When winners lose out to runners-up

Now it looks as if the next two years at least will be a much more but still compromised
benevolent oligarchy in which national government means precious little in terms of
accountability to the people

Friday, 28 August 2015

Politics, like cricket, is a game of glorious uncertainties. Yesterday, your guard was virtually
impenetrable and you look set for a very long innings indeed at the
crease. Today, someone you thought was on the same side might choose
to run you out in a cavalier act of insouciance. Tomorrow, if youre still
in, in the side, and available for a second innings, you could return the
compliment with a corresponding coup: insouciance for the goose is
insouciance for the gander. Thats politics.
Politics, unlike cricket or, at least, unlike the cricket that the last
gentlemanly generation grew up to, and with is also a game of
inglorious certainties. Yesterday, as you crossed over for a cheeky single
to win the match, you were determined to change the nature and the
destiny of the game. Today, which seems like only yesterday, when all our
troubles seemed so far away, the crowd cheered you on and were
definitely on your side. Tomorrow, which is yesterdays day after, you
appeal to the third umpire yourself and bring back to bat the men who
were declared out by common consent. Thats also politics.

In the background, your new sprinting partner beams with approval, because it is one of his
boys whos being brought back in from the cold even though his side swore they wouldnt.
The match referee which is civil society in general and
a coterie of political pundits in particular is down in the
doldrums in the dressing-room especially since they
thought you wouldnt stoop so low. Your fans in the
pavilion are strangely muted experiencing some
dampening in their enthusiasm, like a Duckworth-Lewis
game on a monsoon day. It isnt cricket, they mutter
sullenly but impotently.
After all, theyve no choice now: theyve bought the
ticket to watch you play, purchased a souvenir to track
your records, settled down with snacks and drinks and the
traditional papar band to watch a good match. And now
its taken an unexpected turn in the opening overs, while
the new players are settling in. Of course, it isnt cricket
(with voting being the ultimate spectator sport) when the
head umpire asks the men who were out to come back in
and bat again. When the crowds and the big tent clearly
wanted them out!
Or is it cricket? At least the kind of cricket that passes for
politics now that the noble practitioners of the game have
all but retired? For where are the likes of a Sanga
competent, tactful, sensible; above all honourable to
play a straight bat when the pitch is queered?
But let me stop pussyfooting around, like many politicos
are wont to do these days. This is about the bad taste in
the mouth that has been left behind, for aficionados of
romantic politics to savour, in the aftermath of nationallist manipulations and machinations. We thought good
governance would be better than this. Its proponents
would not dream of asking those whom the electors voted
out to come back in through the back door. Would they?
Would they justify it so blatantly, if at all? That politics
the art of the possible makes it necessary that former
political opponents and some folks outcast by the people
are necessary to make coalition politics the art of the
pragmatic practical and practicable?
But if you had been thinking in terms of realpolitik
instead of romantic politics (AKA cricket or the
gentlemans game), none of these developments would
have come as a surprise much less a shock. And if you
think the good guys are doing something
unconscionable in attempting to smuggle in the likes of
say, a Rosy, spare a thought for how ignoble some quarters might perceive an, uh, SB, coming

in as a substitute for the likes of a, er, GL.

Of course, it isnt cricket. Its simply good politics. But not necessarily good governance. When
those whom the people evidently rejected are rescued and restored by the powers that be, thats
poor governance and with scant respect to the peoples mandate. Theres only one thing
worse when those whom the people repudiated are redeemed and reseated by the political
opposition (now newly become coalition partners in an increasingly misnamed national
government). Thats poor politics, but good cheating the people. (To say nothing of a waste of
public funds and election money and resources)
Perhaps the irony is not lost on those who said they would vote for the JVP as they always
say until the last minute that they will vote for the JVP: that principled party and usually
dont; and didnt this time either. Maybe the irony is lost on those who said they would not vote
for the TNA as they always say until the moment is almost past that they wont ever vote for
the TNA: that nationalist separatist movement and then do; or did. At least these parties
deserved their seats in the House. Their members who came in by dint of the national list did so
by virtue of their principled campaigns and proven character rather than by dubious virtue of
backroom deals and spurious electoral-system analysing logic.
In the meantime, theres an unhealthy goulash of political expectations on the one hand and the
voters aspirations on the other to sort out (at least, for anyone interested in civics while
government tries to sort out governance).
On the one hand, the dominant political mood was that this was an opportunity for the polity to
rid parliament of a raft of rogues. If that is true and is to hold good, and the people voted and
the people voted out the bad and the ugly, what right do the good now have to bring back in
some of the bad and the ugly?
On the other, a corresponding motif among the more conscientious demographics of the
electorate was that here was a chance to partner with clean politicians to usher in a new
political culture. If that is logical and rational enough to risk voting for, what right do we now
have to quibble with the new political culture (read same old apolitical subculture) that is
reinstating the runners-up whom we rejected?
Its neither good politics nor good governance, but realpolitik pure and simple although
realpolitik is rarely pure and never simple. Thats the unromantic side of civics.
More to the point, I meant to ask: Where have all the good men and women gone The ones
who protested (perhaps too much) that good governance would ensure a new deal, the best
social contract between government and civil society? Small, efficient/economical,
accountable/clean/transparent government being the guaranteed order of the day! Could it be
that they are happy with the circumstances which are now emerging that we must live with for
at least another two to three years? Is big government in our countrys best interests now?
Would it be worth for the subscribers to good governance in parliament to cut deals with
saboteurs and subversives who expect ministries and mandarin-ships for the price of
cooperation in a coalition government supposedly committed to reform? Lets not kid ourselves
about national government, folks there is neither cause nor mandate to claim the name or
stake the politys peace of mind on it. Its just realpolitik all over again.
The past decade has been one in which we first war-weary, then peace-drunk, and not a little
afraid of state terror succumbed to the soft whisperings of Growth, Development, Prosperity
(a GDP mantra that many governments adopt). And were seduced by the dark side of an
initially at least somewhat benevolent tyranny.

Now it looks as if the next two years at least will be a much more but still compromised
benevolent oligarchy in which national government means precious little in terms of
accountability to the people. It simply means that while there is still a strongly comforting
separation of powers between the three branches of government (executive, judiciary,
legislature), there is also the strangely discomfiting symbiosis of three trunks of the executivelegislative part of the government-tree (chief executive/cabinet, cabinet/government, governing
coalition). Thats not democracy, its an antisocial contract.
And the clear-witted, strong-willed, principled parties in the House that unwitting, unwilling,
band of brothers: the TNA and the JVP will needs must serve as the main opposition. Thats
one of the ironies of realpolitik: that defenders of their partys faith at two ends of a nationalist
spectrum must take up the mantle of defenders of the peoples faith.
Is this what we (read you and I, my dear readers of this rag) voted for honestly? For the UNP
that it might woo the ragged remnants of its arch-nemesis, even to the extent of sucking the
SLFP out of the UPFA, and forming a symbiotic uni-party in parliament that is potentially a
United Front AGAINST Good Governance? That an SLFP President might continue to play
ducks and drakes with a coalition of which he is no longer a happy chair? a party at sixes and
sevens of which he is still the grudged leader? and a rag-tag motley crew of a government that
he has to struggle every day to keep on the straight and narrow if it is to deserve its epithet of
being a United Front FOR Good Governance?
Whose interest is good governance really in? The peoples? Just that of what now seems like a
nicely blended camouflage-majority in the House? Happy day that we saw the last of the
possible return of a certain man, a corrupt but powerful machine, a crippling chauvinistic
movement, that would lord it over us all again and ditch democratic-republicanism in the trashcan of a post-terrorist state (or state-terrorist position). However, it might be democraticrepublicanism itself that ends up in the dustbin of contemporary history if were not careful.
Im saving my breath for the rest of what promises to be an epic rant if and when a
ginormous cabinet emerges from the rubbish dump of rejected legislators among others. So if
good governance has any self-respect left, it would think long and hard before it foisted a fiasco
of a fat (and potentially fat-cat) cabinet on its loyalists. Us.
Local government elections to put into place over 450 superfluous pussyfooters is not as far off
as wed like to think and hope. Spare us and yourselves of some major grief in the meanwhile
and Think Small. Think Smart. Think Strategic. Maybe theres more merit to it than
immediately meets the eye that in politics there are no permanent friends or enemies. So go
easy on handing out those ministerial portfolios. Which could backfire on you, the elected,
come August 2017 in the same way it has put paid to our dreams of a nice, tight, small,
round, cabinet of under 25 in August 2015. We thought we had won the election when the
losers who were the political-retreads (I almost wrote retards) were well and truly rejected?
Looks like we were just the runners-up; and the large national unity government of winners and
losers are the real winners and losers.