As I write, the last of the late results are trickling in. There isn’t so much as a breathless hush in the close tonight, as much as a peaceful easy feeling throughout the country. Tomorrow, it might be a very different story as the polity we live in and comprise slowly limps back to work [...]

The Sunday Times Sri Lanka

From a new political culture to a whole new clean society

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As I write, the last of the late results are trickling in. There isn’t so much as a breathless hush in the close tonight, as much as a peaceful easy feeling throughout the country. Tomorrow, it might be a very different story as the polity we live in and comprise slowly limps back to work and worship and witness to the vast marvel of being alive. But yesterday we voted with heart and hands. We voted with our feet. That writing is on the wall. We seem to want to go forward peacefully, productively, profitably. The voice of the many has suggested the best path to take. The rest – plans, programmes, policies, principles, putting it all into action – is up to the new powers that be.

So what can we expect? Shall our nation-state suffer a sea-change and be transformed overnight into something rich and strange? Well hardly. One cannot be too idealistic about any government, no matter how good or fine or morally upright their brand of governance is or is said to be. In the end it is up to us – you and I, and even those who voted for some other lot, for even other contenders – to ensure that a new political culture (as they say it is) is translated into a new society (as we now want it to be).

But there are some things to which we can aspire. Some ambitions made of the sterner stuff that manifestoes promised and which have much promise to make manifest. These aspects of island life – youth affairs, travel/transport, education, food supply and distribution, housing, among others – will be in sharp focus in the rest of the five months left this year, and no doubt the putative five-year duration of this parliament.

With that said, will a mere change – or more to the point, a consolidation – of the incumbent administration ensure that Sri Lanka in general and Sri Lankans in particular achieve their full or true potential? Would good governance alone militate towards our being punctual as a people? Should government legislate that islanders grow more hospitable to one another over and above the commercial dictates of the hospitality industry? Could the innate decency of the natives of paradise deem it fit that we bury the hatchet of a gamut of ancient hostilities in no uncertain terms as the nation turns a page in its chequered history?

Maybe you might think and feel that I’ve finally taken leave of my senses? And am well and truly at my wit’s end! Permit me to explain, elaborate, encourage us on this enterprise we appear to have chosen and engendered…

Explain
My main contention is twofold. The clearest clarion call of parties, factions, coalitions, and would-be members of parliament seeking electorate-engaged election has been a clean political culture. But the sharpest and keenest desire of the greater number of citizens being wooed and won has been a clean society.

My point is this. The brightest and best of the good folks now sworn in to serve us are still human, for all their haloes and newly sprouted angel wings. And it will take a lot more than campaign promises and election manifestoes – and even legislation – to deliver the results that the polity (and not the politicos) desire.

Elaborate
A good plan might attract and engage the youth of today so that the moral turpitude of a decrepit and corrupt older generation (I almost wrote erstwhile regime!) will not be their undoing. A sound programme and well-thought-out curriculum may well rescue the education sector from the torpor into which it has slipped in recent times. A clear policy on public transport, travel safety and infrastructure development could get us to the moon and back…

But.
No amount of legislation will make the lazy, lethargic, lackadaisical Sri Lankans among us punctual – much less punctilious in keeping not only our appointments, but also our word. No amount of good governance can lay down the law on how we treat neighbour and stranger alike in our only-recently savagely riven communities. No amount of law and order will make the average law abiding citizen step out of order to do an enemy a good turn…

You. Get. The. Point.
Encourage
Let me urge you then to think about what you want of life in our newly democratised island republic. And what a new political culture can do to deliver on the dreams that lie latent within paradise’s psyche. Because it could well be that we are being as unrealistic about the ability of the albeit clean new political culture that appears to be in situ with the potential to emerge as a game-changer and the brand new society we want to inherit and leave behind as a legacy. (At least that’s what many enterprising and enthusiastic users of social media posted and tweeted about in the tense days leading up to the poll… and even in the heady aftermath.)

Enterprise
I think this is best done by asking ourselves a few key questions:

- Are we willing to give (and keep) to stated times in business, social, personal appointments – as much as we observe auspicious times meticulously?

- Are we willing to be transparent and accountable to family and friends in terms of all that is fiscal and fiduciary in our life and work… in the same breath as we berate MPs who don’t honestly declare their financial assets?

- Are we willing to state – and stick to – our word and our loyalties; just like we expect (and have now legislated, according to 19A) that political crossovers are a no-no?

- Will we forgive our enemies and those who have hurt us and humiliated us, in the same vein that we preach national reconciliation to ultra-nationalistic parliamentarians and parties?

- Do we dare turn the other cheek, observing the “live and let live” ethic of good governance as it continues on its way?

- Can we stand up for the rights of others – even to the detriment of our own?

I think that the sky is the limit once we start being introspective and intentional along such lines!

Endpiece
Time will tell what will be! The new political culture is being born again, and everyone who subscribes to democratic-republicanism must wish that it will not be still-born, but go on to give birth to a brand new society. In the meanwhile, the onus is on you and I – not simply to keep our nicely elected representatives duly accountable, but to set them an example, and hold ourselves accountable to them too as well as our collective vision, dream, potential.

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