Columns

When Pulitzer prize winning journalist Wesley Lowery cleverly punned the election of United States President Donald Trump in his first term (2017-2021) succeeding to the liberal Black (almost) law professor Barack Obama as a ‘whitelash’ (‘American Whitelash and the Changing Cost of Progress’; 2023), that was only half the story.

The ‘basket of deplorables’

Essentially Lowery was referring to a ‘cyclical pattern of violence’ that he said, had ‘marred every moment of racial progress’ in the United States where Obama’s ‘historic election (2008) was typified as a turning point which led to a vicious reaction by white supremacists and the emergence of Mr Trump. But there is more to this ‘erudite’ (Mr Obama) versus the ‘idiotic’ (Mr Trump) comparison than what meets the eye.

What surfaced in the drawing of the battle lines very early on was the class divide between America’s elites and the non-elites, (ironically reposing their trust in a master class entertainer if not a skilled circus performer who was very much one of the elites himself though professing to be the champion of the poor). But it was the perception and not the reality that ruled political outcomes with the Democrats’ painfully retrogressive rhetoric doing them no favours.

Who can forget that scornful reference to America’s ‘basket of deplorables’ as the Democratic contender Hilary Clinton who famously lost to Mr Trump in 2017 categorised his supporters? This is one comment (out of many, one hopes) that she came to regret, saying that this was like a ‘gift’ to her electoral rival though more recently, there has been an inclination to defend that categorisation on the basis that ‘deplorables’ is too kind a word for the multiple xenophobes and racists in Mr Trump’s corner.

To talk or not to talk,
that is the question

But this remark symbolises America’s class divide which came forcibly to my mind in the wake of a continuing furore over the use (or the non-use) of the English language by prominent faces of the National Peoples’ Power (NPP) Government in their public addresses. Most recently was the wave of emotional support engineered for President Anura Kumara Dissanayake when he spoke in Sinhala at a recent State visit to the Maldives.

In fact, the President’s securing of ninety day visa free entry for Sri Lankans to that country was touted as a remarkable achievement despite (we are told) the language factor. This is scarcely a big victory given that the concession is merely an extension of visa concessions already in place. That said, anything more asinine than this sort of propaganda would be hard to find; it does the NPP itself little credit.

In the first place, all Sri Lankans should be proud of their national leaders speaking in Sinhala or Tamil when addressing overseas state events. At the other end of that divide, there is rhetoric almost as if to say that the command of the English language is an indispensable condition for this country’s political leadership. From whence comes this veneration of a colonial language when this should simply be a medium of communication, nothing less and nothing more?

Political categorisation
of the ‘elites

That example set by the President should be emulated by his Government so that there will be no repetition of an incident several weeks ago at the World Economic Forum. This was when a prominent Minister, in attempting to answer a question asked by a panel moderator, gave an answer in English that was garbled and confused in equal parts. The point here is not so much the regrettable lapse thereto or the obvious fact that interpreter services should have been availed of, to avoid such mishaps.

Rather, it is the widespread classist scorn that this incident invited. This basically feeds into the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) led NPP Government’s classic line that the ‘elites’ ruled Sri Lanka since independence while now, it is the ‘era of the common people.’ That deftly deceptive line formed a cornerstone of its triumphant election victory in 2024 despite the fact that (very much akin to Mr Trump), some of the NPP’s front-rankers are unquestionably from ‘the elite.’

Indeed, as much as ordinary Americans suffer miserably under Mr Trump in his second term but are willing to shoulder their misery in the service of their ‘chosen one’, so do Sri Lanka’s ‘ordinary man and woman’ suffer in equal measure but are unwilling to admit that fact as this is ‘their Government’ and ‘their President.’ If the crushing taxes heaped by the Government on Sri Lankans had occurred under a Ranil Wickremesinghe-led administration, trade unionists as well as the public would have been on the streets by this time.

Those who do not learn
from history…

But here again, in the pattern of the United States’ Democratic Party’s ‘elite’ choosing to shut themselves off from the ‘masses,’ that same cardinal sin was stamped on the Wickremesinghe style of leadership. That was so in its lofty categorisation of provincial voters as our own ‘basket of deplorables’ and its insistence on Colombo’s political and civil society glitterati dictating the rule for the rest of the country.

In continuing to harp on class barriers and on a colonial language, these mistakes are enduringly perpetuated leaving the ‘liberal’ opposition to be condemned to the same fate as those who are trampled by the ‘Trumpian juggernaut.’ For however outrageous Mr Trump’s actions may be in riding roughshod over cherished institutions of American democracy including liberal universities, the counter-push has not come by a weakened liberal establishment.

In fact, only the American judiciary has stood strong in many respects. In this land, we have similar contradictions galore. The Government proceeds on pace with populist measures to placate the public, the most recent being this week’s Bill to repeal Presidential Entitlements. This will do away with the Presidents’ Entitlements Act No. 4 of 1986, undeniably attracting loud cheers that are justified. No longer will ‘any residence or monthly allowance, secretary’s allowance, official transport, or other facilities’ be provided to a former President or the widow of a former President.’

The NPP’s contradictions
in governance

The Government has also promised repeal of the parliamentary pensions legislation, another populist measure that will be welcomed. But will this suffice? The NPP’s flaunted push against the ‘corrupt’ of the old political establishment singularly ignores credible allegations of corruption from within their own ranks. Complaints to that effect to the Commission on Allegations of Bribery and Corruption (CIABOC) reportedly languish in dark corners while law enforcement authorities are equally lackadaisical

In what way therefore can it be claimed that a ‘system change’ has taken place in the anti-corruption culture? In fact and on the contrary, alarming signals abound in regard to undermining constitutional governance and changes aimed at returning oversight bodies to a pre-17th Amendment state of rabid politicisation and rendering a scarcely perfect Constitutional Council (CC) as it now exists to an even paler shadow of itself.

A folly that we never realise

These changes are reportedly contemplated in the wake of NPP nominees to crucial positions such as the Auditor General being thwarted by the CC. Hence the attempt to make the CC ‘its own’ as much as former President Mahinda Rajapaksa did, also in the guise of a deeply popular President one and a half decades ago (18th Amendment to the Constitution). The remarkable populism of the Rajapaksa Presidency is echoed in measure by the current Government however much it tries to distance itself from the Rajapaksa legacy.

In both cases, profound perversions of the Rule of Law took place under the cover of ‘acting for the ordinary people’ which is by itself, an aberration of the highest degree. But that is a folly that the Sri Lankan citizenry, as much as their American counterparts, have never quite realized.