Sri Lankans approach this Sinhala and Tamil New Year with renewed hopes for a better country. A nation, our youth would be proud to call home. The road ahead is not an easy one, it never has been.
Despite the limited festive cheer, the limited purchasing power of the average Joe, many Sri Lankans will enter this festive period with a stiff upper lip and an earnest view of what it will take to forge a path ahead. Looking forward, there is much to be done. Millions of Sri Lankans witnessed their dreams crushed over the last five years. Many cannot still clearly envisage a path forward from the precipice they’ve fallen into.
Moving ahead, it may be prudent to set practical short-term and long-term goals, once which are within reach, before we attempt to take on the world. This may indeed be the way to navigate the difficult few years ahead, as the unpleasant reality which faces Sri Lanka, is that we cannot effectively predict what our near term socio-economic or political landscape may turn out to be. The all-important political ‘tea cup’, is too cloudy to read as of now. Perhaps the proposed debates on national policies, and economic recovery plans between opposition parties will give some clarity. Let’s hope that the debates remain about policy issues and eventually are extended to one between members of the current Government, and not disintegrate into the gutter politics we have experienced over the last 75 years. One collective resolution that the citizenry should take up is to be more diligent and far-sighted when exercising your franchise–in voting. We, as a nation cannot afford to allow the destructive political culture that has crushed our dreams, and upended our lives, to persist. We need to move away from such practices and be more enlightened and involved in governance and politics. Citizens need to ask more questions, demand more transparency and clarity, and stand up for more accountability from our law-makers and state officials.
No law-maker, no party, no coalition of parties, is worth sustaining the corrosive political culture and poor-governance model. Politicians, even today, after all that’s gone wrong keep muttering the mantra of ‘saving their party’ or ‘restoring the party to its former glory’, few speak of restoring Sri Lanka and giving the public a better future. Those who chant about ‘party survival, and the heritage of leadership’ are signalling where their priorities lie; in themselves, and not in the best interest of the nation. The fact that mainstream politics has still not put aside their differences and understood the need for a broad consensus on the policies and changes needed to pull Sri Lanka out of the tail spin it is in. Let us hope that Sri Lankans turn out in large numbers to vote at the upcoming elections, and that they do so with a clear understanding of what they are voting for. We cannot afford to be voting based on free hand-outs like the practice has been before. There will be efforts to influence the public again with near elections – promises, and ‘gifts’ of rice, subsidies, loans, ration packs etc. However, such decisions on ‘hand-out’ politics may be perceived differently by those who have been pushed below the poverty line and live in extreme austere conditions. We must take into account that for such communities, the stark ground realities are harsh, and relief or the promise of it, brings hope that those who are not in such circumstance, seldom understand. Therefore, the ‘weight’ of working the rudder of Sri Lankan politics and blowing the ‘sails’ of momentum towards a better Sri Lanka, will likely fall on the shoulders of the middle income communities, and more importantly, the post ‘Aragalaya’ politically aware youth.
Sri Lanka, for millennia has been in the eye of the regional storm, a strategic piece of real-estate, the control of which has aided many regional and extra regional powers to become global powers in the past. The geopolitical contention in the Indian Ocean Region will likely only increase. Thus far Sri Lanka has, despite some blunders, has managed to walk a fine line and ‘balance’ competing external pressure. However, Sri Lanka, being on a weak economic and political footing, has limited options, and is in need of a review of its foreign policy to navigate the complex waters we are in today, and will face tomorrow. Herein, there is a greater role for the citizenry to play, the common understanding of international relations and Sri Lanka’s dynamic within is weak. As a community, we need to better understand our environment, become more aware regionally and globally, so as to ask our government the right questions, and to shape policies which would put ‘Sri Lanka first, while adhering to our international obligations.
As such, the Sri Lanka citizenry have a lot to do in the coming months and years so as to effect the changes we all need, and deserve, to make Sri Lanka a country our children are proud to call ‘home’.