The Politics of Economic Austerity
This danger cannot be met with laws, propaganda or the more overt uses of state power. It can be met only with an economic strategy which is fair, which ensures that the burden of economic austerity is distributed proportionately between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless. A degree of economic justice is possible even in times of austerity.
by Tisaranee Gunasekara
“Just as political democracy is all that stands between individuals and an overmighty government, so the regulatory providential state is all that stands between its citizens and the unpredictable forces of economic change.” – Tony Judt (Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century)
( March 13, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) From time immemorial, humans have imaged their heavens, the ones in the sky and the ones on earth. Thomas More, dreamer and politician, saint and persecutor of religious dissenters, called his own version of the ideal state Utopia, a name he coined from the Greek, meaning no place. Perhaps he meant it as a signal or even warning. After all, utopias are not finished products but works in progress. They can be lodestars, but never reachable destinations.
Good governance was an effective electoral slogan. Contrary to the utterances of some ministers, the replacement of the Rajapaksa regime with the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration did not bring about good governance. That change merely enabled the long and never ending walk towards the utopia called good governance. Good governance is not and cannot be an achieved reality; at the very best it can be a set of guidelines to act within and a series of goals to work towards.
In Thomas More’s Utopia, several religions coexist in peace and even atheists are tolerated. Yet as the Chancellor of Henry VIII, More was notoriously intolerant and excelled at and exulted in burning religious dissenters. Politicians cannot be depended on to usher in any utopia, including the ones they themselves imagined.
Everywhere and always, politicians, most politicians, develop a tendency to abuse power irrespective of party or ideological affiliations. The uncouth conduct of the Minister of Higher Education is only the latest indication that getting rid of the Rajapaksas was far easier than getting rid of the execrable practices which became the norm under their rule. The best guarantee that the necessary journey towards good governance doesn’t end on the opposite shore is not action by this or that political leader but an optimum combination of fair laws, strong institutions and a citizenry willing to stand up for their rights.
Given the problems confronting Sri Lanka, two security guards ordering a couple out of the Independence Square might not seem like a big deal. It wasn’t and it was. That incident indicated that the tendency towards selective moral policing is alive and well in the post-Rajapaksa Sri Lanka and if left unchecked can turn into a scourge for ordinary citizens. The rapid response to this incident via social media and the satisfactory resolution of the matter are symbolic of the very real difference between the old and the new.
The Rajapaksas could impose any arbitrary rule they liked, with near impunity; the absence of democratic space prevented ordinary citizens from raising their voices. Today that space exists to a considerable extent. Even when protests are met with state violence, the public can take their grievances to the Police Commission, re-rendered independent by the 19th Amendment. Such institutional safeguards are far more material in protecting the post-Rajapaksa democratic space than grandiose promises or lofty declarations by politicians who seem to think their governance is, by definition, good governanc
