Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in his celebrated novel ‘One Hundred
Years of Solitude’ describes the signing of an agreement between two warring
parties, the liberals and conservatives.
Colonel Aureliano Buendia, rebel leader, is surrounded by his
lawyers. The draft document is not a
give-and-take agreement, but an absolute surrender. The fact is pointed out to
him: ‘But Colonel, if we agree to all this, it means that all these years we
have been fighting against the general sentiments of the people!’
The Colonel’s response is a classic that holds for all
politics, everywhere and across history.
‘No, what it means is that from now on we will be fighting for
power’.
This is the truth.
Politics is about power. Rhetoric is frill. Objection on grounds of morality,
unconstitutionality, illegality etc., with chest-beating words such as good
governance, democracy, accountability and transparency, amounts to ‘necessary
drivel’. Typically and for
understandable reasons the shrill voices are to be found in opposition
ranks. Given a constitution that was
deliberately and heavily skewed in favor of the party in power (a document
authored by persons who never thought the UNP would be defeated), which
provides ample space for power-abuse and which has a scripted and debilitating
effect on the opposition, that’s where dismay tends to take up residence.
Looking back at the history of party politics, it’s a well
known truism that the opposition whines about systems and system-abuse but if
and when tables are turned revel in the very same anomalies they once objected
to. This, however, does not
automatically disqualify critique. Even
if it is about power, the opposition has the burden of articulating
objections. That alone will not win
elections given the very system-anomalies that constitute a massive handicap,
but it is something that has to be done.
To go with the Buendia quote, what happened was an acknowledgment of
reality. The ‘liberals’ didn’t tell
their followers, ‘drop illusions, this is about power and nothing else.’
But if you want power this side of a revolution even in the
context of a draconian constitution where democracy is the larger frame then
those words are important. Sure, one can
win elections without mentioning once terms such as accountability and
transparency or terms such as rule of law and good governance; ‘we won the war
for you’ after all was a slogan that worked simply because it articulated an
acknowledged fact and played on a population ready to reward. However, when fighting a track record which
is at worst a mix of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ there are no ready taglines that can
swing an electorate, even if ‘bad’ is generally seen as tending towards
‘worse’. You can and must point out
the transgressions one by one but in doing so you will be promising
better. That’s where believability can
end and worse sink the opposition.
It is naturally for those in power to manufacture divisions
where there are none and exaggerate enmities that do exist. The problem for the UNP right now is that no
one has to manufacture such divisions for they are out in the public. The pettiness, more than anything else, gives
the proverbial ‘known devil’ a massive edge in elections. But let’s assume that this is not the case. Let’s assume that what actually exists in the
UNP is ideological disagreement or contention about strategy. Let’s assume that the likes of Sajith
Premadasa and Ravi Karunanayake are not looking for personal gain.
Even if all this is assumed there is a massive believability
deficit on account of several realities. First, there is the UNP constitution,
which makes the ‘draconian’ JRJ constitution the entire country is saddled with
look quite democratic. Then there is the
issue of transparency. Today we have a
member of the UNP’s ‘Leadership Council’, Tissa Attanayake, powwowing with
Sajith Premadasa to negotiate the latter’s re-entry into the higher echelons of
power within the party. Premadasa wants
the No 2 slot. Premadasa also wants the
Leadership Council abolished.
Now Attanayake is essentially negotiating away the very
Council he is a member of without any by-your-leave and this with a man who did
everything possible to prevent the party from establishing this very
council. That’s reneging of the worst
kind. And it’s all hush-hush. One can concede that certain moves have to be
low-key affairs for practical reasons, but this is the party’s General
Secretary we are talking about. Where is
the answerability here? Where is the notion of collective responsibility? What of solidarity? What worth should one attach in these
circumstances to the rhetoric of accountability and transparency? How can the UNP fault the Government for its
many ‘lacks’ in this regard if within its limited scope of operation the party
doesn’t appear to take such notions seriously?
Ideally, what one wants to implement for the larger polity
one must establish in one’s own party.
Democracy is as much about rehearsing the ideal as about correct flaws
and establishing the building blocks. We
don’t see that in the UNP right now. It
all adds to the handicap.
We could negate all that in terms of the Buendia Principle,
if one may call it that. What is damning
though is the fact that it is this very flippancy that is working against the
UNP in all efforts to develop a common front.
First, it stands to reason, one must have party unity. A united UNP can make a better pitch for a
common opposition front. The preference
for cloak-dagger politicking within the party is therefore a distraction the
UNP can ill afford.
For practical reasons, it is too much to expect the UNP’s
leader and/or the party rank and file to move and move quickly to democratize
the organization starting with a revamping of the constitution. Obtaining transparency and accountability in
a limited manner, however, is not asking for the moon. It is asking for the
little something that party loyalists can chew on and would-be voters can cling
to when it comes to the moment of picking lesser-evil. Right now, the UNP is not giving itself a
ghost of a chance and it is futile in blaming the Government for this state of
affairs.
It is better, all things considered, to just say ‘we are in
this for power,’ with a prayer to Garcia Marquez.
0 comments:
Post a Comment