Tragedy and farce of 20A

It was a patriotic show of civic duty by seven Muslim parliamentarians and the main opposition, Samagi Jana Balawegaya’s national list pole-vaulter Diana Gamage that saved Sri Lanka last week. 

They rose with an undying devotion to the motherland, broke ranks with their peers, gave the middle finger to their voters who sent them to Parliament, and voted with the government to pass the 20th Amendment so that the President gets untrammelled powers and Sri Lanka becomes great again. 

Thus they broke the last vestige of chains that held this country back- and was the root cause of all the evil; the war, southern insurgencies, corruption, nepotism, and last but not least, the bungle of Covid-19.

The 156 parliamentarians who voted for the last week’s bill grasped something, that their critics, who might call them sell-outs or mindless drones of the Rajapaksas, have failed to comprehend: The President, especially when he is a Rajapaksa, knows what is best not just for the country and its citizens or subjects whatever the fitting description, but also their children and children’s children. 

So, why do we need those so-called independent commissions and separation of power? If anything, they had tied the hand of the President. With his stellar reputation among the freedom-loving nations in the world -- and not –so freedom-loving ones that the Rajapaksa senior used to hobnob - Sri Lanka does not need any such pretence of the integrity of its state institutions. Now that the President could do as he wishes, we are about to enter an era of hitherto unseen greatness; the vistas of prosperity as it would be called in the generations to come.  

One last thing though needs to be done before it becomes a reality. A presidential pardon to Duminda Silva, a former MP and a brother of a media mogul, who has been languishing in jail since he was sentenced to death for the killing of fellow parliamentarian Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra. 

With a well-publicized anti-narcotic drive currently underway, which has seized tons of heroin and other dangerous drugs, and arrested top-notched underworld figures, Duminda Silva can play a role there, or somewhere else. 
Moves are already underway, the government MPs in their group meeting last week were also instructed to sign a letter urging the President to grant pardon to Duminda, who was one time coordinating MP for the Ministry of defence when Gotabaya Rajapaksa was the Defence Secretary. 

We are living in interesting times,  probably the best of the times. 

My foot!

Let’s be real. The passing of the 20A last week was a grotesque display of personal aggrandizement. It is a tragedy not just because it delivered a death blow to constitutional democracy and empowered an imperial President at the expense of the legislature and judiciary.  It is a tragedy because while the government was pre-occupied with the 20A, a real tragedy had been building up and then unfolding. The country is sinking in a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike a long list of goblins that the government has brought to life, this one is real, and it is out of control.  Let’s have a look at some statistics published by the ministry of health itself. From October 1 to October 25, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country more than doubled from 3381 to 7869, and active cases rocketed from 135 on October 1 - when the first patient of the Minuwangoda cluster was identified - to 4050 by October 25. 

Numbers keep rising. 351 new COVID-19 patients were discovered over the 24 hours ending 6.00 am yesterday (Monday), according to the National Operations Centre for the Prevention of COVID-19 (NOCPOC).

As the government was debating the 20A on Thursday, pockets of Colombo, the whole of Gampaha District and villages scattered across the island were under lockdown. 

A second and equally expansive cluster was identified from Peliyagoda fish market and direct infections and secondary infections have since spread across the country. 609 confirmed cases were identified on Friday and another more than 800 new infections the following day. 

Fishery harbours and some markets have been closed as fresh infections were found in  Galle and Beruwala.
Much of Colombo, including its financial centres, is now under quarantine curfew. Patients have been found in 5 Star Hotels leading to the suspension of their services. Night trains have been cancelled, postal services in the Western province, Galle,Batticaloa and Kuliyapitiya. Country’s chief epidemiologist Dr. Sudath Samaraweera reckons that the virus could have spread to 13 districts including Colombo.

Even Veddas, the indigenous people have stopped entertaining domestic tourists.

For the government, the looming pandemic did not appear as an emergency as the imperative of the 20A. The mismanagement of COVID-19 response may be primarily due to structural flaws of the way the response is handled – it seems to be run primarily by the military and not by the medical professionals. Yet the government’s obsession with the 20A resulted in downplaying the gravity of the looming emergency. Nor did premature and politicized jubilation help in a coherent and consistent form of action.  Irrespective of the definition, Sri Lanka is at the verge of (if not already there) of community transmission. 

Remember how the Indians banged pots and pans on the insistence of Hindu nationalists to celebrate the government’s COVID-19 success before the country ran out of hospital beds and space in mortuaries. 
The 20A would be remembered as one of the callous bunglings of state priorities. One would hope and pray that much can still be salvaged, only if the government acts with consistency, guided by the expert opinion. Still, as of now, a tragedy of unknown proportionality is in the making. 

The 20A is also a farce. Scores of  MPs who voted for it have also cast their vote for the 17th Amendment which introduced the independent commissions, the 18th Amendment that negated much of the 17th Amendment, the 19th Amendment that reinstated some of those checks and balances and now the 20th Amendment, who removed those checks again. Such perfidy of the lawmaker is the stuff of one of its kind.

That also exposes the essential weakness of the third world democracies and people who inhabit the system. 
It was a bunch of Muslim MPs, regularly demonized by the government’s nationalist allies, that finally helped the 20A gets the required 2/3rd majority in the House. A leading monk Ven. Muruththettuwe Ananda Thera was on record as saying “it was the power of 500 million (rupees) that proved to be more powerful than our two-third majority”. In most countries, allegations of vote-buying should lead to investigations (in Brazil, a Workers’ Party Government collapsed due to car wash investigations into vote-buying in the legislature). Here, it is touted as gamesmanship. 

The government’s nationalist Members who had been blowing hot air over a non-issue of dual citizenship eligibility (when the real damage of the 20A is on the institutional independence of the state) also stared in a sub-plot that was fawningly ludicrous. They changed their mind, after meeting the President and listening to his heart-wrenching personal plea. Mr. Rajapaksa wanted to include the dual citizenship eligibility, because he felt it was aimed at the Rajapaksa family . He opened his heart, confiding to the MPs the travails he had been through due to the clause that restricted the dual citizens contesting for the elected post. Hence his yearning to remove the restriction and bring his brother Basil Rajapaksa to Parliament. His MPs, overcome with heartfelt emotions voted without a whimper.

The 20th Amendment was a tragedy. It was a farce. And the joke is on the people!

Follow @Ranga Jayasuriya on Twitter