Three urgent interventions in favor of democracy. By T. Aruna in www.groundviews.org (Engl.)

Das 18. Amendment wurde gleichsam im Handstreich verabschiedet – eine gesellschaftliche Debatte fand nicht statt und sollte auch nicht stattfinden. Als Beispiel für einen Versuch, mit den Ereignissen immerhin Schritt zu halten, dokumentieren wir hier drei mit dem Namen T. Aruna gezeichnete Beiträge, die am 6., 9. und 10. September im Internetmagazin groundviews veröffentlicht wurden. Die “Debatte” des Parlaments fand am 8. September statt.

Sept. 6^th.

The 18th Amendment: Resisting the Loss of Citizenship in Sri Lanka.

I don’t know whether I’m more angry or sad at the way in which patently undemocratic constitutional amendments are being rushed into law. I feel as if I’m watching my country being strangled, slowly, in the grip of self-serving and short-sighted men who have little love for Sri Lanka or its people. I don’t believe that the changes to the constitution will immediately make themselves felt in our daily lives. In some ways, the will simply legalize many unconstitutional practices that are currently in place. However, the changes in law will solidify these and establish new, even lower norms for the way Sri Lanka is governed. My fear is that by the time the implications of the proposed 18th Amendment will become fully apparent, it is likely that many of our fellow-citizens, our friends, co-workers, relative and frighteningly perhaps our children may have come to have such low expectations of their rights as citizens that they can’t see what’s wrong with an executive with unfettered powers. Some would argue that this has already happened. The erosion of the sovereignty of citizens of Sri Lanka has been going on for decades, and my worry is that even a referendum on the proposed 18th Amendment (rather than the illegitimate ‘urgent’ bypass operation being attempted’ would confirm that too many Sri Lankans believe in authority more than themselves.

The tragedy of the architects of the proposed 18th Amendment is that they will not enjoy its benefits for long. I doubt that Junius Richard Jayawardene anticipated the powers of the Executive Presidency being used to lock his party and his anointed nephew out of power for decades. Similarly, it is likely that when Mahendra Percy Rajapakse is long gone, his chosen son might find himself in the Sri Lankan political equivalent of Siberia – courtesy of constitutional wheels put in motion now.

 Who is to blame?

But, of course, in the flurry of headlines it’s easy to forget this is not about political dynasties or the failure of the opposition or the opportunism of the political classes or even the integrity of the Supreme Court judges. These are really symptoms as much as they are causes of our current predicament. Responsibility for the loss of the sovereignty of the people of Sri Lanka actually lies at our own door, the result of our abdication from our roles as citizens. We gave up our duties to hold our elected representatives accountable for their actions in order to vote for party over conscience, for caste over policies, for a bottle over integrity, for a powerful fixer over a not-yet-corrupted independent, or for alleged murderers or rapists over solid citizens. Too many of us backed the prosecution of a war at any cost, not realizing that it was also being used to cut away the ground from beneath our own feet. Too many of us stayed away from polls thinking our votes donít really count, when they could have. As the horse-trading in Parliament reaches a fever pitch, our awakening to the enormity of what we’ve done feels like too little, too late. And it probably is, as far as the 18th Amendment goes.

 What can we do?

So what do we do to resist the further slide downwards? To reclaim our citizenship, it seems to me that a first step would be to publicly and personally refuse the legitimacy of the proposed 18th Amendment if it is not put to a free and fair referendum. A second would be to start on a process of detoxification of ourselves from complicity in the noxious politics that has characterized Sri Lanka for too long. Decades of tolerating corrupt politics and enduring autocratic rulers has compromised our own values and conduct. Tacitly we legitimize political criminals and thugs when we do business with them, ask them for jobs or favours, watch television shows on which they feature, refer to them by familiar nicknames or show them respect in any way. Authoritarian and undemocratic regimes, just as any other, function on the basis of the consent and cooperation of the population they rule over. Even if we do not yet have the means of standing against them, let us at least withdraw our cooperation in our subjugation. A ruler, however powerful they seem, depends entirely on the smooth functioning of layers and layers of state machinery all the way down to the ground. As much as we sometimes need this machinery to get things done, it also needs us in order to function. Turn in your registration forms late. Ask at checkpoints if they are really still necessary. Argue with government officials and refuse to bribe them. Encourage officials who seem sympathetic to air their grievances. Honk whenever a VIP convoy sweeps you off the road. Question the expenditures of public money on MPís cars or on government vanity projects. Explain to your children (or other peopleís) what abuse of power is. Use every vote you have on a candidate of principle not power. Share your views with other people, and build their confidence to dissent. Talk about how things should be, not just what’s wrong with the way they are now.

I know it doesn’t seem like much, but I’ve started to feel a bit better since I started my personal campaign to restore myself as a properly functioning Sri Lankan citizen. It’s about the only thing I can do, so I’m trying it.

I can only recommend that you try it too.

 Sept. 9th

Finding a Moral Compass: Citizenship After the 18^th. Amendment.

It’s often seems hard to find a reasonable discussion in Sri Lanka about right and wrong, especially when it comes to questions of how our society is governed.  I wonder if part of the reason is that too many of our social institutions and frameworks that shape how we draw our ethical judgments have been compromised for decades.  Our religious institutions have been debased by hateful politics of various forms, offering interpretations that often run counter to core doctrinal values.  A cowed and complicit media distorts more than it reflects realities of Sri Lankan life and its polity.  Educational institutions peddle dogma rather than foster the capacity for even-handed critical thinking.  Law enforcement often itself operates outside the law, and there is little confidence that legal judgements are independent of political influence.  Communities and workplaces are rife with mistrust and animosity that makes it hard to believe that others say what they mean.  In the absence of moral certainties, some seem to choose simply to endorse what is personally expedient, whilst others hitch their judgments to the views of personal or public authority figures.  Still others cling more tightly than ever to religious dogma, the authorized news, taught ideology and the law of the land.  It seems to me, however, that if the passage of the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution on 8th September 2010 can teach us anything, it is that citizens can no longer look to Sri Lankan law for guidance on ethics. What the highly secretive and rushed amendments to Sri Lanka’s constitution underlines is that the problems with the law are not just in its implementation, but sometimes with its very substance.

 Faith in the Law
Aside from staunch partisan support, belief in the authority of the President, ignorance about the substance of the amendments, inability to understand their implications and some frankly baffling reasoning, one of the main sources of acceptance of the 18th Amendment amongst Sri Lanka’s citizens seems to be their view that its introduction was lawful.  For many people in Sri Lanka, the fact that the process of ‘urgent’ Parliamentary debate appears to have narrowly followed the letter of the law and was endorsed by the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka means that the events that took place on the 8th of the September are legitimate.  This view pays attention only to a specific sequence of events over a period of the past few days, and misses out a broader context of systematic suspension, bypassing and erosion of procedural  and institutional safeguards that could have halted or altered the recent amendment process.  It also fails to realize that our existing constitution (like many of our other laws) was already deeply flawed and that following its rules would not guarantee protection of the sovereign rights of Sri Lanka’s citizens.  At another time, we might discuss what a constitution for (and hopefully of and by) the people would look like, but for now we must consider how we should live under a regime of governance that is formally legal but is actually an ethical crime-in-progress against this country’s citizens.  It is particularly urgent that we do so, given that the 18th Amendment will likely bring in its wake a host of new changes and applications of Sri Lanka’s laws that will further distinguish what is legal from what is moral or good. Simply being law-abiding citizens will hardly guarantee our moral integrity in the months and years to come; in some instances it will have an entirely opposite effect.

 Citizenship Beyond the Law

The question of how to live under fascist or totalitarian regimes has of course arisen many times before in history, indeed also in parts of Sri Lanka.  The unprecedented nature of the 18th Amendment notwithstanding, the truth is that Sri Lanka has experienced its share of repressive governance over the past four decades at the hands of armed movements as well as national governments.  In villages and towns across Sri Lanka, from East to West, from North to South, there are people who have survived these reigns of terror (often sanctioned by legal or quasi-legal frameworks) and even resisted them in important ways, emerging morally intact and sometime ennobled as human beings. From Sri Lanka and elsewhere, the most compelling accounts of how to retain moral integrity have always located the answer to this difficult task in the hands, hearts and minds of the individual human being.

Reserving space in your mind for critical thought, preserving the yearning for freedom and capacity for compassion for others, and retaining the ability to carry out for small acts of solidarity, subversion and defiance are all a part of this.  This is the work of everyday men, women and children, not of special leaders.  It is based on the actions of individuals, but is fundamentally socially oriented. In fact, it might be described as a form of advanced citizenship, where in the face of violations of the social contract by those who govern, private individuals or groups step in to address these gaps where they can.

The point, I suppose, is that laws are only as moral or ethical as those who draw them up – and where lawmakers fail us as citizens, we are obliged to question, resist or even act in spite of the law in order to be moral persons.  This break with the law must not be taken lightly, but rather with great thoughtfulness and care, if we are to avoid shallow lawlessness.  Whilst each citizen must determine their own actions, it will be necessary to build small and then larger moral communities.  This process will require work by each of us, personally.  The first bit of hard labour will be that of mapping out the fundamentals of what we consider to be just and fair – for ourselves and for our fellow citizens.

This will require us to question our taken-for-granted assumptions about how we think about these issues, and to invite others to join us.  This will have to be done with spouses, children, colleagues, friends and relations.  We will have to reach beyond our own experience – and must take time to read deeply, travel to unfamiliar places and really talk to other people.   Tasks we might usually leave to politicians or policy-makers will have to become our own to solve – in theory and in practice within our own communities.

 No Alternative

There is little hope of magically putting the genie back in the bottle; of easily reversing the decline of how this country is governed.  The truth is that there is no party political opposition that will come to the rescue. There will be no intervention from the international community (however you choose to define it).  There will be no people’s revolution.  For now, it seems we are truly on our own, stuck with a crooked regime that can now make its own rules.  It seems to me that the best that we can do is to stake a claim on our own lives and actions, and to slowly enlarge the space within which we can bring about some changes for good.

Sept. 10^th.

Sovereignity for Citizens: A Call to Restore the Republic!

Sri Lanka is a modern republic – which means that its system of government is based on the idea that the citizens of the country rule themselves through arrangements for the representation of their interests. Our constitution sets out these mechanisms, affirms fundamental rights of citizens and declares in its first chapter that, ëIn the Republic of Sri Lanka sovereignty is in the people and is inalienable. The practice of government in Sri Lanka has unfortunately not lived up to the promise of this statement. Even as our constitutional arrangements have fallen short in ensuring the realisation of the equal rights of all Sri Lanka’s citizens, those whom the mechanics of our representative system of government has empowered have often abused the responsibilities and privilege given to them. It seems at times like the republic is turned on its head. The citizen has to seek the favour of the political classes that represent them,rather than those who seek or hold office having to serve the citizen’s interests.

The state, which is supposed to represent the totality of the population who are its citizens, has been captured by certain citizens who are more equal than the others. From our independence onwards, we have seen an increasing dependence of the citizenry on the patronage of the political classes in more and more aspects of our civic life. Both little big men and bigger big men mediate our access to the state resources that are, in fact, held in trust for all citizens. The strong sense of entitlement with which we were born as citizens has been gradually eroded, to the point that most of us now bribe or prostrate ourselves to receive what is rightfully our due. The concept of citizenship has been hollowed out to the point where we only have the right to decide between a few bad options of who is to rule us. We are subjects with a nominal power to choose our lords. No longer are we truly citizens of a republic, except perhaps a bastard version that resembles more closely a colonial dominion, but with one tragic difference ñ our conquerors come from within our own ranks.

In our case, the inversion of the desired relationship between the republic and the citizen has been exacerbated by the state of emergency that we have lived under for decades. The threat to the nation’s sovereignty has been allowed to justify the rolling-back of many of the constitutional and institutional safe guards that protect citizens from those whom they have had to elect to high-office. In the contest of estate v. citizen, we have been told that it is no-contest at all. Our liberties and entitlements as people of this land may be suspended for the causes of liberation, war or development. The rule of just law is undermined by both criminal legislation and by pure violence. In the state of emergency, we are stripped bare of our civil and political rights. Of course, we have played our part in our own disenfranchisement, seduced by the myths of ethnic purity and national sovereignty propagated by Sri Lanka’s political classes and the revolutionaries who would replace them. They told us that our lives depended on the securing of a state, either extant or yet to be born, and too many believers gave their lives and took others lives for this purpose. Or stood by and witnessed great cruelty as if it were inevitable, or had nothing to do with us. Stripped of our full civic rights and responsibilities, we have not only been alienated from the state, but we have also become alienated from one another.

To reclaim our citizenship and restore the republic, we have to first recognize the state for what it is: a symbolic edifice and a set of mechanisms that are a means to an end, not the end in itself. The state is supposed to exist for us, not the other way around. The nation belongs to us, not we to the nation. When the state has become sovereign over the citizen, and has been captured by the interests of a few, it is necessary to re-design it altogether. Our current constitution must be re-written to guarantee that the citizens of this country are foremost and inalienably sovereign in this island. The spirit of a government of the people and for the people must be present in every clause and every amendment. And yet I do not trust those in the seats of power to return our rights to us willingly or easily. Just as I barely trust my fellow citizens to do so, so habituated we are to abide by authority and not by ourselves. But trust each other we must. And equally live up to the responsibility of our full citizenship in refusing to follow politics and government like the remote audience of a reality television contest, texting in our votes when we’re invited to. We must set the terms of our engagement with the state and with our fellow citizens. We must secure our own individual and collective entitlements. It is we who should write our own constitution, not our rulers.

 And we have every right.