Sanath Nishantha and the Cheapness of Politics in Our Times

State Minister Sanath Nishantha Perera, at his death, upsurged another bout of deep political polarization in the country - a trait he personified in his political life. Some quarters in social media celebrated his death. “What a great day to wake up to…” said one poster in the Sri Lankan X (formerly Twitter). Fake news and doctored imagery amplified that rancour: A photo widely shared on social media platforms was revealed as an old imagery of the public in Borella celebrating the resignation of Nishantha’s political patron, Mahinda Rajapaksa, in 2022.

Public anger at the system can obscure a bigger picture of an assortment of defects that led to the economic and political decay of the country. Subpar individuals in politics are only part of the problem; the bigger malady is the destructive economic and social policies their governments followed to keep their constituencies satiated for the time being. 

Mr Nishantha was a foot soldier of the Rajapaksa regime, and like most of his peers of the same ilk, he prided in their sycophantic loyalty to the Rajapaksas. He rose in politics at a time Sri Lanka underwent a period of extreme bastardization of its politics. Many Sri Lankans blame J.R. Jayawardene for setting off this degenerative process, which has, overtime, robbed the honour and public respect of the elected office. At the same time, politicians got rich in the system that placed little value on personal and professional integrity. This erosion of the quality of the political class probably happened before J.R.’s Presidency - when S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike opened floodgates, preferring to capitalize on the local intimacy of the candidates to any idea of intellectual or professional sophistication. Or it is an inevitable function of the electoral democracy. 

But of all the people, Mahinda Rajapaksa took it to the extreme end. He adopted a group of young MPs, including the refuse from other parties, such as Duminda Silva – who was sacked from the UNP after an alleged sexual assault on a woman – and promoted them purely on the ranking of their sycophantic loyalty to him and his family. While the young MPs were the court jesters and guard dogs of the Rajapaksa fiefdom, seniors like G.L. Peiris nannied the Rajapaksa scions to groom the dynasty’s next generation. 

All were the accessories of the dynastic enterprise, relishing whatever the breadcrumbs thrown on their way. Such a system blinded by an overbearing familial interest cannot last longer, and it crashed during an interim phase of the dynastic succession of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was sent as a seat warmer until Presidential scion Namal was ready. The Rajapaksas alone could not have unleashed the political and economic decay as acute as it had later proved to be, without the help of their sidekicks.

Many have internalized the same economic model that was the root cause of the economic collapse. And charlatans, who are no different from their opponents, are offering the sun and the moon without addressing the elephant in the room. 

Interestingly, though, some of the same young MPs – some of whom are Ministers in this government – have proved to be competent administrators of their portfolios (perhaps more accomplished than their seniors when they were given the freedom of action), “Liberty” was not available under the Rajapaksa regime, when the first family controlled the lion’s share of the government budget, and made all key decisions, guided by the simple and selfish calculations of perpetuating the familial hold on power. However, Nishantha held no such latent genius. A school leaver who joined politics soon after, he climbed the ranks purely by his sycophantic loyalty. So much so that he paid the overdue electricity bill of several millions of rupees of Namal Rajapaksa’s wedding. Such gestures could still be more transactional - a reciprocal act in a well-oiled patronage network that the Rajapksas managed through the state funds.

A Mirror Image of the Hated System

The public reaction to Nishantha’s death is not necessarily aimed at Nishantha himself. Rather, it is a public display of repulsion against the political system he was part of.
That political system promoted nincompoops, who brought in nothing in intellectual sophistication or personal integrity. It is now facing its worst-ever crisis of legitimacy.
The public considers Parliament a den of thieves and holds all 225 members accountable for the current plight of the country.

Much of the everyday resentment at the political system tends to find scapegoats everywhere but makes little mention of reforming the statist, captive economic model in the grip of the SOEs and local wheeler-dealers. Without dismantling the restrictive market barriers and liberalizing the economy, Sri Lankans would be trapped in a low growth underperforming economy that begets many other social woes, including corruption and nepotism.

However, public anger at the system can obscure a bigger picture of an assortment of defects that led to the economic and political decay of the country. Subpar individuals in politics are only part of the problem; the bigger malady is the destructive economic and social policies their governments followed to keep their constituencies satiated for the time being. It was the aggregate impact of the flawed economic policies that accelerated the economic collapse. However, much of the everyday resentment at the political system tends to find scapegoats everywhere but makes little mention of reforming the statist, captive economic model in the grip of the SOEs and local wheeler-dealers. Without dismantling the restrictive market barriers and liberalizing the economy, Sri Lankans would be trapped in a low growth underperforming economy that begets many other social woes, including corruption and nepotism. However, many who find fault with the government – which State Minister Nishantha was part of – for the economic misery, offer no realistic economic solutions to the country’s long persisting problems. Instead, many have internalized the same economic model that was the root cause of the economic collapse. And charlatans, who are no different from their opponents, are offering the sun and the moon without addressing the elephant in the room. Few have ever called out this duplicity. Probably, it is this intellectual poverty in our time that elects the likes of Sanath Nishantha to the political office. 

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