Let’s move away from sugar politics

Sugar continues to be a headline story. The sweetness of corruption is the stuff of politics today.

After so many thousand tons of sugar was imported since the government gave the sugar importers that wonderfully sweet drop of import duty to 25 cents from Rs. 50; we are now told that 29,000 MT of sugar were concealed in warehouses. Are we surprised about the absence of any arrest, detention, or CID investigation regarding these traders?

Just don’t be surprised. The saubhagya approach to this would be to purchase this hidden sugar at the new fixed sugar prices, and save the importers of any loss to the stock, wholly in excess of the demand. Isn’t this really a honeyed approach to dealing with importers who were given such a syrupy cut down of import duty?

How much of such sugary or tasty action will be taken regarding the rice traders? It was not so long ago that a retired senior Army officer who raided a big rice trader’s outfit, had to do a military type haste. Let’s not forget that rice is very much the stuff of politics in this country. The price of rice and the amount issued on ration led to the first ever hartal in Sri Lanka, and changes of prime ministers and governments, too.

Let’s keep guessing on what the hidden stocks and price of rice would do, under the Gotabaya – Saughabya play of politics. We hear many ministers and

pohottuva politicians talk loud about there being no rice shortages or the fixing of rice prices to suit the hoarders.

We are now at the beginning of an Economic Emergency of the Gotabaya flair, even though the government insists that there is no food shortage, or crisis, in the country.

Ageing Parties

Amidst the heavy sweetness of sugar and rice handling politics, we are also marking the celebration of the long life of two political parties in Sri Lanka. There is certainly no sweetness of any sort, or broader public acceptance of the stuff and style of the UNP and the SLFP today.

The UNP that made a huge impact with its elephant symbol and its so-called winners of independence, has now come down to a party that has no elected member in the 225-member Parliament. The party of the Senanayakes (father and son), Kotelawala, and Jayewardene leadership, is now in a leaderless politics. A party that removed the citizenship rights of the Tamils in the plantation sector, and later hooked itself on to the Sinhala Only wave of politics, having done much for the agriculture sector, is now a political party that has to depend on a so-called unelected National List member to be heard in Parliament.

This party is moving away from its tough elephant symbol, to that of a party being chased away by the people, as most wild elephants are today; with the land base for survival steadily declining, as the vote base for the party? 75 years have certainly brought it to the old and declining age of politics, moving to its demise in the years to come.

The SLFP with its Hand symbol, is today using this hand to clutch whatever power there is in Pohottuva politics. Its present leader is one with a mockery of leadership during the Yahapalana government; who even violated the Constitution, in giving the prime ministerial post to Mahinda Rajapaksa, in late 2018. This leader certainly has no respect for constitutional democracy, and is followed by a team of political catchers, hanging on to the tail of the Pohottuva players.

The party itself shows no political thinking or strategies, and do not understand the wider failure of the Sinhala Only policy, which brought its founder-leader SWRD Bandaranaike to office in 1956, but which he himself sought to change before his assassination in 1959. The Bandaranaikes did hold sway as party leaders with Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, and then Mahinda Rajapaksa. But Sirisena has marked the decline of the SLFP leadership. Just like the older UNP, the SLFP too shows signs of old age creeping up its system, with the demise certainly not too far away.

What future can this country and people hope to have, as its two main political parties through 75 and 70 years, are now led by two total failures in the process of democratic governance.

This is the challenge the people and voters of Sri Lanka face today. With the Gotabhaya – Saubhagya showing a wider family threat to the democratic process, the call is for a new leadership. Certainly not a leadership of crooked sweetness as we see today, but one of harsh and even bitter politics of reality; of unity without divisions of race, religion, and caste; and a commitment to restoring and ensuring Democracy – even as a bitter, sweet pill.