Ravi K’s Case Must Not Be Taken In Isolation
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“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
When wheels of change begin to turn, it does not care who stands in between. The brashness and bluster, which is usually associated with change, alone could consume into oblivion those who dare challenge change. Or for that matter, a mere whisper of change could send intense ripples on a placid pool of civil service and those who pretend to be ‘servants’, but who in fact are masters of evil. Only those who have a discriminating mind could withstand the fury and fierceness of a socio-political change. That change has no mind, it has no heart and it certainly has no mercy. Guessing that such a change would grant small favors is incredibly naïve and foolish. Resting in a comfort zone without making any strategic or tactical adjustments to one’s journey’s goals is unacceptable. And meandering aimlessly along an already trekked road would result in being bereft of fresh opportunities leading to one’s material and spiritual stagnation.
When Sri Lankan voters elected this government in the last Presidential and General Elections in 2015, the hopes and expectations were unforgivingly high. They, the hopes and aspirations, are now being dashed to the ground. Corruption and nepotism, I have written many a time, over and over again, cannot be traced to the last regime alone. All politicians, especially in the so-called Third World, are unwisely clinging on to the belief that political power gives them unlimited supremacy over their subject. Whether it’s a democracy or a dictatorship, this frightening phenomenon of political power invested so much with power to impose any and everything on the masses is further augmented by populistic policies that these rulers advocate before they assume the mantle of power.
Lack of preparedness on the part of an overwhelming majority of the country to embrace democracy as a mode of government is being displayed each time such a populist rulers come to power. Sophisticated tools such as a well-educated civil service and a robust private sector that a modern democracy employs to facilitate governing mechanisms, albeit available to be followed to the letter, the excruciatingly slowness of the process in ‘getting things done’, tells on the entire system and impatience on the part of the masses is exploited to the hilt by the existing parliamentary opposition in a democracy or an underground one in a dictatorship. This impatience of the masses is easily made into a battle cry by the prevailing socio-political forces in the country. Social scientists may debate as to what precisely is the cause and effect of this convoluted process, yet would not conclude as to one single overall effect such a defaced system would eventually bear on the people. The burden of freeing this corrupt system of all its advocates and executives is too heavy to bear, for one man or one movement.
Revolutions may erupt in such conditions if the material circumstances conspire to produce such. Revolutions with all their optimistic promises have invariably met with limited results. Whether it’s the Russian, Chinese or Cuban kind, they have all produced an utterly enslaved people, servile to the power they desired. Undoing of the results that such revolutions entail is no easy task for the succeeding powers. Sri Lanka is far away from such revolutions. She has successfully thwarted any such attempts on all occasions. But the underlying force of simmering frustrations is taking deep root and the results could be either an explosive outcome or apathy. Whichever it is, a confrontation between two value-systems seems inevitable.
