{"id":68534,"date":"2017-08-03T14:24:19","date_gmt":"2017-08-03T21:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=68534"},"modified":"2017-08-03T14:24:31","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T21:24:31","slug":"the-fault-is-in-the-political-constellations-and-not-the-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/08\/03\/the-fault-is-in-the-political-constellations-and-not-the-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"The fault is in the (political) constellations and not the stars"},"content":{"rendered":"
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BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars\u2026\u201d \u2014\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Jack Gilbert<\/i><\/div>\n
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Jack Gilbert (1925-2012), celebrated poet from the USA, in a poem titled \u2018Tear it down\u2019 was essentially calling for self-criticism, for the recognition and subsequent erasure of bias, and perhaps even reflection on the error (let\u2019s say) of being fixated with political projects or preferred outcomes.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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There were many who voted for Maithripala Sirisena in January 2015 not because they believed a word about the\u00a0yahapalana<\/i>\u00a0promise but they thought that defeating Mahinda Rajapaksa was necessary to stop things from deteriorating. On the other hand, there were many who actually believed in the\u00a0yahapalana<\/i>pledge, never mind that you cannot get (as the Sinhala phrase goes) feathers from a tortoise.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Among them was the columnist Nalaka Gunawardena.<\/span><\/div>\n
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These are not ‘the stars’, no….most certainly not!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Nalaka recently quoted a fruit seller who runs a small retail shop near his house in Kotte, Jayasena.\u00a0<\/span>Jayasena Mudalali had told him a few days before the 2015 General Election that there are no honest politicians and that he would prefer if it were possible to vote for a robot.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Nalaka, at the time, had entertained utopian hopes about\u00a0yahapalanaya<\/i>, he confesses, and therefore had not agreed with Jayasena. Nalaka yearns for robots today.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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The biggest problem with those who jumped on the\u00a0yahapalana<\/i>\u00a0bandwagon is the term.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>It was a challenge and a good one.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>It was an aspiration, a standard to be maintained and it was going to be tough.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
Many who cheered Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe back in 2015 probably knew it would be tough, but what they probably didn\u2019t know was that yahapalanaya was a feather and the yahapalanists were tortoises.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
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The problem is that\u00a0yahapalanaya<\/i>\u00a0is an end as well as a process.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Once you embroider the term on to your political flag you cannot play \u2018End justifies the means,\u2019 but you have to be alert to the journey, the decisions, each step of the way; and you have to point out deviation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Here\u2019s an example.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>There were those who demanded that whether one likes the idea or not R. Sampanthan should be made the Leader of the Opposition.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>The hesitation of course was\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>ideological (at best) and racist (at worst), the latter being the more common source of objection.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>The argument was about accepted parliamentary practice and the business of numbers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>And yet, the very same lofty principles were duly forgotten when the parliamentary arithmetic changed and it became obvious that the Joint Opposition had more oppositional legitimacy and clout than Sampanthan and the TNA.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Those who raised shrill cries of horror at corruption, nepotism, abuse of state resources and such during the tenure of Mahinda Rajapaksa are conspicuously silent today.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>They are not calling for the blood (or at least a hauling to the FCID) of those accused of swindling the Central Bank (accusation, let us not forget, was \u2018crime\u2019 enough for the name-shame game that the\u00a0yahapalana<\/i>\u00a0(sic) media played when it came to those associated with the previous regime).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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The Ministry of Home Affairs has written to public servants in all districts, asking them to arrange all kinds of religious ceremonies to commemorate 40 years of the advent of a particular political ideology and the 40th anniversary of a politician\u2019s first electoral success.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>That\u2019s a call for the abuse of public resources, a demand that government servants pander to the interests of a political party and of course a leg-up to the (further) politicization of the public service.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>The (obvious) at-odds with\u00a0yahapalana<\/i>\u00a0rhetoric has surprisingly been missed by\u00a0yahapalana<\/i>\u00a0apologists.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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We should not be surprised since\u00a0yahapalana\u00a0<\/i>nepotism first surfaced just days after Maithripala Sirisena became President and no one among the prominent anti-nepotism brigade uttered one word of consternation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>The watchers of the watchdogs were and are silent on the abuse of state media.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>They are not exactly howling in protest when the government unleashes violence on demonstrations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>They didn\u2019t say a word about the attempted white-vanning of a student leader.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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And then there\u2019s the issue of postponing elections.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>If the country can move along (\u2018stagger\u2019 if you wish) without local government bodies but just government-appointed \u2018minders\u2019 why hold elections at all, one could argue. The same logic could be extended to include provincial councils as well.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>But not holding issues is at odds with\u00a0yahapalanaya<\/i>, and again that at-odds has not been noticed by the\u00a0yahapalana<\/i>cheering squad.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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When one reads the columns of the\u00a0yahapalana<\/i>\u00a0apologists one gets the feeling that at least some of the columnists are embarrassed about what\u2019s happening.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>They don\u2019t exactly say it as they should \u2014 where a thundering slap is warranted (going by the ease and weight of swing they demonstrated against the previous regime), they mutter \u2018tut tut.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Take all that\u2019s happened over the past 2.5 years and imagine that it was the Rajapaksas in power. Now ask yourselves how the\u00a0yahapalana\u00a0<\/i>cheer-leaders would have responded.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>It\u2019s a throw-back to the eighties, isn\u2019t it? It is as though people who pretended to be fast asleep during the JRJ-Premadasa tyranny, who were half-asleep during the CBK years and were wide awake during the Rajapaksa tenure, have return to feigned-sleep all over again.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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So what was all the high-minded talk during the Rajapaksa years about, one has to ask.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Were they really worried about corruption? Did nepotism keep them awake at night?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Did they feel stifled by the lack of democracy? Were they upset about violence then but not now because those targeted by\u00a0Yahapalanists\u00a0<\/span><\/i>are dispensable?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Is it just another\u00a0api venuven<\/i>\u00a0api\u00a0<\/i>thing?<\/div>\n
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The fault, as they say, is not in the stars but, as they don\u2019t say, it\u2019s in the constellations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>There are constellation-preferences clearly.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>It could just be a configuration of stars that make up an\u00a0ape kattiya<\/i>(Our Guys). It could be a constellation called \u2018Constitutional Reform Closer To Our Hearts.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Whatever it is, it is not about things that ought to matter more than ideological and political preferences, such as truth, honesty, decency, consistency, equality before the law, accountability, transparency and such.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Let us not for one moment imagine that the same principle cannot be applied to those who support the Joint Opposition, see Mahinda Rajapaksa (or Gotabhaya) as a saviour.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>They look up and they don\u2019t see stars either; they see configurations that spell Joint Opposition, Mahinda or Gota.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>If they see corruption, nepotism and other ills today, the chances are that they were blind to these before January 2015.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Jayasena Mudalali has a point, all things considered.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>But if we are a long way off from robot-governments and if we recognize that humans designing robots are never value-neutral, then we have to go beyond the more persistent constellations, i.e. those that describe the dominant political formations in the country which include not just the UNP and SLFP but also the JVP, TNA and SLMC (and their off-shoots).\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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The stars that are backgrounded by such constellations are in fact the very stars that are used to create the constellations only to be sidelined post-creation: the people.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Jack Gilbert says \u2018The village is not better than Pittsburgh, only Pittsburg is more than Pittsburg\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>We don\u2019t have to look to the constellations, we don\u2019t have to look across the seas and over the mountains.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>The fault is right here. Among us.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Within us. So too the solution.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars\u2026\u201d \u2014\u00a0\u00a0Jack Gilbert Jack Gilbert (1925-2012), celebrated poet from the USA, in a poem titled \u2018Tear it down\u2019 was essentially calling for self-criticism, for the recognition and subsequent erasure of bias, and perhaps even reflection on the error (let\u2019s say) of being fixated with […]<\/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-68534","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\/68534","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=68534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}