A brand new L.I.F.E.
It is just beginning to sink in. The decade-long night is over, the dawn is breaking. The old regime is out of power. The new republic is in with potential. The reality of a fresh start is in the air everywhere. Well almost. Today as we as a nation look forward to the Fourth of February and all that it holds for us all, your favourite Sunday columnist (ahem) would like to look back and look around at the state of the nation under four broad categories closely associated with our newfound democratic republicanism. It is a wish-list of sorts – we hope the Powers that don’t want to be Despotic are taking notes.
Liberty
The right to life and the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed by our Constitution. Or so we hope. Time for all authorities, institutions, establishments, etc. that can compromise that right to be put in the know. And put in their place when they compromise on that right.
Time for the long arm of the law to willingly foreshorten its illegal or extra-judicial activity. One area in which the law-enforcement authorities have been falling short is in their treatment of suspects in police custody. Now that the Reign Of Terror is over – and seems to want to continue to be over – here’s hoping that an all-new law-enforcement ethic or police culture will come in. In tandem with an all-new political culture, or legislative ethos. This means no more of even the most dastardly of villains dying under egregious circumstances while in their cells overnight or being transported from cop station to crime scene.
Independence
There is also the issue of for whom national independence was won. Was it for the majority ‘race’ (which is more an ethnicity) or the majority ‘religion’ (which is more a philosophy)? Was it for a power group, lobby, or elite? Was it for a super-class of rich and influential citizens?
Or was it – as the Constitution suggests – for “all peoples”: namely “the people of Sri Lanka”; and especially “succeeding generations of the people of Sri Lanka”?
If that is the case, then why are some provinces of Sri Lanka still occupied by a victorious military? Why do some people in some parts of the country still have no due recourse to state services in their mother tongues? Why is there still a groundswell of resentment against the idea that people of the Sri Lankan Diaspora must be encouraged to return to their homeland? Why is it that we must pander to chauvinistic parties in the Coalition and nationalistic elements in the National Government and strongly counter the UNHRC rather than simply respond to it? Why is there still deep suspicion – and, in some instances, deep-rooted hostility – between south and north, west and east, hill-country and lowland? Is it too radical to ask that the emerging new political culture introduce some of the sense of bonhomie and camaraderie and general goodwill to the deeply entrenched combatants on several sides of the ongoing national ethnical dialogue?
So let the Powers that don’t want to be Chauvinistic and Ultra-Nationalistic take note. (While you are about it, dears, would/should/could you please investigate which flags must fly over Independence Square, and which be taken down in the name of national unity?)
Freedom
Usually, this word is used lightly and carelessly – such that freedom is “just some people talking”. On National Day 2015, Sri Lankans as a country, state, people, would do well to reinvent themselves and the types of freedoms they would enjoin, espouse, and enjoy in the future. One of these freedoms is in the areas of choices that we make. Keep in mind that “the freedom to twirl my umbrella in the air ends where the other person’s nose begins”. Maybe this might be located closer home to our polity in this pithy saying: “The freedom to appoint my evidently qualified brother to one plum position ends where the other regime’s freedom to appoint their brothers to all plum positions ends.”
Really, dears, MS – as he has become fondly known, all too soon – should have known better; could have done better. No matter what his justification and rationale, it is just too soon after MR & Co. to start the nepotistic, family-favouring, crony-appointing treadmill all over again. O, that our aspiring republican politicos would “feel free” from today on – and for the rest of those 100 days – and for the remainder of this regime – NOT TO choose their kith and kin ahead of the rest! What price that “meritocracy” we heard all about in re these supposedly sea-green incorruptibles? Hope there are no more brothers or “brothers from another mother” lurking around – soliciting “jobs for the BOIs” (pun intended – go figure.).
Equality
Here is one area in which the Powers that don’t want to be Seen or Heard are doing really well. By now the urban myth of MS stopping his patrician presidential motorcade to let other plebeian users of the road pass first is the stuff legends are made of – if no less true for its fabulous nature. Now can the rest of the Cabinet and sundry MPs and PC members please follow your leader’s suit? We have had it Up To Here with cocky, strutting, egregious politicos who thought they were God or the gods’ gift to island-humanity. We would be free of that culture once and for all.
End Note (A Tale of Two CJs): The wheels of justice grind slowly, but surely under those committed to democratic republicanism. But justice must be tempered with grace, good sense, and a grain less of self-righteousness. Only those without sin may cast the first or last stone. Thus the exit of one CJ who wasn’t really in one interpretation of the law and the re-entry of another who wasn’t really removed in a parallel universe left a mixed taste in the mouth. Equality from now on must mean that over and above the purely legal metier by which we judge and enact jurisprudence for loyalists must balance – not cancel out – the judgment we render our opponents as well as those who have fallen from grace and foul of the letter of the law.