It’s that time of the political silly season when people are challenging each other to debates. Some complain that certain other parties don’t want to turn up for a proposed verbal joust.
At given times, you’d find at least a couple of politically significant persons avoiding debates. They have various reasons to do so. Some say that their challengers are not worth their time and effort, or that an ‘A’ grader should never debate a lightweight.
Some think it’s politically advantageous to goad a reluctant opponent to a TV debate. They may probably know that the debate is not going to happen, because the opposing party is reluctant or is not willing to take the bait at a given time.
But claiming that the other party is running scared (‘too chicken’) is one way of upping the political ante. It is not the debate per se that matters but the political drama that surrounds a debate, focussed mainly on whether it would happen or not.
Sri Lankans unlike others in contentious democracies have made a fine art of not having any debates but allowing for extensive debates on whether debates are to be held or not. To be or not to be, to joust or not to joust, that is the main question.
This argument is not made in jest. Ever remember a pre-election debate between any two serious political contenders of major political parties before any key election in this country?
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You can’t remember any because there haven’t been any. No Presidential Candidate has ever debated any other Presidential Candidate at any organised session of thrust and parry that can be called a debate.
But there have been plenty of debates about debates. Candidates have thrown challenges to opponents for debates that they promise would be the most illuminating events of any election season.
But no debates have ever taken place and no debate quite got off the ground. Candidates have called each others names, and sometimes the challenged candidate has responded saying it’s beneath him or her to debate the challenger.
Over time, this has become a firm and entrenched Sri Lankan tradition now. There is always a debate about a debate, or many debates about debates, but never in fact a real debate. Why exactly is it essential to debate about having a debate when there is no likelihood of having any debate at all?
Well, it’s because Sri Lankan politicians seem to seriously think that a debate about a debate in fact replaces a debate.
Not for Sri Lankans a National Commission on Election Debates. The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) sponsors and organises Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates in the US. There is no need in Sri Lanka for such institutions, unless they form a ‘Commission to Debate if Presidential and Other Political Debates Should take Place?.’ That way, they could debate about debates until the cows come home.
Perhaps Sri Lankans could make an international case for why political debates if they are in fact actually held, could be damaging to democracy.
Do Presidential debates between candidates serve a useful purpose in a democracy? There is a case to be made that other than to energize the media into debating about the debate, debates have served no constructive purpose.
Also, how about those candidates that have all the right attributes for leadership except the ability to talk? Or to look good on a public stage, under intense camera scrutiny for around two hours or more at a stretch?
It could also be argued that the downside of debates is that they tend to dwell too much on specifics. This could give a candidate who revels in detail (a ‘policy wonk’) an advantage that he or she shouldn’t possess.
Such a candidate could disport the illusion of competence. But providing a ream of factoids doesn’t necessarily mean that the particular candidate could get important things accomplished if elected.
But debates are a means on the other hand of engaging in direct combat. It can be argued that politicians do have a skill-set, and debating and speech making comes with the job description.
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If that’s the case why have debates not become part of the political staple in any pre-election context in this country?
It’s probably because debates are also all about accountability. Debates make politicians extremely vulnerable within a certain given context. Politicians have to leave behind the prepped-up agenda for the most part and forget handlers. They are on their own to a great extent. This does not mean however that debate questions cannot be anticipated and politicians and their debate performances are not monitored by handlers, by way of anticipation and intense preparation.
It can be said rather blandly that we in Sri Lanka do not have this type of political culture. Sri Lankans do not insist on keeping politicians to account by having them debate each other. But what if Sri Lankans are right on debates being overrated? That too ought to be considered.
Perhaps political debates favour a certain type over others, and it is unfair. Also it could be about what happens on a given day. A good debater may have a bad day, and then the outcome of the debate is necessarily skewed. Besides that ‘debates’ refer to one-on-one face-offs whereas Sri Lankans are treated to the spectacle of talk shows all the time where a bunch of ‘C’ grade politicians generally sit down and keep going at each other for hours on end.
The only debate that was historically recognised as a debate rather that a discussion was the great Panadura Vaadaya and this was a debate over religion. But the debate took place in 1873, long before the advent of television and the tradition of regular Presidential debates anywhere in the world.
Miggetuwatte Gunananda Thera and his fellow debating colleague Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala reputedly won the debate and spurred on a Buddhist resurgence, as a result. The Christian missionaries fielded a formidable team that included the then principal of Richmond College, but the Buddhist monks had honed their debating skills.
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In more recent days late politician M.H. M Ashraff squared off in what was also essentially a debate over religion, with Ven. Gangodawila Soma, whose sermons had taken the Buddhist world by storm a decade or so in the past. The debate ended amicably with Mr. Ashraff doing much better than most people expected him to, but the event was soon forgotten in a country that was firmly majority Buddhist in contrast to 1873 when Buddhism was not encouraged by the colonizer that had set up missionary schools and was essentially on a path to gradually make Buddhism irrelevant.
People considered Buddhist revival an important issue in 1873,which is why the Panadura Vaadaya was,even absent the medium of television, a celebrated event in that era. Sri Lankans never thought of debates between party leaders as important partly because they were jaded with speeches by politicians, which are most of the time considered a necesarry evil that they have to put up with rather than enjoy.
But future Presidential debates may be useful. However, to begin a successful tradition of political debates with key individuals pitted against each other, debates don’t have to be considered with religious-zeal given that the only successfully conducted debates in the country’s history were over religion.
But ironically, people have to take politics seriously and it appears they don’t, because much of contemporary politics has become trivialised. There isn’t any public pressure on politicians vying for any high office let alone the presidency to debate each other.
Politicians are seen as empty vessels making deafeningly loud noises, and people don’t necessarily want organised debates to add to the continuous cacophony made by political types. But they may have not considered the fact that debates that in fact take place would be more useful than debates about debates that may or may not take place.
Perhaps it will take just two potential candidates to agree to a single successful debate, to establish the tradition of debates, for better or for worse. People are in any event cynical enough to judge a debate on the merits of what the participants say, rather than decide based on television presence of individuals, which is essentially a matter related tocharisma. The trouble seems to be that debates call for facts over substance despite the fact that the TV medium is all about showmanship. Politicians in this country are still used to avoiding hard facts and therefore political debates are not our cup of tea yet.
Rajpal Abeynayake