Lessons from Libya

Angry protesters have set the Libyan Parliament building on fire. They have been calling for elections. Continuing power cuts, soaring prices, months of political deadlock, etc., have driven the Libyans to extreme action although their demands have been endorsed by the interim Prime Minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, who has also agreed in principle to the need to overhaul all state institutions. Libya is in chaos today with rival parties vying for power and killing one another because of the western-backed regime change in 2011.

Muammar Gaddafi was an eccentric dictator, who had to be made to uphold democracy, but the West had other plans and destabilised Libya by supporting the anti-Gaddafi forces that included Jihadist fighters. Until the ouster of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, Libya had boasted not only political stability but also excellent living standards, which were the highest in Africa and easily compared with those in the developed countries; it had one of the best social welfare schemes in the world. The Arab Spring has turned out to be a winter of despair for Libyans.

Prevailing economic, social and political conditions in Sri Lanka are similar to those in Libya at present in some respects, and have the potential to plunge the country into lawlessness just like the north African nation in depths of anarchy. This is something both the government and the Opposition should take cognisance of.

The government is groping in the dark. The Opposition parties are pulling in different directions, demanding that they be allowed to govern the country. They have said they will join forces to hold a continuous protest in Colombo, seeking the ouster of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The removal of the President may be the most effective way of extricating the country from the tentacles of the Rajapaksa family, which is aggravating the crisis by leveraging Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s dependence on Basil Rajapaksa’s SLPP. Now, some Basil loyalists such as SLPP General Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam, are crawling out of the woodwork. But the ground reality is that President Rajapaksa cannot be ousted so easily. Unless he resigns, he has to be impeached. The process of impeaching the President is a tedious one, and the Opposition is without sufficient numbers in Parliament for that purpose. A sustained protest campaign backed by a general strike may be considered an option, but such a course of action will be tantamount to collective suicide in that political upheavals will destroy the economy and deprive the country of the much-needed foreign assistance. The way out, in our book, is to crank up pressure on President Rajapaksa to appoint a truly national government so that all political parties will have to stop protesting and make a contribution towards crisis management.

Sri Lankans are a credulous lot. They swallowed Dhammika peniya (syrup), which was touted as a cure for Covid-19. Gotabaya offered a political peniya, (read the Vistas of Prosperity) claiming that it was the cure for all ills of Sri Lanka, and the people fell hook, line, and sinker for it only to be disappointed. Now, they are being offered the Sajith peniya and the Anura Kumara peniya. The SJB consists of a bunch of politicians who were in the yahapalana government, which failed. The country is paying the price for having elected, as its President, a person without any experience in statecraft. The JVP, which could not run even a local government institution properly, is now demanding the reins of government. Its ideology is an anachronism in the modern world, and its utopian dream may be marketable but is not attainable.

The Opposition parties must be prevented from using the present crisis to hoodwink the public, capture power, and thereafter go on asking for time to find a solution while blaming their predecessors. No single party is equal to the task of helping straighten up the economy under its own steam, and there will have to be a concerted effort. That is why all political parties must be made to form a unity government and carry out their promises collectively pending a general election. They have to make necessary laws and policies to enable the technocrats of the Finance Ministry, the Central Bank, etc., to resuscitate the economy. Nobody will be safe if the country slides into anarchy with the irate public marching on Parliament.