Sri Lanka Must Emerge From Its Tragic Contemporary History
By Lasantha Pethiyagoda -March 21, 2015
Lasantha Pethiyagoda
Passing an age of decimation of civil liberties and individual freedom, carried out in the name of fighting manufactured enemies of choice, any civic choice will have shackled citizens to an interconnected police and security state, unprecedented in contemporary Sri Lankan political history before the previous regime.
In a tyrannic serfdom, the freedom of the wild ass is no freedom at all, as the popular dictum exclaims, while the search for unbridled power and unlimited terms of office, symbolised these in explicit form.
Modern tyrannies are deceptive. In the age of technology, it has to do with the need to hide its true nature from the eyes of those on whose support and indifference its maintenance depends. Successful tyrannies excel at hiding reality from public view, turning the truth on its head and criminalising its manifest victims.
The greatest purveyor of corruption, vice and violence in the country must surely have had state patronage not merely to survive but thrive. Its varied mechanisms, as well as being the leading exponent of the deadly arrogance that has poisoned the atmosphere for so long and having been whitewashed from the discourse must constitute the biggest threat to civil society.
If not for its timely end in January it would have installed a far deeper malady within the Sri Lankan spirit than had hitherto been experienced. No significant social problem – wealth inequality, underworld violence, racial and religious disharmony- could be resolved while the state remained an entity that continues year in year out, spending more money on military “defence” and grandiose projects than on programs of social upliftment – a most certain recipe for a spiritual death of the nation. It should be incandescently apparent that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of Sri Lanka could have ignored that status quo.Read More