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| Sunday, 19 December 2004 |
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The march of zealotry Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake The cry goes out across the land that the country is stricken with a grave national crisis. Things fall apart they say and the Centre cannot hold. From the proverbial man in the street to the professional wiseacres of the seminar circuit all are sunk in gloom and gripped by despondency. The Cassandras are having a field day.
The tragedy which began with the slaying of a High Court Judge has reached its acme with the mockery which was made of Parliament two weeks ago with the loquacious Mr. S. B. Dissanayake in the role of star performer even in absentia. The repeated disturbances in Parliament, the snatching of the Mace which seems to have now become a popular sport, the theatrics of the UNP and the TNA Opposition in the well of the House were certainly unprecedented but not unexpected in the context of the volatile political situation. For the fact is that for the last almost three decades the country has been going through an agonising process of adversarial politics which has had its ebbs and flows. The transplantation of a powerful Presidential form of government on the uncongenial soil of the Westminster form which makes for a greater sense of give-and-take among MPs (whatever their party labels might be) and the consequent erosion in the power of Parliament as a whole is without doubt at the root of the crisis. This was starkly illustrated when the present UPFA Government was unable to obtain a majority in Parliament although winning the generality of votes on a national scale. The general sense of political instability such a situation induces compounded by the sense of impotence and helplessness of individual MPs aggravates the tendency towards bitter adversarial politics. Things are not helped when a Government is compelled to resort to doubtful means to obtain that majority in the belief that by so doing they are giving effect to the people's will at the hustings. This was the dilemma with which the Government was faced and it is a pity that just as it was on course with a workable majority that there should have been a recrudescence of adversarial politics with even the Speaker getting entangled in its coils. Anybody with any memories of political developments will concede that politics was not so bitterly contested before 1977. Even with the two thirds majority which the United Front Government of Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike enjoyed the UNP although reduced to a rump was able to influence that Government in the 1970-1977 period. After the LSSP was expelled from the Government in 1975 the Opposition received a considerable shot in the arm. General Elections were held on time and regular by-elections kept the parties on their toes. No Government could afford to enjoy a sense of hubris for long and this coupled with the general camaraderie of the Westminster-style parliamentary club made for a more decent type of politics. But now with governments struggling to maintain their majorities in the face of a hostile Opposition politics has become nasty and brutish. Needless to say this is not a situation conducive to good governance and the need for a national consensus which is vital for the resolution of the Tamil National Question. It is all the more disturbing that this fresh eruption should have taken place just as the Government was clearing the decks for negotiations with the LTTE. The UNP has accused the Government of subterfuge in making inroads into their ranks such as in the case of Minister Rohitha Bogollagama but if everything is fair in politics if not love the Government is also faced with the problem of maintaining a viable majority within a hostile constitutional framework. Any disunity between the major parties can be calamitous at this juncture. This is why it is necessary that the process of arresting the growing distrust between the two major forces in Sri Lanka's politics should be launched immediately. There must be a temporary ceasefire in the petty political battle and a minimum of the vituperation and the manouvering for power which has characterised politics in recent months. Parliament has to be made a tribune for national reconciliation rather than a bear pit for partisan battles. The JVP will be called upon to play a major role in any such exercise. While it is in the nature of politics that parties will seek to outmanoeuvre each other in the quest for power the leaders of the major parties will have to come together and evolve some basic ground rules on how they can place the national interest over the attempt to cut the ground from under the feet of one another. Velupillai Prabhakaran has already referred in his Maha Vir day speech to the differences among the major political parties over the nature of the negotiations. Of course there will be many sceptics scoffing at his utterances but the fact is that these seeming incompatibilities can be advanced as a strong argument for the LTTE turning its face away from negotiations. It is another matter altogether that the ISGA proposals go even beyond a federal structure and will be unacceptable to most sections. But it is not merely enough for us to say that we all stand for peace. That is mere deference to a fashionable verbal pattern. The Sinhala polity must decide at least on the broad contours of a possible settlement. (Incidentally this columnist at least finds the reference to a 'final solution' chilling. It reminds us of Hitler's final solution to the Jewish problem). There is also the problem of the ugly face of religious fundamentalism. In a horrendous post-modernist scenario at the old Race Course grounds the rigid and virulent forces of Buddhist fundamentalism collided with the fantasies churned out by the Bollywood cinema little knowing perhaps (although ignorance was certainly no virtue or bliss or excuse here) that both share a common origin. Even if some of the Buddhist priests who spearheaded this campaign did not know that Bombay had for long been the fountainhead of Sinhala film entertainment they surely know that the Buddha originated in India. Even if they in their blissful ignorance did not know that Sharukh Khan in the film 'Ashok' had played the role of the Great Emperor Asoka to whom Sri Lanka owns the gift of Buddhism they surely knew that an agitation of this scale would reflect badly on both themselves and the country. The central question is not who threw the grenade but of the hand which was behind it. It will be a sad day for Sri Lanka if the world concludes that this was the recently-emerged hand of a hitherto placid faith hijacked and led now by a small bunch of zealots who are traducing all the articles of their founder's faith. |
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