Has this “democratic moment” for Sri Lanka passed?

Has the democratic moment passed? Yes, the recent one? Has the train left the station, with a swirl of candy wrappers, cigarette butts and empty drink cartons, and pieces of newsprint? And are we left with a fading wail of a once loud train horn notifying its journey to those in the distance?

Were some citizens expecting that we had reached the top of a mountain and that we were on high plateau? Or was it a peak that we reached and had to get back from it to the place we started from or to another side and another place? Was the peak the obstacle that we thought that we had overcome? Did we climb it because it was there? Are we backing down as we went, happy that we reached the summit, were there for our moment and planted flags took pictures and have to retreat and retreating now we are? So those who went to the top are back down and they have been dutifully cheered for their effort, now we go on.

What about the big social movement, the international community, the power struggles of the mighty, and what they wished for and didn’t quite get? This is the thirst for compassionate government and good governance? Maybe it was slaked for the time being. The constitutional amendments, the change in executive powers, the diminution of the powers of the once mighty, they will all come about in their own time and with effort of the willing.  It will be good for all that these changes occur. And not only the defeat of an incumbent president who with his government saw to bend rules and did. The Big Picture people and the small pixel types, (the pixies?) all are working in close harmony, what? An eternal, infernal symphony of mixed intentions, tunes and purposes meeting in unison for one tune and then going into their own cacophony?   Everything ends and the start must be with this clearly understood, every journey, every task every undertaking, it ends. The end! Then something else starts.

“Revolutions are made by amateurs” said a commentator and “coup-d’état by professionals”. What are we making? Everyone who wished to do so worked on this program of evicting the despots, removing the dynastic bumpkins, ushering in good governance. All necessary and all in good time. But first, water will flow along what is ordained by the forces of nature, unless we impound it and use energy to force it to go where we will it to go. We obtain electric power that way. Good governance is a little more complicated as we are finding out, and as if we did not know. By its fruit will we know the tree and all trees don’t bear fruit that can be eaten let alone bear fruit. So now we know.

So the children will go to school, the workers to work, mothers to their mothering and fathers to their tasks, the old will look on, some chewing their gums in wonderment. What did you think you were getting? What did you want? What did the young want with the newness and excitement of change? For the young everything is new in their experience.

The revolutionaries and commentators of revolutions that had been and are yet to come are worried. The realpolitik of the situation is emerging from under the euphoria and excitement and the expectation of public floggings, shaming and gathered heaps of real-loot. The latter events will occur after their fashion, they are necessary especially since we don’t have Lions to make a circus.

If the moment has passed what has it wrought? Well, we will find out in due course, in the “fullness of time”, not before.

What did you expect? Good governance! Nothing else! What were you willing to pay for it? I thought it was for free, free elections and all? And a free lunch at the end of it? That too? Guess what? What? Nothing for nothing!    But we paid! Well, it is not enough, there are other payments to consider! Whosoever pays more will get what they need first. Some are paying up!  Well it was always so, revolutions or not.

Amateurs!

Some professionals are engaged in this venture?  Then it is the C word??