Promise not what one cannot deliver

  • By  Dr. Shanthikumar Hettiarachchi
  • Sunday, 01 March 2015 00:00
Chief Minister Wigneswaran insisted that the word ‘genocide’ be dropped when the NPC passed a resolution calling for an international probe, observing that it had to be used with caution
Chief Minister Wigneswaran insisted that the word ‘genocide’ be dropped when the NPC passed a resolution calling for an international probe, observing that it had to be used with caution

 
The interim Budget by the interim finance minister to the interim Parliament with an interim prime minister and an interim Speaker was full of goodies as promised. Concessions for sure, but what about the elections coming up, whose party was being promoted, is something that the Opposition has already raised. What, in fact, stable right now is the executive presidency but only with the 1978 Constitution that is to be scrapped for all practical reasons.
 President Sirisena is the most mandated person because with him coming to power the rest has become perfectly un-mandatory in a different power game. If that is not the case, how was it possible that the former prime minister became null and void, how was it possible that the Chief Justice was made redundant just by way of a letter from the presidential office?
So the incumbent president has been already accused by many political commentators as acting exactly opposite way they proclaimed during the campaign. The incumbent president’s authority is displaced and hardly wonders who governs what, de facto who is mandated to be in authority and governing the country.
President was enabled by a clear mandate to do so by the people on January 8, even though the PM’s position is arguably un-mandated and so is the current cabinet. President Sirisena has so much to deliver because there are so much the coalition demands eventually, and this is what he will confront by the butt end days of his 100-day miracle project with nearly 50+ days ahead.
A real test of his partnership would emerge sooner or later. Would he lead SLFP with the ‘Nugegodawave’ last week, be absorbed by the UNP, be impeached or scapegoated by the current Parliament as a man who promised too much undeliverable. The very promises could be his downfall and the coalition could sacrifice him for the ‘parliamentary pound of flesh for seats’.
His humility that is being portrayed can be someone’s pride of power. Politics is not really an arena of Maithri/metta as a virtue because there are no permanent friends and foes in it. Yahapalanaya is a good slogan but should be redeemed from deals and promises.
Deals and promises
Politics without deals and promises cannot function in today’s world. CBK’s recent interview is full of deals and promises which she says she began about three years ago to topple the Rajapaksa government. The ugly phase of cross-overs that took place over the last few years indicate that Sri Lankan politics was interwoven with deals and promises to cross over, if not cash then with cabinet portfolios and other privileges to every jumper.
Classics are the ‘puritanical lily-like Senaviratne’ to ‘crestfallen Rambukwella’ to ‘limbo living Attanayaka’, ‘to national-upasaka like Gammanpila’, too many to name. This shameful culture of cross-overs, even though the incumbent president too indulged in the same, must be terminated by him if he wishes a new political culture of honesty and nobility of governance.
It is a fact that president Sirisena’s crossover to become the common candidate can only be justified if he is determine to deliver what he promised without deals and compromises.
Secondly, deals and promises must be carefully handled with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and Muslim parties as the people of this country are watching and waiting because they need to abide by the national concerns that paved the way for thirty year agony as part of a citizenry.
Most people are not concerned about a 100-day project as I noted in a previous discussion since they knew that it was undeliverable in any way. TNA and Muslim parties are certainly part of the plural democracy Sri Lanka inherits and that they must be taken on board in national politics just like the ‘rehabilitated’ Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) now in main stream politics.
Resolution Wiggie
The TNA and Muslim parties must now realize that ethnicized and territorially based politics will be rejected. The mandate given to president Sirisena is in way for TNA and Muslim parties to renounce if they harbor tendencies for ethnic politics. LTTE’s separatist agenda, was also about deals and promises for an illusory Eelam by an elusive terror outfit and the people were disillusioned by their modus operandi of terror and duress.
People and the coalition are assured that TNA has renounced the LTTE stand and willing to work with other national leaders of the coalition. In January 2014, when the NPC passed a resolution calling for an international probe into Sri Lanka’s rights record, it was the Chief Minister Wigneswaran who insisted that the word ‘genocide’ be dropped, observing it had a very specific meaning legally and hence had to be used with caution.
However, the confrontational nature of the resolution has willfully inserted the word ‘genocide’ which certainly would stir fresh waves of international relations on citizenry rights making reconciliation untenable and such to be tribal and ethnic once again. The Tamil parties must realize that sense of victimhood is an unhealthy political game that provides no reasonable approach to resolve issues.
They must engage with the new regime with new perspectives away from LTTE’s tribal-terror politics to national politics. TNA must know that people are fed up with political deals that they are not part of. Its simple logic how majority and minority function in any society, and the Northern chief minister is aware of this sociological factor. He must not mess with the hornet nest because Serbia was not consulted when Kosovo was made UN’s babe of the Balkans.
Peoples’ will is the deciding factor whatever the resolutions passed. They must remember that ‘Northern Province is Sri Lanka’ through and through and not a state. People would like to know whether there are deals and promises agreed on this matter.
Current regime reckons that best offer of reconciliation would be to make all parties feel and engage with national politics and abandon tribal politics. This applies to the majority parties wooing for Sinhala ethnic votes, and UNP and SLFP are both challenged to change their own deals and promises to its constituencies. Even Wiggie-Sambandan-Sumanthiran and the rest cannot promise what they cannot deliver without alienating the rights of all of a sovereign state, Sri Lanka.

– See more at: http://www.nation.lk/edition/lens/item/38686-promise-not-what-one-cannot-deliver.html#sthash.eHWQgZPQ.dpuf

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