Oh politics, Thanks but No Thanks!

There is a tendency among many of us to believe that ‘politics is a dirty game’ that one should not get involved in. This is especially so among some of us who believe that they are above the ordinary in our society with the thought that politics is a game that appeals to the baser instincts of people and therefore it is not for the ‘educated and the respectable’.

To say that ‘we are above politics’ is to place oneself above the ‘hoi polloi’. We also have this tendency of dismissing things that have unhealthy influence on a particular subject matter under discussion as ‘just politics’.

Hence we express our intentions at Company Board meetings or managerial meetings to ‘stick to the issues and not to bring politics to bear’ on them.

Thus, politics over the years have earned the reputation of being an evil or questionable field of activity that should best ‘be left to the politicians’.

Then we go a little further where we hasten to identify the politicians with opportunism, corruption and self seeking interests; things that we often consider ourselves to be incapable of in our day-to-day lives.

Such thinking however, to say the least is unfortunate and in effect is an attempt to escape into fiefdom of our own abstract and wishful thinking. If politics is the art of governance, it affects us in the way we live, in the way we eat, in the way we educate our children and for that matter in just about everything we do.

Politics therefore permeates us in all our activities and hence to develop such an abstract attitude in this age of democracy would be to disregard our own contribution to the civil society which is the duty of every responsible citizen. ‘All what is required for the evil to triumph,’ they say, ‘is for the good men to do nothing’.

This selfish, but circumspect thinking in the Sri Lankan society however could be traced to our 443-year colonial legacy. We have been told quite often, directly and sometimes in subtle ways that Ceylon was a prosperous Island where everything was fair before independence and it is these politicians who took over after independence that ruined this country.

They even say that Lee Kuan Yew visited this country in the early ’50s and said, that he wanted to make ‘Singapore a Ceylon’. Whatever the veracity of that statement if that icon of modern Singapore has indeed made such a statement, he must have based his statement on the facile features of the Sri Lankan society at the time.

Those who lived in this country should know what poverty, what inequity and what injustice existed in this country during the ’50s and ’60s. The ordinary man in this country had been so poor that they had revolted and forced a Government out when the price of rice went up by just 25 cents in 1953.

The justice in this country at that time was to put the ordinary citizen on trial in a language that he did not even understand. Per capita income of people in those years had not been maintained for comparison but it is a fact that there was abject poverty at the time where people, especially women worked only for their meal and more children were sent out on labour errands to earn their daily living and less to school to gain education.

Today Sri Lanka is a Middle income country and we do not see children employed in domestic errands.

Therefore these much maligned politicians of the post independent era has accomplished a lot during the 60 years, and certainly much more than the colonial rulers did during their 443-year rule.

This however was probably achieved by the elected representatives of this country with comparatively limited patronizing by the privileged sections who wished to ‘mind their own businesses’.

If you look back the 61-year history of independence in this country we have had two JVP insurrections and a drawn out Tiger war that pelted us and the causes of those could be directly or indirectly identified with this attitude of either non patronization or the wrong patronization by the powerful elements in our society.

This is the country that we live in and therefore its economy, its image and its social ethics all affect us in every way. Hence it becomes incumbent upon the English speaking and privileged segment in this society to adopt a more pragmatic approach to the issues that are before this country and play a more constructive part in them in the wider interest of the country.

This may require a degree of courage which requires a trade of between our immediate but narrow interest for the long term and broader interest of the people.

Our politicians may not be the best in the world in terms of integrity and competence but in this democratic society we have little choice but to strive to improve on them. Politics is too serious a business to be left in the hands of the politicians alone.

We have just finished an election in this country. During the run up to the election the Opposition picked on a candidate they said was ‘to save this country from dictatorship and restore the democratic rights of its people’.

This candidate in turn promised to end corruption in 72 hours and political thuggery in 52 hours. That, I thought is a travesty of justice which is the essence of a democratic society and hence I expressed my views to do my duty by the society.

I, for one could not believe how an association of lawyers who knew their law or a former Chief Justice for that matter, could support a candidate who espoused such commitments. They probably had other reasons to support him.

The fact that nearly 4 million eligible voters in this country did not share my views is another matter. And that is democracy. I am relieved however that at the end that sanity has prevailed. After all democracy is the verdict of the majority and if one does not have the humility to bow to the verdict of the majority such a person simply is not suitable to enjoy the fruits of democracy.

The elections may be over but the democratic form of governance does not end there. There are other institutions such as the Legislature, Judiciary and media that act as checks to balance the power reposed in the political executive. Let us therefore now work to strengthen those institutions.

The common aspiration of everyone of us is to ensure a better life for us and our children and the best way to do it is by developing the economy, social etiquette and the image of this country.

We have tried a rather circumspect and an abstract method to accomplish this during the past 61 years and it has had limited success. It is therefore time that we stop behaving like foreigners in our own country and commit ourselves fully for the national development of the country because that in the long run would be our own salvation.