{"id":63475,"date":"2017-02-16T17:21:37","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T00:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=63475"},"modified":"2017-02-16T17:21:55","modified_gmt":"2017-02-17T00:21:55","slug":"a-cannot-and-will-not-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/02\/16\/a-cannot-and-will-not-government\/","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018cannot\u2019 and \u2018will not\u2019 Government"},"content":{"rendered":"

Malinda Seneviratne<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
When the Government\u2019s staunchest apologists sound disappointment it is a sure sign that things are more than \u2018pretty bad\u2019.\u00a0 According to one yahapalanist, <\/i>Jehan Perera (see “Going back to an alliance that can win elections” <\/a>published in ‘The Island’, February 14, 2017)\u00a0<\/i>the public perception is that the Government has not (cannot?) tackle corruption, has not (cannot?) deliver visible development and has not corrected war-related injustices. The last of these is of course of the easy-to-say kind, not because correction is hard but \u2018injustice\u2019 is poorly defined and in most cases slanted to the point of perversion.<\/div>\n
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It\u2019s a generous observation.\u00a0 Someone raised a question about a high-ranking official on Facebook, clearly upset about the man\u2019s performance.\u00a0 The question was, \u2018Is he a Mahinda loyalist?\u2019\u00a0 The issue was about a statement he had made.\u00a0 But if incompetence, putting feet in the mouth, uttering anti-yahapalana<\/i>statements, indulging in nepotism, being corrupt and unleashing thuggery makes people Mahinda-loyalists, then this is Mahinda\u2019s government or rather an enhanced version considering the pledges made, the tears shed, the bleeding-heart rhetoric.\u00a0 We have just passed the two-year mark; even the previous regime took longer to slip. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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There are two excuses offered.\u00a0 The first is what we\u2019ve heard more often: Mahinda left the economy is dire straights, put the country in a debt trap and as such we really can\u2019t do any development.\u00a0 Well, the grandmasters of economic management, celebrated and now even \u2018doctored\u2019, didn\u2019t have the wits to read who has the bucks and who does not.\u00a0 They believed the West would bail them out and indulged in quite a bit of China-bashing.\u00a0 Someone is having the last laugh here and it is not anyone in this Government.\u00a0 That\u2019s regarding the economy. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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They talked of wastage.\u00a0 They spoke of a burgeoning pubic service.\u00a0 They talked of leakages.\u00a0 What\u2019s been done on these matters, though?\u00a0 Well, more of the same; a \u2018Mahindian\u2019 approach if you will.\u00a0 Mahinda-Enhanced, someone might add.\u00a0 If debt was the issue, why add to the burden, someone might ask. If corruption and wastage was the problem, why not stop the leaks?\u00a0 If nepotism was an issue, why is it still an issue in a Mahinda-less dispensation?\u00a0 If thuggery was a problem, why do we still have it?<\/span><\/div>\n
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The second explanation is the less-mentioned (for fear of acknowledging cracks?) one about the glitches inherent in a coalition.\u00a0 The truth is that we\u2019ve had coalitions for the past 23 years.\u00a0 If you can\u2019t deal with the reality, then you are not suitable to govern, it\u2019s as simple as that.\u00a0 Sure, this is a coalition of the two major parties, but then why do people like Lakshman Kiriella say things like \u2018 it was the government\u2019s objective to bring forth the new constitution, followed by a referendum with the support of the SLFP\u2019?\u00a0 Is the SLFP not a part of the Government?\u00a0 Is this not a coalition, then?\u00a0 Are these people confused or simply stupid? \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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If it\u2019s about \u2018cannot\u2019 and not \u2018will not\u2019, we can sympathize.\u00a0 If it is both \u2018cannot\u2019 and \u2018will not\u2019 (anyway), as a characterization less generous than that offered on occasion by yahapalana apologists would conclude, then it is serious. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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This brings us to the question \u2018why?\u2019\u00a0 Why do we get a \u2018will not\u2019?\u00a0 It implies that both system and personnel are flawed.\u00a0 This calls for system-correction and that means constitutional and institutional reform, both of which requiring political will.\u00a0 In other words we are talking about expecting flawed people to fix a flawed system or getting the ill-equipped to do what they would not dream of doing for the simple reason that it is against their self-interest. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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It is in this context that the Government needs to be applauded for having got the 19th Amendment through, flawed though it is.\u00a0 The Government has to be applauded for getting the Right to Information Act through as well.\u00a0 These are necessary but obviously insufficient conditions for a system re-haul. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Interestingly, the apologists are already talking about alliances that can win elections, in particular a referendum on a new constitution.\u00a0 The argument is that a referendum could force coalition-continuity.\u00a0 That\u2019s a pretty impoverished place to be politically, even if one were to stress the \u2018reform project\u2019 as the impetus for the wish. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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The problem is that the government has, by the admission of its own apologists, lost political credibility.\u00a0 Forget a referendum, they are struggling to get the document into Parliament!\u00a0 The more they talk of unity, the more apparent it is that there\u2019s \u2018kachal <\/i>in the mandale’<\/i> (internal strife).\u00a0 The alliance is made of political parties.\u00a0 Political parties are made of politicians.\u00a0 Politicians are about power.\u00a0 They assess political equations, they make \u2018informed\u2019 decisions, and they look to the future \u2014 the short-term, that is. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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More than anything else, all this is evidenced by the scandalous aversion to holding local government elections.\u00a0 Even the apologists are not buying the excuses trotted out by various factions in this Government.\u00a0 What is clearly apparent is fear to face the people in an engagement where true strength will be revealed. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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In fact, the Government\u2019s biggest promise-break is about election reform \u2014 something that even the disappointed apologists are not talking about.\u00a0 It is almost 2 years since the 100 day dead line that the Yahapalana Government set itself for reform expired.\u00a0 That\u2019s a long time.\u00a0 In two years, i.e. since President Maithripala Sirisena thundered from an SLFP political stage at Town Hall that he will deliver on the promise of electoral reform.\u00a0 A long silence, that. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Under these circumstances, constitutional reform along Eelamist lines will run into serious political problems.\u00a0 There will be protests.\u00a0 Politicians will try to disassociate themselves from Eelamist moves.\u00a0 Babies will be thrown with the bathwater.\u00a0 That would be a pity indeed.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The solution is to build on what\u2019s been done, i,e. the 19th and the Right to Information Act.\u00a0 These enabling mechanisms need to be used and used frequently so that both people and politicians are aware of what these safeguards mean and how they empower the former and restrain the latter. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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That will obviously that time.\u00a0 And time is what this Government does not have, and not because of Mahinda-remnants or alliance-hiccups, but bold, italic and underlined \u2018CANNOTS\u2019 and \u2018WILL NOTS\u2019. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.\u00a0 Email: <\/i>malindasenevi@gmail.com<\/i><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 Twitter: malindasene. \u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Malinda Seneviratne When the Government\u2019s staunchest apologists sound disappointment it is a sure sign that things are more than \u2018pretty bad\u2019.\u00a0 According to one yahapalanist, Jehan Perera (see “Going back to an alliance that can win elections” published in ‘The Island’, February 14, 2017)\u00a0the public perception is that the Government has not (cannot?) tackle corruption, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malinda-seneviratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63475","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=63475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}