Editorial-September 3, 2013, 8:50 pm
The government may have thought UN Human Rights High Commissioner Navi Pillay was beating a retreat vis-à-vis its propaganda onslaught. But, shortly before her departure on Sunday she caught the government unawares; she turned back like an ancient Parthian archer on horseback and started shooting poison-tipped arrows at the government leaders.
By the time the government figured out what had hit it, Pillay was gone, having brilliantly executed a well planned human rights surgical strike in time for the CHOGM here and the UNHRC summits in Geneva.
The Opposition is cock-a-hoop while the government leaders are licking their wounds. President Mahinda Rajapaksa is apparently still smarting from Pillay’s Parthian Shot which came in the form of a nasty barb that Sri Lanka was becoming increasingly authoritarian.
President Rajapaksa is taking great pains to debunk Pillay’s assertion that Sri Lanka is drifting towards a dictatorship. Addressing the SLFP’s 62nd Convention in Kurunegala on Monday, a visibly agitated President asked how anyone could claim that the country was becoming a dictatorship when there were regular elections.
True, this country has so many elections that the people are fed up with them. However, electoral contests are not the sole yardstick of a country’s democratic wellbeing.
Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, Plato tells us in The Republic. The Constitution calls this country a democratic, socialist republic, whatever that means. But, it has in reality facilitated the concentration of state power in one institution, to wit, the executive presidency so much so that the head of state could usurp the powers of the other two branches of government with impunity. He or she becomes powerless only when his or her party loses power in Parliament. Politicians by nature thirst for power and it is only natural that every executive president tends to run a one-man or one-woman show. One should not dupe oneself into believing that those in the political wilderness at present campaigning for democracy would act differently if they were to be in a position to exercise executive powers. Their love for democracy like the fidelity of a lecher boils down to lack of opportunity!
All executive presidents have used and abused the Constitution to the fullest for self-aggrandizement and the incumbent is no exception. He has surpassed others by abolishing the presidential term limit besides doing away with the fetters which the 17th Amendment imposed on his powers. What more he has up his sleeve is anybody’s guess.
So, the threat of Sri Lanka becoming a dictatorship has always been there. It does not go away simply because elections are held. We will have to live with it so long as the current basic law which former President Chandrika Kumaratunga chose to call Bahubutha Viyavasthawa, is there. The only way out is to curtail the executive powers of the head of state. But, the problem is that no president, ensconced in power, wants to abolish the executive presidency; he or she only makes promises to do so for the public consumption while enjoying all the powers.
Meanwhile, one should not be so naïve as to think that the western powers and the UN officials are overly concerned about the situation here as they are great lovers of democracy and human rights. They would not have cared a damn about what is happening in this country if the Rajapaksa government had toed their line. They have a history of backing criminals like Shah, Papa Doc and Pinochet to further their interests in spite of people’s suffering, don’t they? They even backed Saddam Hussein to the hilt while he was carrying out the Anfal campaign by using chemical weapons against Kurds. So much for their concern about democracy and human rights!
If President Rajapaksa were to switch his allegiance to the western bloc today Navi Pillay would have to recant all her anti-Sri Lankan statements tomorrow the way she had to eat humble pie, having condemned human rights violations in pro-western Bahrain. This is the sad truth about human rights crusaders and ‘exporters’ of democracy.
