VAT has to happen, properly

The Government's response to the Supreme Court's suspension of the VAT and NBT may seem a bit of a fumble, but, given the complexity of pushing through tax changes in a finely-balanced coalition government, the process is necessarily a tortuous negotiation. More importantly, it is a break from 'tradition' when past regimes either got stones thrown at judges' homes or, ensured that new Bench appointments excluded non-conformist judges or, worse, rigged an 'impeachment' that humiliated and removed the Chief Justice herself!

Recently, we have seen in other liberal democracies, politicians bowing to the will of the people expressed in referenda, however complicated and drastic the referendum result, or, the will of thin majorities of party members in choosing maverick personalities as presidential candidates. The Government's response to the Supreme Court ruling is in that tradition of strictly conforming to democratic practices. The Government has respected the Court ruling on the one hand and, is also simultaneously responding to people's expressed socio-economic hardship.

Of course, elements of the parliamentary Opposition - those who had helped in that summary 'impeachment' of a Chief Justice - will jeer at the Government's moves. But true to its demonstrated competence, what the Government has initiated is several measures to simultaneously address the legal, fiscal as well as socio-economic aspects of the matter. No one would have expected the Rajapaksa regime, given its dismal record of ad hoc management and wildly contradictory policies, to have responded in a similarly comprehensive manner.

But the citizenry will watch the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe regime as it sets about mending the revenue system while endeavouring to shield the more economically vulnerable. On the one hand, the legal imbroglio over the new VAT and Nation Building Tax has to be resolved. On the other, while certain revenue enhancing tax increases MUST go through, the newly imposed price controls need to be managed so that they do not distort too much the market dynamics and supply chain stability. At the same time, the MRPs must ensure some succour to those economically weaker sections hit by higher prices. The general public will do well to cooperate with the authorities and vigilantly monitor retail markets to ensure retailer compliance with price controls.

All this will demonstrate the workings of a complex society and economy - the necessary hallmarks of modernity and development - as compared with the blundering (and crudely plundering) actions of the previous, simplistically authoritarian, regime that thought only in terms of just forcing one's will on all sections of State and society.

The sensitivity of the Government to socio-economic group interests has been demonstrated in the rumpus over the VAT/NBT. Liberal democracy is slow and seemingly clumsy only because it is meticulous in listening to the people and responding to public needs and interests - including State needs - in the most comprehensive manner. Notwithstanding the jeers of the un-intelligent, the Government will do well in persisting with such practices. The people will understand its imperatives in the long run.

Manipulating religion

Today's newspaper has reports of extreme violence carried out in the name of religion and also of moves to reverse the trend of abusing religious teachings for reactionary political mobilisation. Even as we report on the recent atrocities in Europe, we also report on initiatives in Singapore to counter tendencies of some religious currents to influence youth in ways that stimulate violent militancy.

In past centuries, Christianity was manipulated by certain powerful states to intervene in the Levant under the guise of 'Crusades' - geo-political behaviour that the Church overall has repented and thereby redeemed its spiritual stature. More recently, the Church has gone on to acknowledge the atrocities and abuses done in the name of Christianity by colonial powers. Even more recently, Christian fundamentalist streams have begun realising the pitfalls of its own inward-looking and anachronistic theologies and have moved more towards a genuine 'ecumenism'.

In the 21st century, the shift from western imperial domination to a more culturally and economically multi-polar global geo-politics has seen the emergence of trends in which other major religions - some with more adherents than Christianity - being manipulated in ways that emulate the earlier manipulations of Christianity: mobilising narrow communalism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny and crude sectarian orthodoxy enforced by violence. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam all seem to be suffering from these manipulations today.

Already, the ecclesiastical authorities and theological leaderships of these faiths and philosophies have begun responding to this emerging threat to the intellectual and spiritual dimension of human civilisation. Theological and doctrinal introspection and internal renewal and reform are critical to this process. There is an urgent need to move beyond religious narcissism to spirituality that embraces all humans and all of nature in a genuine, divinely-guided, love and compassion.

Humanity can learn from the large scale atrocities - genocide even - perpetrated in the name of Christianity in past ages. We see the beginnings of such barbarities in religio-communal violence in various parts of the world: from Nigeria to Bangladesh to Burma to India to Iraq and, even in our own country. Europe is also beginning to feel the savagery of this new, globalised form of manipulation of religions. There is no need for history to repeat itself.