Voting with clear purpose | Daily News

Voting with clear purpose

With the eighth edition of the Presidential Election just days away, it is time to look beyond the election rhetoric and focus on the challenges that lie ahead. On November 16, Sri Lankans will elect a totally new face as the President, this being a rare instance when the incumbent President, Prime Minister or the Opposition Leader is not contesting. Thus we can assume that whoever comes to power, there will be a fresh perspective on governance and matters of critical importance.

Sri Lanka is still emerging from a lengthy era of ethnic pogroms that punctuated an equally long period of intensifying separatist insurgency that raged for decades. We were shockingly reminded of this type of violence by the more recent Easter Sunday tragedy. It would not be incorrect to say that the scars of all these traumas still remain, to varying degrees, in the hearts and minds of all Sri Lankans.

With such a historical experience, we, citizens of our beloved island republic, must now focus on stopping the forces of extremism regardless of the ideologies, communities and religions they claim to represent. Only ten years have passed by since the end of the internecine conflict and another ethno-religious conflagration is the last thing this country needs. Thus, there is a need to pre-empt even a tendency in that scary direction.

It is rather unfortunate that any electoral alliance with the Tamil or Muslim communities is seen by some as a “sell-out” of the whole country. This should not be the case. All political parties have rejected the idea of separation on ethnic and religious lines, though there is a broad agreement on the need to devolve power. And the tenets of our Republican nationhood does not provide for any ethnic or other community exclusivism or superiority over others – even if our principal indigenous religion is given a necessary constitutional protection as a recognition of the continuing need for recovery from colonial cultural devastation. Thus, today, after the severe shock of ethnic wars and the understanding by most citizens of their devastating consequences, no political group that is at the level of national electoral significance now dares to explicitly pursue such a divisive political project.

Some political forces, however, still seem to rely on proxy allies who fan the flames of ethnic suspicion and mistrust and a consequent communal hatred. Such proxy wars against this or that ethnic minority is aimed at instilling fear and panic among the ethnic majority with perhaps the hope that will drive votes toward those who stand out as ‘saviours’ from this imagined threat.

Whoever comes to power has an onerous task on their hands: to banish extremism and foster reconciliation among all communities and religious groups. In contrast to a statement made by an Opposition Parliamentarian now circulating online, there should be no room for any new schools based on religious or communal lines. Forging a truly Sri Lankan identity, sans any ‘superior’ status, should be one of two priorities for the incoming President, the other being socio-economic development.

Other goals for our future head of State should include ensuring development of the economy that also addresses economic inequalities. Thus, citizens would want their future President to point the country’s economic direction towards greater social democracy. The future President should be one with the most sensible and cohesive economic policies that are not a haphazard collection of nice sounding ‘goodies’ to capture hearts but rather should be a set of coordinated and focused strategies that rationally complement each other and the resulting outcome is convincingly achievable.

These strategies should include an emphasis on energy output, green sustainability and, an industrial expansion that sustains the biosphere rather than undermines it and, empowers the working population rather than simply exploiting it.

Likewise, voters should seek those who show promise of calm and calming management of the State; someone with a record of smooth implementation of projects rather than someone with a record of volatile politicking and autocratic bulldozing of projects. Voters must decide whether to risk authoritarian governance with all its attendant unsettling social fall-out or, whether, especially in a post-era, the new manager of our State should be experienced in reasoned, socially sensitive governance.

Equally importantly, what is desired is someone with little or no record of corruption which then provides him/her with the legitimacy to crack down on the corruption that permeates our political and administrative systems. Votes should not be wasted on someone whose past performance does not guarantee a clean government. Neither should votes be wasted on someone who lacks the intellectual capacity for a sophisticated, socially sensitive management of society and security. After all, Sri Lanka does not need simplistic gun-slingers who blow up at the slightest challenge to their egos, thereby unable to exploit opportunities for creative and meticulous solutions to complex problems.

In all, our votes should be cast for rational and reasoned governance and not mere opportunistic political navigation of affairs without the end goals of peace, justice and harmony.


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