Yahapālanaya, Its Enemies & Sympathizers
By Wishwamithra1984 –June 8, 2016
“How can one absolve intelligent men for engaging in arrogant and demented folly?” ~C.R. Strahan
Yahapalanaya or good governance is no new concept. Its origins could be found in our ancient scriptures; its inherent qualities are still shaking the modern concepts of governance to their core and questioning their validity; its singular appeal to fair-play and justice is casting aside all mundane excuses of attempts at alternatives and when suppressed, its wailing had been echoing down the primeval caves to modern day corridors of power, burning for inevitable awakening and eventual rebirth. Man and man alone has stood in between good governance and its unacceptable alternatives in whatever the manner, shape or form it may embark upon his governmental affairs. From the great Caesars to Lenin, Hitler, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung did suffer at the merciful hands of good governance, for they did not teach or practice it.
Modern social scientists analyze the various norms of governance and their evolution through the ages in terms of the measures of the various prisms (or prisons) of their education and learning. And in these analyses, they lose the obvious and get caught up in a conundrum of pros and cons, hypotheticals and theories. Instead of using their education as an elementary tool for analysis, they try to fit their answers and solutions to fit into their precast theories.
What is good governance? The writer’s answer is: it’s ‘dispensing greatest good for the greatest numbers within a reasonable amount of time and costs of resources’. In terms of that definition of good governance, every government, may be barring the first administration since Independence of D S Senanayake’s, has failed in this aspect. As I have written earlier, one cannot expect a perfect union between the people and government. That kind of utopian vistas are far too delusionary and would amount to loitering about in a fantasyland. But the opposition to a government that used good governance as a critical form of governance as against a regime that for all means and ends looked, acted and consummated the ugly craft of hoodwinking the masses at a phenomenal degree, deserves more clarity and forthrightness. Those who are opposed to the current government led by Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe are doing so in order to safeguard themselves from the very tools of good governance that are being aimed at them. Those tools, the judiciary, legitimate and legal commissions and other state-sponsored institutions have exposed the corruption, nepotism and plain ‘bad governance’ of the last regime.
