What Toppled the Government?

by Ruwantissa Abeyratne

( February 12, 2015, Montreal, Sri Lanka Guardian) In a recent interview on television, President Maithripala Sirisena, when asked whether it was solely the Northern and Eastern voter who  toppled the former President  said that while it was true that these two regions voted almost en bloc for him, there were predominantly Sinhala Buddhist areas that had also swung away from President Rajapaksa  when  compared with the election of 2010.  President Sirisena cited Maharagama, Panadura and Kelaniya as just three areas where President Rajapaksa had lost thousands of votes that had come his way in 2010.  According to the President this was  an incontrovertible expression by the overall voter in Sri Lanka of dissatisfaction with the incumbent  regime.

Many reasons for this unexpected swing have been given: corruption; extravagance;  lawlessness; poverty and misuse of the peoples’ money including but not limited to the abuse and misappropriation of taxes they paid.  Perhaps the last of these factors was the most  hurtful to the people.  At a recent interview, Anura Kumara Disanayake the leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna said: ” The biggest accusation against the Rajapaksa regime was abuse of people’s money, misuse of State property and corruption” – placing abuse of the peoples’ money as the first cause for the demise of the former regime.  Whether or not this claim is true will come out in the wash, when all the promised investigations are done.  However, earlier in Parliament Disanayake had come  out with actual figures of misappropriation of and overspending  by the former regime of the peoples’ money, which one would like to think were not concocted by him as he was not challenged when he presented the data.

Some political analysts might agree that abuse of peoples’ money brings down governments..  One view is that taxation impacts governance by altering the expressive benefits citizens receive from sanctioning corrupt officials, making those who pay taxes more likely to hold leaders accountable.   Lucy Martin of Yale University, in a paper submitted in 2013, argues  that taxation and corruption are usually co-related, particularly in developing countries. She states: ” taxed citizens are less likely to acquiesce to corruption and more likely to punish non accountable behaviour: individuals receive an expressive benefit from taking punitive action against corrupt leaders, and taxation increases this benefit  by activating a stricter norm of fairness. Facing more engaged citizens, and possible sanctions, leaders will therefore have higher incentives to reduce corruption and to provide the goods and services valued by citizens” .

Intrinsically tied to this line of reasoning is that government spending has to be transparent and that if aid money is siphoned off by corrupt politicians people are profoundly upset but if their taxes are misappropriated or misused they are furious.  As The Economist says in its most recent issue: ” embezzled tax provoked greater anger than stolen aid”.   This essay by no means accuses the former regime of this crime, but posits the proposition that, through the political speeches that led to the election of January 8th, the voter in austere circumstances may have cultivated a perception of a deceitful regime that deprived them of their rightful benefits and lived a life of unwarranted and disproportionate luxury at their expense.

Then there are the knock on effects.  In October 2014  The government of Burkina Faso collapsed as demonstrators protesting President Blaise Compaoré’s plans to stay in office after 27 years surged through the streets of Ouagadougou, the capital, overrunning state broadcasters, setting fire to the Parliament building and burning the homes of the president’s relatives. In February of the same year, the people of Ukraine ousted Viktor Yanukovich (who was subsequently removed by parliament) by revolution.  Here the people of Ukraine were seeking a better future for themselves by seeking alignment with the European Union which Yanukovich shied away from.

In a much more democratic Canada, Ontario’s National Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwarth  said in June 2014: ”  Let’s give people a chance to make their choice and then we’ll see where the lay of the land is and make decisions as a result. I’m a pretty pragmatic person and pretty open-minded but I know for sure that I won’t support firing 100,000 people in this province at a time when times are tough. And I certainly am not into governments that disrespect people’s money.”  This argument, even though it may have been made in a context different from the current discussion, brings to bear right at the forefront Ms. Horwarth’s reference to “disrespect of people’s money”.

At the end of the day, what the people care about is the respect their money is given and their  just returns. The wave of Arab protests which began in December 2010 starting in Tunisia and spreading to Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Algeria, Kuwait, Egypt and Morocco just to name a few, was all about just returns.  In an earlier essay I said that a country should not be judged by its achievements but by its compassion.  This compassion comes with the assurance of human rights.

A right is something due to a person by just claim, legal guarantee or moral principle.  It is a power, privilege or immunity accrued to a person by law and is a legally enforceable claim that another will do or will not do a given act.  It is also a recognized and protected interest, the violation of which is wrong. Therefore, the starting point should be in the words “just claim” “legal guarantee and “moral principle”. These claims and guarantees based on moral principles should be justiciable.  In a world full of wrongs, rights of the human have never been so important to us.  They are often analogous to our health and loved ones.  We tend to take them for granted until they are taken away or endangered and we appreciate them most when we are in danger of losing them. However, the question is, if human rights were to be recognized on the basis of injustice, how could one identify injustice in the absence of a paradigm of justice?  The answer would lie in the fact that although one could not pinpoint justice, any decent and intelligent human could recognize injustice when he sees it.

In any election campaign facts count for little but emotion and perception, together with the personal circumstances of the voter counts for much. Perhaps the opposition was clever enough  to play their cards along this strategic approach?