The VIP in this election is you

This almost unbearable journalistic cliche to refer to various political developments as the ‘most important in post independence history etc., But, this election on the 26th of January is the most crucial in Sri Lanka’s ‘post-war’ history and that does not sound much like cliche, because it’s the indubitable truth.
It would determine the essential direction that the country would take after 30 and more years of a gruelling, debilitating morale-sapping ethnic conflagration.
Those who are for the opposition combine and their virtually born again candidate (pun-intended) say that the nation has to come back and reclaim its minorities after this war, and arrest the malignant tendencies the conflict has spawned in a war-wracked society. Essentially what they say is that society is in need of a catharsis after the pressure of war had buckled all its controlling bulwarks and safeguards.
But those who back the incumbent president say that this catharsis is an illusion, and that there is no need for it when the president has set right the ship of state that was capsizing when he took office. All he needs to do now, they say, is to clean up the decks, and the ship will be the envy of all who behold it.
Between these two versions, the truth is that there are other inconvenient details that perhaps override a binary calculation of whether it’s him or his challenger.
People would have to make a risk-assessment. Which is riskier, a new combine led by a non-politician military man or a regime led by a president who has shown some dynastic if not despotic tendencies himself?
But, essentially, also, people would consider before they vote, that for long, under whichever government that was in power, be it a UNP government, or a SLFP-led government, there has been, over the last thirty years and more, a steady deterioration of many aspects of public administration and civic good governance.
Such labels are irritating, almost clumsily cliches, but the truth is that these labels for want of better words, describe a rot that is unbearably putrid. Among the most nauseating aspects of this deteriorating picture are the lack of accountability of politicians and the sickening politicisation of the police, the judiciary, and other public institutions.
There is one school of thought that the executive presidency is at the root of all of these evils and that getting rid of that canker in our system would be a panacea for all that ails.
There can be no instant answer on any of that, but what can be said is that your individual vote, therefore, is of crucial import. The people’s vote in an atmosphere in which there is no war should be directed at doing all that is possible and necessary to restore confidence in the system and in their institutions, which they have lost over time.
The above sentiments are words, but these observations can be fleshed out by reference to the way in which this election was conducted — the way in which state media was abused, the elections commissioner was ignored, state property was misused, and election laws were cynically violated.
The government undoubtedly has to bear responsibility for a great deal of these abuses, but it is not to seek to exonerate the government to say that all regimes including former UNP governments were guilty of such abuse, to varying degrees.
Some say the abuses reached a new apogee at these particular elections but that is a matter for people to judge, whereas what can be categorically said is that people yearn for a system that cannot be abused, because they are only too well accustomed to their right of franchise being made a mockery of by successive governments belonging to all parties. The Chandrika SLFP had its Wayamba and the JR Jayewardene and Premadasa UNP were past masters in the art of rigging and intimidation, as Nanda Ellawala for example may be able to tell any reader, had he been alive today.
But this is a post war dawn in which people are more sensitive to their rights for the simple reason that they withstood years of such serial suspension of their rights and privileges, because they were told that there were other important and intervening issues such as the war, which necessarily begged for tolerance of a creaking system.
Well, now the war is over, and the creaking system is more jarring to people’s ears than ever. The majority of people we are sure, are sick and tired of politics as usual be it from one side or the other, whereas political catchers henchman and hangers-on, and those with delusions about being persecuted or invaded by aliens or foreigners may have other things on their minds.
But there is one thing more that merits mention in this pre election assessment of a crucial landmark pivotal poll that the people are bound to remember for another hundred years. That is whether our different peoples — of Tamil and Sinhala ethnicities primarily, though not forgetting the Muslims etc., — can co-exist and resolve their differences in this post war epoch.
It is true that not much has been said by the main candidates on how to approach this issue, but though they are not beyond reproach on that count, perhaps it is fitting that a clean slate be kept for whoever that wins this election, to evolve an entirely fresh discourse on this aspect, devoid of decades of baggage that resulted from a vexed conflict.
Whoever wins this election should be the man trusted not only to bring back the kind of clean governance and accountability in institutions that would restore collective confidence in the system, but should also be the person best suited to forge the grand vision that enables the Tamils and Sinhalese to live together in this land in peace.