delivery on the economic front \u2013 people, sadly, seem to have resolved to take \u2018bad governance\u2019 as a given, regardless of pledges to deliver the opposite.<\/p>\n

Vengeance, let us repeat, distracts and detracts, and the Government is seriously facing the unenviable prospect of completing its term doing little more than vilifying and chasing the Rajapaksas. It\u2019s been more than a year now since Mahinda Rajapaksa was defeated. He is hardly a spectre hanging over Sri Lanka\u2019s political landscape and even if he was, the best way of slaying such ghosts is to ensure that there\u2019s tangible change on the ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorial\u00a0Courtesy The Island August 20, 2016, 8:08 pm Power: one either has it or does not have it. Power: one either wants it or eschews it. Politicians are all about power, whatever they may say in manifestos, whichever way they read mandates, whatever rhetoric is used to prove otherwise and however solemnly the relevant pronouncements […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-106"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}