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I was very happy to see and hear on TV Maduluwawe Sobitha Thera, JC Weliamuna and Fr Reid Shelton giving a press briefing about the necessity of making one’s own sane political agenda for any political leader who will then get the support of the people. They enumerated their agenda beginning with the abolition of the executive presidency within one hundred and twenty days of coming to power. This was a topic some of us over here in the South were discussing how to get across to the leaders of the country. We are grateful to them for doing it. We endorse what they have suggested fully and unconditionally.
But when this was presented to him, the Asgiriya Mahanayaka Thera of Asgiriya, was down to earth and said that all promise to do these things till they come to power and then forget about them later betraying, as their wont, the people who supported them. He was perfectly right as that is our experience in the recent history of this country. That brings to the fore the absolute need for a mechanism of power that can force the hand of the powers that be. Power can be forced to obey only by a greater power. What is that power and where to find it? I can see two loci of such strong powers. One is the people power and the other is the trade union power.
To build up people power, these ideas must be vulgarised and make every citizen in this country conscious of them. But it will take time and the logistics of organization calls for another organisation that already exists who has the infra structure to do it. It would be hoping for something like a Sri Lankan Spring. This will be complicated, it will take time and the whole idea can be hijacked or aborted easily. Offering these ideas to any common opposition leader is useless as the JVP already has it in their manifesto, Sarath Fonseka, once the common opposition leader had accepted this agenda and the UNP will never accept them or if they accept them it will be only to break that promise. After all, though an ugly monster, executive presidency is their baby. They have also offered this agenda to the present regime in power. There is a big silence like that of a deaf mute from that side. It is like trying to awaken a man pretending to be sleeping.
So what is left is the trade union power. Apart from trade unions of workers there are also the Associations of trades like the Bakery Owners Association, Three wheelers’ Associations, mercantile associations and so on. All of them must be roped in for this last stand. Civil Society needs to persuade all the trade union leaders and all the association leaders to come together in a grand convention where they will thrash out this agenda with the civil society leaders, formulate and put their signatures to a MOU of joining together in a possible general strike. Now we can offer this agenda to any putative common opposition leader OR challenge the present regime to implement this agenda within 120 days, which they can easily do with their two thirds majority. If they don’t then on the 121st day Sri Lanka will come to a dead stop. Nothing will move, no shop will be opened and not a loaf of bread will be available. If Sri Lanka wants to get rid of this Evil (Executive Presidency, 18th Amendment and the Vermin they have spawned.) It has no other option.
Fr. J. C. Pieris
Galle
island.lk
