Dial ‘M’ for Democracy

DEMOCRACY: Democracy and Social Democracy are very much in the air these days.

In the past few months we’ve had a more than tolerable defence of democracy and demands for media freedom by UNP and Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose attachment to Government of, by and for the people, as well as media freedom, was not very evident when ensconced in power under his uncle JRJ and later Ranasinghe Premadasa.

We now have a new pair of knights galloping into defend democracy or the social democracy of the SWRD type.

Whether the new Freedom with an M in parenthesis will be accepted as the real stuff is yet to be seen, with the whole package yet to be unveiled. Winning elections or leading electoral campaigns is one thing, but a commitment to democracy is another.

JRJ won an election with a five-sixth majority and gave us today’s Constitution of the Executive Presidency. We are not unaware that democratic elections have brought many a nascent dictator to power.

There was the interesting cartoon in a daily English newspaper earlier this week that raised a poser about the new initialised freedom offered to the people with the “M” standing out, the obvious sign of a splinter party [Congress (I) of India and our own (LSSP (R)].

The query raised was whether the people would take the “M” to stand for Mahajana as the proponents hoped for, Mangala as some may like, or Mahinda as many are used to just now.

In case the last of the three possibilities is what happens - dialing M for democracy - those who chose “M” as their identifying difference will find themselves trapped in their own Ms and rue the day they thought of such a strategy.

But many more things are yet to happen before we see these two knights really riding into battle, with the first being the homage at the Horagolla, coincidentally not the best sounding name for honest politics.

One wonders for how long democracy and social democracy will be presented to its people dressed up in the blue shawl of the one time silver-tongued SWRD of politics.

Well into the latter half of the first decade in the new millennium there is a need for new thinking in politics, in place of the ballyhoo of a Middle Path that was never found.

It is interesting to recall the late Edmund Samarakkody’s pithy comment in Parliament that the Bandaranaike Policies were as vague as the principles of China’s Sun Yat Sen.

Everyone claimed to follow them but no one knew what they were. Maybe we are about to have new light shed on what I think is the fanciful political thinking of the past.

Wide Eyed in Gaza

While there are new and unlikely saviours of democracy stamping about in Sri Lanka all in the name of the mahajanaya or the people, it seems more important to look at what is happening to democracy in the Palestinian territories, particularly the Gaza strip.

The great international champions of democracy even to the point of carrying out regime change ostensibly to save the democratic way of life, are today busy snuffing out the democracy of the Palestinian people, and using foreign aid for that purpose.

What’s happening there should be an eye-opener to anyone who believes in the sanctimonious humbug of the United States, the United Kingdom whether led by Blair or Brown, and the European Union, about their support for democracy, or their keenness to nurture it elsewhere.

For 18 months they kept suffocating the Palestinian people by withholding aid from the time they exercised their democratic right and expressed their democratic choice to elect a Hamas led Parliament, in preference to a corruption ridden Fatah. Their fault was that Hamas was not ready to recognise Israel.

That was a handle taken over so readily by Western newscasters, talk show hosts, even hard-talkers and all those pro-Israeli pundits, never raising the other side of the issue that Israel remains an occupying power in Palestinian territory, and whether Israel would leave all of that land in return for recognition.

The violence that erupted in the Gaza is one more tragedy the Palestinian will have to bear, put behind and gain strength from in their struggle for full nationhood in secure borders.

It appears to have pushed their struggle some decades back, but mass action has own dynamics that can fool the pundits of today. What we see today is a dual tragedy with the United States and Israel hugging Fatah leader and Palestinian President Abbas in an embrace that can only spell his total destruction.

Rump leadership

The speed with which the withheld aid was restored to the rump leadership of Fatah on the West Bank, by both the US and EU; the endorsement of Abbas by the Arab League, and the hardly veiled expressions of joy by Israel underline the sanguine expectations of George W Bush and Prime Minister Olmert about the new opportunities for them to have their own way with the Palestinian people.

Bush has reason for greater pleasure in that the new crisis in the Gaza has possibly given his presidency the hope of a legacy of approval in one important issue at least, with the powerful Jewish lobby leading the applause, when there was nothing for him to clutch on to all the while.

Yet, the contempt shown by the West for democracy in the Palestinian territory in its total disregard for the verdict of the Palestinian people in favour of Hamas, and the ugly speed with which they have come to prop up Abbas and Fatah, is a lesson to many in the developing world of real politik of the international community.

It is that caught as we are in our own divisions, not all the preaching about democracy, human rights and all that caboodle peddled by them today is anything but a thin veneer to cover their own self-interest, and it is best to take political decisions with this well in view.

Western news channels do not tire of show the lip-smacking pleasure of President Bush and Prime Minister Olmert about the latest developments in the Gaza and the West Bank. But there are more cautious voices too in the West.

One such is the decidedly right wing “The Economist” of the UK which editorialised on the Palestinian crisis headlined “As bleak as it gets”. Its thoughts deserve and extensive quote:

“But if Hamas is smashed, as many Israelis and their secular-minded Arab neighbours such as Egypt and Jordan hope, the prospect of a Palestinian-Israeli peace will be no closer either.

Despite its refusal to accept Israel unequivocally, Hamas cannot be bludgeoned out of the equation. It represents a good chunk of Palestinians; some 44% of them across the two Palestinian territories (and a strong majority in Gaza) voted for it.

The Palestinians elected Hamas as their Government mainly because they deemed it less corrupt than its secular rival, Fatah, the party of the late Yasser Arafat.

There is no sign that the Palestinians as a whole are turning against Hamas, despite the punitive boycott of the Hamas Government by most of the Western world as well as by Israel and the United States.” (The Economist - June 16, 2007).

It is an interesting analysis of a people’s thinking and how they view political developments, as well as shifts in allegiances. This should help sober those who believe that the increase of hardships to a people leads to an immediate change of allegiances.

Such changes take time and can never be a success if forced upon any people. The Palestinians face a new struggle for democracy, as they continue to struggle to free themselves from Israeli occupation.