Cohesive leadership and positive thinking

With the present President assuming office for the second term, let us fervently hope that after years of ‘independence’ we have finally found our own ‘Lee Kwan Yew’ in President Rajapaksa and that he will take this country to the heights that we have been aspiring for, since independence

Nation building requires cohesive nationalist policies and collective self-confidence of the people and this has to be specially so when a nation is endeavouring to stand on its own feet after having been subjected to 433 long years of colonial rule. However the road Sri Lanka has treaded during the past 62 years had been marked by the absence of those very pre-requisites for we have been torn asunder by cultural, communal, religious differences with political divisions as icing on that disintegrating cake.

With different interest groups jostling to establish themselves and protect their interests, our national leaders have been unable to pronounce and carry out cohesive national policies on vital spheres of national renaissance.

For instance compared to other countries Sri Lanka’s policy on national economy see-saws between private/public mixed to neo liberalism as political parties change; our policies on education have been wobbling; Our language policy has been non existent and to cap it all we did not even have a proper policy on terrorism with successive governments pampering terrorists as if to outdo one another.

National leadership

This is primarily due to lacuna in character and strength of Sri Lankan national leadership which required strong and strategic governance to strike the best equilibrium keeping competing interests in place.

Collective self confidence and national conscience of the people in Sri Lanka too, have not been great during these years. We have been constantly told; that the British built the railway but since independence we have not been able to effect any improvements to its network; that Lee Kwan Yew visited Sri Lanka in 1950’s and promised to make a ‘Ceylon’ out of Singapore; that we inherited an efficient public service and an independent judiciary which have been found wanting since independence. Overall, the general impression created therefore is that the country was ebullient and prosperous at the time of independence but things started ‘going to the pot’ since independence.

In practice however, this ‘glory’ of Ceylon at the time of independence is nothing but a ‘fairy tale’, for those who could recollect life in the 1950’s would tell you how basic it was for the average Ceylonese and how rampant poverty was in this country at that time. We were a primary producer of raw material to the world and all our food and other necessities in life, including hairpins were imported to this country. The standard economic indexes like the per capita income and unemployment ratio were not calculated at that time and had those being calculated the per capita income would well have been unimaginably low and the unemployment ratio would definitely have been above 50 percent.

National focus

British did not build the railways for the use of commuters and in fact they avoided the populated area and made the rail tracks to transport the produce to the port. Lee Kwan Yew probably must have been enchanted by the lush tea grown mountain tops in the country but what he did not know was that our tea prices at the time were controlled by 13 British agency houses and that those emaciated estate labourers were living a life of near slavery with hardly enough room to stand straight in their estate line rooms.

Sixty two years after, despite limited national focus and half hearted collective self-belief, the nation however has meandered along and our accomplishments as a nation has not been all that unimpressive. Considerable part of the national wealth since independence, have been invested in human resources and as a result we have recorded remarkable achievements in the fields of literacy, life expectancy and the PQL physical quality of life to reach standards that have earned the envy of other developing countries. We are on the verge of achieving most of the millennium development goals ahead of time while most other countries are grappling to come to terms with their basics.

Therefore this ‘thinking’ about national degradation and decay setting in after independence is not justifiable and it certainly has been having a demoralizing effect on the national psyche all these years. Needless to say, that it is this type of depraved thinking that kept us desolated, unable to counter the demons that tried to destroy the nation with unbridled terror.

Hence it is unfortunate that these self-doubts are drilled into the national psyche so subtly but it nevertheless is a fact that such thinking, in our milieu, has been habitual. Such is the pervading nature of this thinking that even a Senior Cabinet Minister in the government recently maintained that ‘our per capita income was higher than that of Singapore at the time of independence’ when in fact no such measure was in calculation at that time.

However, if you analyze this pessimistic attitudes and the persons who spawned such thinking it becomes very clear that it is the colonial remnants who indulge in this nostalgia with a nuances wish that this country reverts back to the ‘good old colonial times’ again. But these ‘remnants’ in their haste to condemn the post independent rulers conveniently gloss over the fact that the rulers of independent Ceylon so far, save one or two, have had colonial upbringings and were the products of missionary ‘good schools’.

Rural background

The present President probably is the first leader of independent Sri Lanka who is devoid of a ‘good’ education by missionary standards, representing the average Sri Lankan with a rural background. Thus the signs are that his perceptions have no strapping and his leadership style is strong practical and cohesive.

This has been proved beyond doubt when he was able to eliminate the malaise this country was burdened with for the past 34 years, the scourge of terror. Lee Kwan Yew was able to build modern Singapore because he provided strong leadership, accommodating national policies and an extremely practical approach to day-to-day issues.

As for Sri Lanka, with the present President assuming office for the second term, let us fervently hope that after years of ‘independence’ we have finally found our own ‘Lee Kwan Yew’ in President Rajapaksa and that he will take this country to the heights that we have been aspiring for, since independence.

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