Before the Elections- 1

December 26, 2014, 5:42 pm

I started writing political articles soon

after I left Government Service in 1989. I am struck by the similarities and
contrasts in our politics during the periods 1977 to 1989 and 2009 to
2014, and it occurs to me that it might be useful to draw the parallels in an
article. 1977 witnessed the entry of the market oriented economy in
contrast to the State-centric one which had ruined the Sri Lankan economy
from 1956 to 1977. The success of that market economy, with all its
drawbacks, was probably the major reason why the UNP managed to cling
on to power for seventeen years, though dubious means were employed.
The present Government has shown in the perception of many Sri Lankans
an impressive dynamism in its economic performance. They believe that
that could turn out to be an important reason for President Rajapaksa
winning the forthcoming elections.
There is now a very wide consensus in Sri Lanka that the victor at the
Presidential elections, either Rajapaksa or Sirisena, will barely scrape
through, and that the decisive factor would be the minority vote. In other
words the economic factor may not weigh all that much. I can think of two
possible reasons for this. One is that it seems impossible to combine
economic growth with equity under the capitalist system. In 1998 we had
John Grays False Dawn exposing its shortcomings, and now we have the
international best-seller Capital in the Twenty first Century by Thomas
Piketty. It speaks volumes that economic inequality in China, still under the

dominance of the Communist Party, is greater than in the West European

countries. It is very probable that the economically dissatisfied in Sri Lanka
constitute a substantial proportion of the Sri Lankan electorate. They may
not be voting for the President because they cannot be expected to be
overly impressed by the successes of the Government at the macroeconomic level. The other reason is that there are no fears now, unlike in
the period before 1994, that a change of Government will spell a reversion
to a State-centric economy. The market economy has come to stay as an
integral part of the bourgeois revolution here and elsewhere at least for
the time being. So, the economic factor may not weigh very much in favor
of the President.
Corruption is a major issue at this election, more perhaps than at any
earlier election. I am concerned here only with the moral and not the
economic dimension of corruption. Both periods, from 1977 to 1989 and
from 2009 to 2014, witnessed an atrophy of the moral sense in public life,
something like a frightening collapse of public morality, that was not the
case in our politics since 1948. I will cite just one case from the earlier
period to illustrate my point. A notorious gangster, Gonawila Sunil, headed
a gang rape of a young middle class female, was convicted and sentenced
to rigorous imprisonment for a lengthy period. But after a brief period he
was given a Presidential pardon, and I am told that he was escorted out of
prison by one of the most powerful politicians of that time, a right hand
man of President Jayewardene. Thereafter he was made an all-Island
Justice of the Peace and member of the UNPs Central Committee. There
was no uproar from the civil society, no adverse reactions from the clergy
of the world religions that flourish mightily in Sri Lanka, which are facts
attesting to the atrophy of the moral sense in our public life. Mrs.
Bandaranaike happened to mention those enormities in a speech, and I
took to referring to them in my writings of that time, but I cannot recollect
anyone else doing so. I must clarify the full enormity of the Gonawila case.
Certainly most of the third-rate Governments of the third world use
gangsters for their nefarious purposes, but they are hypocritical about it
bearing in mind the tribute that vice must pay to virtue in civilized
societies. Not so in Sri Lanka where the Government blatantly rewarded a
convicted criminal. There was a frightening collapse of public morality.
A similar collapse has been taking place in Sri Lanka since 2009. That
corruption has been more rampant than ever before had to be expected as
part of the natural order of things: we are now a middle income country,
and particularly with the vast infrastructure projects undertaken by the
Government the opportunities for corruption are vastly greater than ever

before. That, from one point of view, is all that needs to be said about
corruption and there is no need to be exceedingly fussy about it. But what
about the attitudes to corruption? I would make a distinction between
attitudes to corruption on the part of the people and of the State. The
people tend to view corruption from a moral perspective, not so much an
economic one where the emphasis is on the deleterious economic
consequences of corruption that goes beyond the petty stage. This moral
attitude seems to derive from the almost universal disapproval of theft
universal in human societies with some very rare exceptions. Corruption is
seen as a form of theft because it amounts to misappropriation of what
belongs to others, and a permissive attitude towards it is sensed as a
destruction of social bonds. The State on the other hand tends to be
permissive about corruption, particularly in the third world countries.
It is arguable that in Sri Lanka corruption is part of the very order of
politics. I have in mind the fact that our idiotic electoral system requires
big money, indeed big money on a colossal scale for its operation, and that
engenders corruption on a colossal scale in the post-election period. The
fact that so iniquitous an electoral system has been allowed to continue for
so long suggests a permissive attitude towards corruption on the part of
our political elite. However, the fact that I want to emphasize is that in Sri
Lanka the Government has gone beyond permissiveness to an actual
acceptance of corruption. A politician on the government side has put
forward a unique argument for voting for the UPFA: its members have
made so much money through corruption that they dont need to resort to
corruption any more, whereas an alternative Party in power will resort to
it. There has been no suggestion of Governmental punitive action against
that politician. We are witnessing therefore an atrophy of the moral sense
in public life, a frightening collapse of public morality.
That collapse can be seen in many ways, for instance in the Kurrham
Sheikh case. He was a British national who was killed, and his Russian girl
friend gang raped, as part of the midnight revels of a local politician and
his gang. According to the established norms in Sri Lanka criminal acts by
the politically powerful tend to go unpunished, and in the Kurrham Sheikh
case it became evident that the Police were not seriously pursuing
enquiries. But the British Government would not reconcile itself to Sri
Lankan norms, Prime Minister Cameron himself intervened, and
convictions followed. Everyone knows that if not for that British
intervention there would have been no convictions at all. A contrasting
case is that of Hirunika Premachandra whose father, a politician, was killed
in public "like a dog" as she reportedly put it. The suspects are politically

powerful and therefore there has apparently been no serious action

towards incriminating them. She has joined the Opposition in the hope that
justice will be done. Her case shows that practically anything can be done
to the politically powerless unless they have powerful foreign backing.
The Governments contempt for public morality is most eloquently shown
by its criminally permissive attitude towards the anti-Muslim hate
campaign of the BBS and other extremist groups. The Muslims have been
an abjectly submissive minority who have sided with the Sinhalese in all
the racist idiocies perpetrated against the Tamils, and furthermore they
have suffered horribly in consequence. I have shown in a series of articles
that the charges made against the Muslims by the BBS are totally
preposterous, and I have not been refuted. Two indisputable facts declare
eloquently the Governments contempt for public morality: it has refused
to curb the hate campaign, and it has refused to apply the law to the BBS
leaders.
(To be continued).
izethhussain@gmail.com
Posted by Thavam