{"id":72964,"date":"2017-12-20T20:58:08","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T02:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=72964"},"modified":"2017-12-20T13:43:12","modified_gmt":"2017-12-20T20:43:12","slug":"being-snug-dumb-and-numb-in-a-kakistocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/12\/20\/being-snug-dumb-and-numb-in-a-kakistocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Being snug, dumb and numb in a Kakistocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

\u2018Democracy!\u2019 was the clarion call of Maithripala Sirisena\u2019s campaign against Mahinda Rajapaksa.\u00a0 Much was promised.\u00a0 So far, the only victory in this regard is the 19th<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment and even this is but a shadow of what was pledged.\u00a0 If there is a greater sense of freedom and more reasons to hope that things will get better, such sentiments are offset by clearly evident resistance to such things from the regime itself.<\/p>\n

When Mahinda Rajapaksa defeated Sarath Fonseka in 2010, a senior member of the United National Party, responding to claims by a set of feller UNPers that Fonseka was robbed said, \u2018It\u2019s ok to claim anything because rhetoric is part and parcel of politics, but there\u2019s something wrong when you start believing your own propaganda!\u2019<\/p>\n

This Government is two-faced about a lot of things.\u00a0 Out with nepotism!\u201d is a slogan that was followed by numerous affirmations and even celebrations of nepotism.\u00a0 Media Freedom\u201d was promised but there has been direct and subtle subversion.\u00a0\u00a0 The echoes of the cry \u2018An end to corruption\u2019 had hardly died down when the Central Bank bond issue blew up in the new Government\u2019s face.\u00a0 \u2018No more wastage!\u2019 screamed those who would quickly turn out to be wastrels.\u00a0 There has been a lot of huffing and puffing over the Right to Information Act, but W. A. Wijewardena, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank who is by no means a \u2018Rajapaksa stooge\u2019, has pointed out some embarrassing exclusions which he claims amount to\u00a0\u2018a defeat ofpublic aspirations for transparency in the Central Bank<\/a>\u2019.\u00a0 We haven\u2019t noticed even a sigh, leave alone huffing and puffing, over electoral reform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\u00a0\"\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The Headquarters of Sri Lanka’s Kakistocracy: \u00a0Nice from far, but far from nice<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

And these are (still) the early days.\u00a0 To be fair, however, most of the criticism of this state of affairs has come from people whose moral right to object is questionable, given culpability in similar acts of omission and commission during the previous regime. The cries of horror and\/or the guffaws are not prompted by a desire to drive reform in the promised direction.\u00a0 Rather, it is to ridicule and undermine.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we have a political culture that is at odds with the spirit of democracy, a state of affairs created and nurtured by all, politicians as well as voters.\u00a0 Not to say of course that democracy is necessarily superior to other forms of governance, considering the hypocrisy it comes coated with in a capitalist system and how it sugarcoats all manner of oppression (which of course are not described as such).<\/p>\n

In April 2011, the first time I had an informal conversation with the former President, we spoke about certain pertinent elements of the political culture.\u00a0 The following is an English translation of that conversation (which was in Sinhala).<\/p>\n

\u2018You said that politics is a marathon and not a 100 meter dash in response to criticism of your son Namal\u2019s ascendancy, but Namal is doing exactly that \u2013 a 100 meter dash!\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Well, he has his ways, his speed.\u00a0 I told him not to get involved in the party\u2019s youth activities, so he started his\u00a0Nil Balakaaya\u00a0<\/em>[The Blue Brigade].\u00a0 He started\u00a0Tharunyayata Hetak<\/em>\u00a0[A Tomorrow for the Youth] while still at school.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve told him that he has to respect the party seniors and to address them as sir\u201d,\u2019 that was Mahinda Rajapaksa\u2019s response.<\/p>\n

\u2018Well, he does address the people who surround him as sir\u201d but they treat him as though he is their superior; it\u2019s all very feudal!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018You are correct, it IS feudal.\u00a0 What can we do about it?\u2019 and he laughed the laugh of a politician who had an excellent sense of the realities he finds himself in and of the dimensions or change-potential.<\/p>\n

The other day a senior professor in the field of law lamented that people seem to have lost interest in democracy.\u00a0 What\u2019s probably true is that democracy or rather democratization in the context of the January 8, 2015 political \u2018transformation\u2019 was never a serious national need.\u00a0 What the majority voted for was not democratic change, but the defeat of a particular individual who they believed was no longer suitable to lead the nation.\u00a0 That\u2019s not a \u2018for\u2019 vote but an \u2018against vote\u2019.\u00a0 Not \u2018For Maithripala\u2019 but \u2018Against Mahinda\u2019; nothing about \u2018democracy\u2019 in that overall decision.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this explains the manifest sloth on the part of this Government in the matter of democratization.\u00a0 Deep down they probably know that people really don\u2019t care about such things and don\u2019t see a relationship between democracy and general well-being.\u00a0 Given the realities of capitalism and the necessity of anomalies for its perpetuation and indeed even the necessity of conflict, all of which override on a day-to-day basis the fairytales of democracy that will not fill stomachs or bank accounts, one cannot blame the people.<\/p>\n

So there\u2019s a lot of laughter about the size of the cabinet, the slip-ups of ministers, the non-implementation of pledges and the daily confirmations that things have not changed.\u00a0 The problem however is not that Sri Lanka is not really a democracy.\u00a0 What\u2019s problematic is not that we are for all intents and purposes a feudal society, but that what we have is a particularly pernicious form of feudalism.\u00a0 Sri Lanka is (and has been) a Kakistocracy.<\/p>\n

Kakistocracy is a term coined way back in 1829 as a counterpoint to \u2018Aristocracy\u2019.<\/p>\n

It is drawn from the Greek\u00a0\u2018kakistos\u2019<\/em>\u00a0which means \u2018worst\u2019 or \u2018evil\u2019, i.e. a superlative of\u00a0\u2018kakos\u2019<\/em>\u00a0(bad).\u00a0 Indeed, some etymologists hold that it is related to the general word for defecate,\u00a0\u2018caco\u2019\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0\u2018kako\u2019<\/em>; a base word for \u2018excrement\u2019 in\u00a0many Indo-European languages (Greek\u00a0kakke<\/em>\u00a0, Latin\u00a0cacare<\/em>, Irish\u00a0caccaim<\/em>, Serbo-Croatian\u00a0kakati<\/em>, Armenian\u00a0k’akor<\/em>, and the Old English\u00a0cac-hus<\/em>\u00a0which means \u2018latrine\u2019).<\/p>\n

So, Kakistocracy would be (if you want to keep things sanitized) \u2018government by the worst\/evil element of a society\u2019.\u00a0 \u2018Kakocracy\u2019 is a slang version that describes pretty much the same thing and perhaps a more appropriate term in a Sri Lankan context, linguistically speaking.<\/p>\n

It stinks, sure.\u00a0 The question, then, is not only about the form of Government but a system or a social reality that puts\u00a0kakistos<\/em>\u00a0in power.\u00a0 We can blame politicians or we can blame ourselves.\u00a0 We can blame an overall education\/nurturing system or we can learn to learn something else in some other place in some other way so we are better informed and better able to resist Kakistocracy.\u00a0 One thing we could avoid, in the interim, is to indulge in and feed the illusion of democracy.\u00a0 We can begin by naming things correctly.\u00a0 We can start calling what we have what it is: a Kakistocracy.<\/p>\n

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.\u00a0<\/em>Email:\u00a0<\/em>malindasenevi@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Twitter: malindasene. This article was published in the Daily Mirror on April 9, 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n

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BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE \u2018Democracy!\u2019 was the clarion call of Maithripala Sirisena\u2019s campaign against Mahinda Rajapaksa.\u00a0 Much was promised.\u00a0 So far, the only victory in this regard is the 19th\u00a0Amendment and even this is but a shadow of what was pledged.\u00a0 If there is a greater sense of freedom and more reasons to hope that things […]<\/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-72964","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\/72964","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=72964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}