Stealthy authoritarianism and lofty promises

"The truth of course, was that the working of the 17th Amendment depended more on the democratic spirit and the public demand for better governance, all of which now we know to be illusions."

by Kishali Pinto Jayawardene

(September 26, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Loudly (if somewhat unbecomingly) praised by some editorialists and cautiously commended by others in Sri Lanka’s private media, President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s address to the United Nations General Assembly a few days back had all the hallmarks of the definitively Janus-faced policy that characterizes this administration.

The substance as against the reality

This prefacing observation need not necessarily be regarded in a purely pejorative manner. Janus, if one recalls, was the Roman god of gates and doors and possessed a double-faced head, each head facing opposite directions. Through colloquial use coming down the decades, this term has come to mean hypocrisy, deceptiveness and of saying something and actually doing another. Yet, the original notion of Janus merely meant a study in contrasts, beginnings versus endings, primitive life versus civilization, countryside versus the city and peace versus war.

"Many were blasé if not openly cynical about what the now largely defunct 17th Amendment to the Constitution intended to achieve in terms of depoliticizing the governance process. The thrust of the propaganda war that preceded the passing of the 18th Amendment was that the country’s institutions had survived despite a crippling conflict even before the 17th Amendment and the creation of a Constitutional Council with nominees of political parties and politicians was not the best way to remedy existing deficiencies."

So when the Presidential UN address is said to be Janus-faced, enthusiastic cheerleaders on his behalf should not gasp in indignation at the very outset. The key question is whether what was substantively said remained true as against the reality. Thursday’s address was indeed studded with eloquent promises to safeguard all citizens of this country, including the classic remonstration (inserted by an imaginative speech writer in all probability while chortling to himself/herself) that ‘’Let me be clear, no nation on earth can wish Sri Lanka’s Tamil community more good fortune than Sri Lanka itself”.

Where is the full participation of all in constitutional changes?

Yet, if one gets down to the real core of the issue, the one phrase most singularly missing from this entire address was any commitment to restore the Rule of Law in Sri Lanka in post war times and (as is commonly said on the floor of Parliament during question time), if not, why not?

Surely, a passing reference to the fact that ‘’constitutional changes which appropriately reflect the aspirations of our people will be evolved with the full participation of all stakeholders’’ is to be a little bit too cavalier? And even if we are to take this statement at face value, are we then supposed to believe that the abolition of the two-term limit on a sitting President’s ability to contest the Presidential election was done with the ‘full participation of all stakeholders in this country?

If that were truly the case, then this question should have been referred to a referendum by the President himself as exemplifying his bona fides rather than passing the burden onto the Supreme Court to neatly give him the benefit of the legal doubt. Of course, the holding of a referendum would have contested the integrity of the process, though we would have been spared the unsightly spectacle of a weeping Dayananda Dissanayake the second time around as apparently he has already stepped down or, in any event, is about to. But at least, referring the question to a referendum would have given the public the chance to exercise whatever democratic freedoms that we have left on the issue both of the time limits as well as what manner of governance we choose to have. And even if one were not to go to that extent on the high road, does referral of the issue as an urgent bill to the Supreme Court with even its final draft not being made public, constitute the sum total of this lofty Presidential promise?

Or, are we to believe that the phrase ‘full participation of all stakeholders’ mean only the motley crowd of parliamentarians whom the Rajapaksa administration now has firmly under its thumb except for a very few dissenting voices? This is indeed a miserable picture to contemplate.

The appalling reality of the constitutional status quo

Many were blasé if not openly cynical about what the now largely defunct 17th Amendment to the Constitution intended to achieve in terms of depoliticizing the governance process. The thrust of the propaganda war that preceded the passing of the 18th Amendment was that the country’s institutions had survived despite a crippling conflict even before the 17th Amendment and the creation of a Constitutional Council with nominees of political parties and politicians was not the best way to remedy existing deficiencies.

The truth of course, was that the working of the 17th Amendment depended more on the democratic spirit and the public demand for better governance, all of which now we know to be illusions.
That said, even those who tended to dismiss the 17th Amendment react very differently regarding the abolition of the Presidential term limits. Regardless of such wide ranging opinions of dissent however, the 18th Amendment is now a fait accompli and coupled with the constitutional protection of immunity, we can now rudely thumb our noses at Nepal which ditched the monarchy for a democratic process not so many years back, to the applause of the world.

The accountability of the State as a priority

To those who may point to the fact that the President also spoke of reconciliation apropos the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission and the rolling back of emergency law, it may be retorted that these are but miserly sops thrown to the beggarly. As observers of the government propaganda blitz would assess, the accountability of the State is now being replaced by the accountability of non-state actors.

Hence President Rajapaksa’s call for the laws of war to be reformed in order to meet the challenges of internal conflicts comes as little surprise.

Yet it is the President as Head of State who should both emphasize and ensure the accountability of the State before we come to non-state actors.

This cannot merely consist of relaxing some aspects of emergency law or allowing another fruitless commission exercise while gradually and stealthily taking away even the remaining constitutional safeguards that we have against authoritarianism. On the contrary, it should be by replacing repression by democracy and by reinforcing the Rule of Law in all its liberating freedoms. It is then and only then can we have the luxury of talking of accountability in respect of non state actors

Unfortunately, the absence thereof is what is Janus-faced (in the full blown pejorative sense of the term) when contrasted with the appealing geniality with which promises of good stewardship are made by Sri Lanka’s President at the United Nations and elsewhere.