Politics, violence and international theories

This column, being a column devoted to contemporary politics could ill afford to gloss over the tragic events that rocked the country’s political firmament during the week that preceded. One popular politician was killed while another popular politician lay in a hospital wounded. All that because they wanted to serve the masses!

Sounds ironic with a tinge of paradox but yet it is the truth about politics, a field that is known for its strange possibilities. In the past the trend had been for clashes between rival parties as they held equal stakes at election time but this time since the rivals posed no threat the contest was for consolidation within the same party. Thus the clash is clearly not for ideological reasons but for ‘political say’ and ‘upmanship’. So do we just blame the two politicians and their supporters for using violence to achieve their political goals?

Bygone era

It is popular story in this country that the politicians of the old school, those who took to politics soon after independence, were a decent lot; ‘non violent, incorrupt, gentlemanly and all that’. But the irony of the political reality today is, despite all that homage paid in general for those gentlemen of the bygone era no man with gentle qualities could win an election in present day Sri Lanka. This again is a social paradox but yet it is the truth about contemporary politics in the country.

The reason for this is, even though the politicians of the old school were gentlemanly they were people bent in preserving the status quo, knowingly or unknowingly, of the old political order that was not conducive for reformations expected in a nation emerging out of years of colonialism.

Political careers

There was rampant poverty in this country soon after independence and people were hungry. In 1953 they brought a government down because it increased the price of rice by a mere 25 cents.

When people are faced with the difficulty of meeting their day-to-day needs, it is human for them to compromise their rights for the sake of their immediate needs. It is then that the polity would look for representatives who are responsive for their needs however uneducated like and even violent such representatives could be.

Further in a country where popular reforms are resisted or postponed through various guises it is natural that the revolutionary type that rebel against the existing order becomes the guardian angels of common man and thus violence and those who give leadership to violence hold sway.

Therefore we have a situation where the politicians cannot extricate themselves from violence if they are to be successful in their political careers.

We could always argue against this theory to say that it is 63 years after independence and hence that is enough time for the leaders in this country to set things in order. But the fact, however, even though we are 63 years old as a nation, the basic needs of the majority in this country still remains unfulfilled. First it was hunger, then dwellings, then employment, education etc. and the list goes on.

Swabasha Act

Although reforms have been introduced after independence their implementations have been scuttled, often at their birth pangs by the powerful elitist lobby in this country that prefer to continue the old order that have served them well through generations. The opposition to the Swabasha Act, is a case in point.

Swabasha Act was introduced to correct a historical wrong that deprived the majority their basic language rights for generations.

If implemented, in its true spirit the Swabasha Act would have empowered the people in this country as the true masters of their destiny. But that would have meant marginalizing the powerful elites who held the power in all social and economic spheres and hence they sabotaged those reforms raising a ‘minority bogey’. This is not to say that a country after 440 years of colonialism could revert back to the pre-colonial order with everything in its pristine best. And also in the current international order the country has to keep up with the Joneses of ‘internationalism’. Yet the idea is that if we are to retain the democratic system of governance, reforms are necessary to empower the masses to feel that they are in control of affairs.

Political violence

That is the best way that people could be dissuaded from revolutionary catch phrases and violence. Who is the voter who would wish to support a rebel like political character, if his basic needs are met by the prevailing political order?

International rights groups issuing statement from their ivory towers in New York and London have criticized political violence in Sri Lanka as ‘customary’.

Such organizations always see the down side of developing countries and for them even democracies are not democratic unless aligned to their international power blocks politically.

It is customary for them to lack empathy to appreciate the problems of new nations embroiled between people’s basic needs and universal standards propounded by advanced nations.

The key word however in weaning the nation from political violence is ‘empowering the people’ and to achieve that end the people could place their trust in the present political leadership that has achieved much in that direction.

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