76 Years Of (In)Dependence!
By Vishwamithra –
“The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.” ~ James Baldwin
On Sunday, February 4, 2024 we ‘celebrated’ our ‘Independence’. After being a subject country of the Western colonial powers for nearly four and a half centuries, Ceylon obtained so-called Independence. Political and administrative power was transferred from the British to the people of the land. The British flag came down and the Ceylon flag climbed up the flag pole. D S Senanayake, our first Prime Minister, clad in Western Coat tails presided over the proceedings. A leading businessman, the media mogul of Asia, DR Wijeywardene was invited by DS and was provided with a seat on the rostrum but not in the front row. The front row was reserved to the VVIPs, those who were leading the government power. DR Wijeywardene was not amongst them. He was thoroughly unhappy and left the proceedings even before they started the ceremony.
DR Wijeywardene was no ordinary man. Before Ceylon gained Independence, DS, as leader of Ceylon’s movement for Independence, when needed to meet Wijeywardene for any unofficial advice, visited the media mogul, not the other about. Such was the power of Wijeywardene. Yet he, as per ‘precedence table’ drawn out by the Ministry of External Affairs, was not accommodated in the front row of the Independence Day celebrations. And quite rightly so.
Our current President, Ranil Wickremasinghe is the maternal grandson of DR Wijeywardene. Nowhere near achieving the grand exploits of Wijeywardene, Ranil, however, may have adopted the misplaced sense of importance that Wijeywardene was consumed by. Certainly not a very flattering story for the grandson, leave alone the grandfather. The grandson, as President, presided over the seventy sixth Independence ceremony without the people, for whom that independence was fundamentally meant to deliver freedom from the colonial masters. The people were banned from attending the ‘Independence’ they ‘won’. As much as his grandfather left the ‘Independence’ Day celebrations in 1948, the grandson has left the people out of the celebrations. A very cruel irony of recent history indeed!
Where are we now? Where are we going from here? Consumed by our own self-importance, we have arrived at a moment in time which is demanding a total departure from the road that we have been treading to date. We are a nation still in search of totality as one nation; she is groping and finding a debt note here and a missing pair of earrings there; they have been pawned for want of real cash. The former Minister of Health is in jail. He is accused of downright corruption, in order to enrich himself with commission money. The Sri Lankan court remanded this member of the Cabinet after taking to custody on Saturday over the purchase of fake medicines for state hospitals when he was in charge of the Health Ministry. Former Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella was ordered to be held until February 15 pending investigations into a 144 million rupee ($465,000) scam involving what were meant to be life-saving drugs. President Ranil Wickremesinghe has not asked him to explain. There goes accountability out the door.
An independent nation is suffering from a serious malignancy; a malignancy that has spread all over her body politic. An independent nation is gravely ill and those who are treating her are more plagued by the same virus and seems to be nearer to death than the patient-nation. It is not a time for celebrations. It is no time for introspection and revert back to the same regimen of medicine, same dose of the same drugs. It is an extremely grave state of affairs. You cannot allow the patient to die; you cannot let her pass away for want of better and more educated administration of hospital care. Even the hospital is full of corrupt practices; not only the former Minister, even the doctors, nurses, attendants and other minor staff are guilty of negligence and willfully looking the other way.
Not only the doctor, not only the administrator, not only those who brought the patient to the hospital, relatives and friends, everyone except the patient has to be done away with, period. A country that has been nurtured and nursed on a steady dose of dependency syndrome cannot be expected to recover overnight. The patient who has been exceedingly dependent upon repeated dosages of sugarcoated medicine was never given a prophylactic; had that been administered at a very early stage of the first signs of the diagnosis, perhaps the patient could have been saved; now an invasive surgery seems to be the only option available and a change of doctors by no means can be ruled out.
When did the first signs of this dependency-malady manifest themselves? It was a way back in 1953 when the then left-wing parties led specifically by Dr NM Perera and his Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) organized the infamous Hartal. Here is how Wikipedia describes the Hartal of ’53 with its authentic historical context:
“The people had been accustomed for a rice subsidy, which was the staple diet of the island. Dating back from the rationing during World War II, the rice subsidy was issued for ration cards and over the 1940s had become a basis for the sustenance of the local population. The United National Party had promised in the 1952 election campaign to maintain the price of rice at 25 cents a measure. Soon after the election, the government faced a sudden economic crisis. In July 1952, the food subsidies were running at the rate of 300 million rupees, which was a third of the estimated revenue in the planned budget for the coming year. Ceylon depended heavily on rice exports and the global price of rice increased because of the Korean War. R. G. Senanayake, Minister of Trade and Commerce negotiated the Ceylon-China Rubber-Rice Pact, a barter systems which allowed Ceylon to trade its rubber for rice from the People’s Republic of China without affecting its foreign reserves. The pact came into effect despite the opposition of the Finance Minister JR Jayewardene who was pro- United States which was engaged in bitter fighting with the People’s Republic of China in the Korean War. However, it did not help the government’s financial position, with its trade surplus of 345 million rupees in 1951 turning into a trade deficit of 200 million rupees in 1952”.(Source: Wikipedia)
Independent Ceylon was unashamedly put on the cosmetic pedestal of dependency on government welfare programs which could not be financially afforded in the context of the worsening economic conditions in the country. But the left-wing parties and SWRD Bandaranaike’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), after assuming power in 1956 turned the country into a slavishly loyal welfare system of living making government subsidies an entitlement not only for the living but also for every baby born thereafter. Dependency syndrome became an entitlement syndrome, paving the way for a country overly reliant on subsidies the government offered to the masses more as a fulfillment of an election pledge rather than an economic principle.
Dependency on government handouts leading to intractable corruption was another nasty implement in the hands of our corrupt and incompetent politicians. Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s battle cry in 1970 General Elections was ‘rice from the Moon’ (Handen haal). The ensuing economic chaos and inefficient and incompetent handling of the country’s coffers ultimately, after successive governments of both parties, UNP and SLFP, is what we are witnessing today. In order to contain the mass protests against economic peril and their vehement opposition to corruption, the incumbent President has chosen to reaffirm his own executive powers and extend that power to curtail and curb the national will. An ‘independent nation has become an extremely dependent collection of men, women and children expecting a relaxation of draconian measures already introduced in Parliament.
The callous manner in which President Wickremesinghe and his media personnel interpret various articles of the Constitution and the conspicuous intellectual bankruptcy of the government and its Executive branch is amply illustrated in the article dated February 5, 2024 written by Nihal Jayawickrama to Colombo Telegraph. While President Wickremesinghe is abusing every political muscle he has in order to prevent public outcry and at the same time ensuring his own influence on the country’s body politic, the Opposition simply cannot limit its fight to court cases and leave it to the better senses of the judiciary to resolve matters of politics and public well being.
Politicians have erred. Their erring and deliberate misdoings cannot be ignored. The public as a whole too have an equal or even a more relevant and compelling responsibility and accountability to themselves for their own sorry state. Sri Lanka, like the United States as illustrated in the current manner in which she is upholding the rule of law by various branches of government, does not have defined ways and means of bringing the rulers to justice. Elections remain the most apt and imperious way in which we can hold the politicians to account for upholding the Articles and Chapters so enshrined in our Constitution. The Constitution is not merely a story written in incomprehensible language. The constitution is the source of law; from our constitution flow all our statutes, by-laws, Parliamentary Acts, precedents and even natural law would be interpreted in terms of our Constitution. Let it work and our would-be-rulers such as NPP and SJB must swear to uphold each and every word of that sacred document.
*The writer can be contacted at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com
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