“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people” – Martin Luther King Jr.
The renowned American activist expressed these sentiments over his frustration and unhappiness with people who, despite the suffering they were undergoing, were yet unwilling to support his efforts to secure civil rights due to apathy or fear. Rings a bell?
As of the recent past, consecutive leaders of this nation have had the uncanny knack of taking one step forward and two steps back, dragging this nation of 22 million back and forth. When the three-decade-long war ended, the then President had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to unite the nation and heal the wounds of war. Unsurprisingly, he used that historic opportunity for political gain by playing to the ego of the majority community. Today, 15 years later, those old wounds are yet to heal and even the other minority communities feel more isolated than ever before.
A similar opportunity presented itself yet again in 2015 when the so-called regime of ‘good governance’ was swept into power. Consisting of a coalition of the two biggest political parties in the country, what the masses expected was for the two parties to unite and work for the greater good of the nation. That was not to be. The result was an even more fractured Sri Lanka. Had the two parties stuck to the script, none of the present-day travails would have come about.
Therefore, having missed out in doing the needful in 2015 as the then Prime Minister, the current President was presented another golden opportunity in June 2022, when former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was chased out of office by the people. All that the new President had to do was to form an all-party interim government, leading to an election. However, going against the wishes of the people, the President sought to go it alone with the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). Having burned bridges and with SLPP support on the decline, one year and seven months later the President is appealing to all parties to support him.
During the period the current President has been in office, he has prorogued Parliament on no less than three occasions and presented three different policy statements in the process, in addition to two lengthy Budget speeches which in effect are also policy statements. A president serving the remainder of the previous president’s term is normally expected to serve out the remainder of the tenure of the previous presidency, in accordance with the policies for which that mandate was received. However, the five policy statements presented so far are a drastic departure from the one for which 6.9 million people voted yes, raising legitimate concerns as to why the people are not being consulted sooner. Having just recently celebrated the 76th anniversary of Independence, the nation’s long legacy of democratic governance should not be compromised in any manner, least of all on the excuse of a weak economy.
A seasoned campaigner like the incumbent President cannot be unaware of not only the importance of democratic governance but also the optics associated with it, given its direct impact on economic stability. Based on this ground reality, politicking for mere survival is not going to do any good for economic revival in general or investment promotion in particular. Despite offering every conceivable inducement by way of concessions and tax breaks, there are yet no takers for the simple reason that the nation’s democratic credentials lack credibility.
The current leadership cannot escape the reality even though it may choose to, that its existence is owed to a popular revolt against the last leadership, and therefore, with a Presidential Election scheduled for later this year, no investor or donor will willingly take the plunge until such time that there is clarity on the governance front. Therefore, the sooner people are consulted, the better for Sri Lanka. To make matters worse, the collective Opposition and arguably the alternate government-in-waiting, has consistently signalled opposition to most of the policies set out by the current regime, including and not limited to re-evaluating the IMF bailout. As far as the global entities seeking long-term policy consistency are concerned, Sri Lanka has ruled itself out of contention due to its own actions.
Sri Lanka’s bane in the march to economic advancement has consistently been policy inconsistency where, every few years, alternate governments impose near-opposite policies, leaving investors in the lurch and, more recently, even forcing them to run for cover on the back of skyrocketing utility costs and heavy taxation. In just the last 10 years, radical economic policy reversals have taken place in 2015, 2019, 2022, 2023, and counting.
Adding to the concerns and disincentive for Foreign Direct Investment is the regime’s seemingly-incessant appetite to shrink the democratic space through various means. No democracy has ever survived a transition to an autocracy without serious consequences for law and order, with public protests usually being the order of the day. There was a time when aspiring autocrats may have assumed a less messy transition, but those days are long gone with the advent of the internet and social media.
The legislation dubiously enacted recently and known as the Online Safety Act is one that qualifies to be identified as yet another attempt to shrink the democratic space for dissent. The act was described by the regime as the panacea for all ills faced by women and children in the online world, but out of 57 clauses only two actually pertain to women and children while the rest appear to be a less-than-subtle attempt to gag the people.
Curiously enough, protecting women and children from cybercrime through benchmark legislation is certainly creditworthy and deserves appreciation, but this particular piece of legislation has no known author. For all intents and purposes, the haphazardly-put-together law that was rushed through Parliament in a matter of a few months devoid of any public consultation, with serious questions over the role played by the parliamentary oversight committee as well which okayed the legislation by issuing a one-page letter as opposed to a comprehensive report in a period of just 24 hours, has been a disaster from the word go, with the Supreme Court ruling 31 out of its 57 clauses as being inconsistent with the Constitution.
To make matters worse, last week the Leader of the Opposition made a bombshell allegation that nine out of the 31 amendments proposed by the apex court had been ignored in the final version passed by Parliament. It must be remembered that the Supreme Court noted in its ruling that the legislation could be passed into law with a simple majority only if all of its amendments were incorporated and, if not, its passage required a special majority in Parliament and a referendum. If the Opposition Leader’s contention proves to be correct, then serious questions are likely to arise over the constitutionality of the law.
When such legislation is passed into law by dubious means by a regime that has outlived its mandate, what comfort and confidence does it offer the investment and donor community on which Sri Lanka is relying for help? Besides, how can any Opposition party heed the President’s call for support?
While a once-bitten regime is doing all it can to avoid being twice shy, it is the people who will ultimately become the victims of their own silence. As Martin Luther King Jr. observed: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”