Tomorrow’s critical decision in Parliament

Tomorrow, the country is going to see a new President. Parliament is scheduled to accept nominations today from the members of it for the Parliamentary election for the Presidency that has fallen vacant following the resignation of former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on July 14. The election for the Presidency is to be held tomorrow.
The new President, who is going to be elected tomorrow, first of all, should not forget the circumstances that catapulted him to the highest position in the country. It, in a practical sense, was a situation that saw an executive President being overthrown by hundreds of thousands of people who continually agitated for months for his ouster, after having suffered immensely due to his flawed policies and actions.  

Therefore the person who is going to be elected to the post of President must be a person who can mobilize the government to manage the current economic crisis. It has to be done in a manner that would address firstly the immediate shortage of fuel, cooking gas, medicine and other essential food items within a short period of time, while laying the foundation for a stable and sound long-term economic development that could withstand local and international economic storms in the future. 

The leader who is going to be elected tomorrow should not be misled by the relative tranquility at the Galle Face Green or in various other parts of the country where people agitated for the past several months and consider that the sufferings and the resultant fury among the people are over.  If he believes that masses would not come to the streets again in thousands demanding solutions for their immediate problems and a “system change” in the long run, or that he can suppress such agitations using the armed forces and the police, he is miserably wrong. 
People’s rage for the past several months was not a manifestation of a personal animosity against a particular person, but the fury against what befell them. The country is, therefore, sits still on top of a volcano. The current tranquility is only a temporary letup created by the confusion that has engulfed the people by the dramatic turn of events during and following the ouster of the former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.   

Addressing the economic issues from a practical point of view would not be a simple task, as the country has lost almost every avenue of recovery, owing to massive corruption and the short-sighted political and economic policies of the past governments, especially the Gotabaya Presidency. Addressing these issues involves local and international political realities apart from the local economic policies that have the potential to foresee the needs of the people and the future trends in global economy. 

Besides, corruption has become a cancer that eats into every cell of the body politic, including the country’s economy as well as every layer of the government machinery from the Presidential Secretariat to the Grama Niladhari’s office. The tendency among the masses to justify even the mass scale corrupt activities of politicians and the high profile officialdom on the basis of political affiliations, despite those activities immeasurably affecting their lives, has also been an immense impediment to eradicate corruption in the country. Hence the country needs a leader who is morally strong and courageous enough to hold the bull by the horns. 

However, it is unfortunate that one cannot confidently name any of the 225 members of the Parliament as being unblemished, except for one or two. On other hand, Constitution provides for the selection of a President only through the Parliament in case of the Presidency falling vacant in the middle of its term. Also, any attempt to bypass the Constitution would be dangerous at the moment which would set a disastrous precedent for the future as well.  

Members of Parliament, even amidst an unprecedented economic and political crisis that has almost ruined the lives and the future of the people, seem to deem tomorrow’s Presidential election in Parliament as another round of fighting for power. 

Against this backdrop, there is a possibility of the people’s uprising going down the drain or stability of the country which is most essential at this juncture worsening. It is high time for the Members of Parliament to minimize the harm by way of putting their heads together and exchanging views with the prominent groups of the uprising or the Aragalaya, as it is called. It would be a decision that would help find a way out of the current mess or show the path to further disaster.