In a political sense, Sri Lankan elections are public enemas administered by the state apothecary to dehydrate democracy. There was a presidential election in January, and before the country could recuperate its political wits, a parliamentary election is due a week after the April Fools day. In between, there have been some quite bizarre happenings that together bode ill for democracy.

There is a school among political commentators – from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Qadri Ismail - that challenges the very practice of representation through elections as being antithetical to the essence of democracy. The essence of democracy is equality of citizens, and not simply a rule by majority. Elections are a necessary condition of democracy but not a sufficient condition. There can be no democracy in a political society without elections, but having elections alone – no matter how frequently – does not mean that the society is under democratic governance.

Elections give the elected the right to govern, but that is only a delegated right to be exercised within the limits of the constitution, conventions and the rule of law. More important, they do not take away the right of the people to question the government between elections, any time and ever time.

Sri Lanka offers enough examples where the process of representation has privileged the majority based on their numbers and underprivileged those who do not have the strength in numbers. Sri Lankan elections have twice produced parliamentary tyrannies, in 1970 and 1977, and it was to prevent another such tyranny that J.R. Jayewardene created the 1978 Constitution. The upshot has been the growth of a presidential tyranny.

The present government is acting on the false premise that its victories in successive elections give it the prerogative not to be questioned by anyone, and the right to silence anyone who dares to question the government. That the government is so behaving is not surprising, but what is surprising and worrisome is that such governmental thinking is being assimilated by opinion and decision makers outside the government.

People come out in large numbers to vote at elections and then go back to their daily humdrum chores. Few of them, to borrow from Harold Laski, have the energy or the resources to spare for politics in between voting. So the task of watching the government and checking its activities falls on the official opposition, the media as daily reporters, the judiciary as independent referees, and the general intelligentsia as opinion makers.

If any one of them comes up short or fails in their respective tasks, the government can go astray, whether benevolently or malevolently – doesn’t matter, and democracy would be in peril. When a government tries and succeeds in controlling any or all of them, then it is: good bye democracy, hello tyranny. The Sri Lankan government has quite a chorus lined up to sing in the seemingly seamless transition from democracy to tyranny as a transition mandated by the will of the people. No government, whatever its majority vote, can claim mandate to asphyxiate democracy and impose tyranny.

Erosion of democracy since January

The erosion of parliamentary democracy, as we had come to know it, was facilitated by the 1978 constitution, and the same erosion continues unchecked to this day. The rate of erosion has picked up over the last few years, and the events between January and April are nothing less than cataclysmic in the political sense. But few seem to care and those who do are quickly dismissed as Colombian elites who are woefully out of touch with the rural masses. The dismissive pundits are no less Colombian, their rural touch is no less insubstantial, and their only touch is with the government. Some of them stand to lose their state stipends and perks if they were to criticize the government.

Quite apart from the pundits and the intelligentsia, the official opposition has gone mute and the main pre-occupation of its leader is to retain corporate control over the grand old Uncle Nephew Party, aka UNP. Ranil Wickremasinghe is more interested in preserving the elephantine symbol but wouldn’t lose sleep over the government’s premeditated attempts to weaken and destroy democracy. A few of the government’s trespasses are of particular concern, although none of which has overly excited Mr. Wickremasinghe

Gen. Sarath Fonseka

Take the arrest of Sarath Fonseka. No one has any illusion that Sarath Fonseka is a Dalai Lama, or an Aung San Suu Kyi, not to mention that people like them will be in even bigger danger than Sarath Fonseka in the present day Sri Lanka. What is at issue is the manner of his arrest and the trial process that he is being subjected to. There is hardly any country in the world where a retired Chief Justice would publicly offer an unexceptionably powerful legal opinion challenging the arrest, detention and trial of a retired Army General turned political candidate. It happens in Sri Lanka and the opinion of the Chief Justice has no weight in the scales of military justice.

Most sections of the media and opinion makers conveniently ignore the foulness of General Sarath Fonseka’s arrest and soundness of Chief Justice Sarath Silva’s opinion, by focusing on their personal pasts which are not relevant to the issue. It remains to be seen how the civil forums of justice will deal with Sarath Silva’s opinion when those arguments are formally presented to them. The independence of judiciary is a fundamental pillar of constitutional democracy, and the judiciary must not only be independent but also appear to be independent. No one is suggesting that the Sri Lankan judiciary is not independent, but there is enough reason to suggest that the government would not even let them appear to be independent.

Perhaps the most sinister aspect of the Fonseka fiasco, at least to this writer, was what happened at the Kandy Post Office to scuttle the threat of a Sangha revolt against the State. That the High Priests were threatened with internal sedition and loss of property affiliations came as neither surprise nor shock to anyone. A little-reported story that shocked me was what transpired at the Kandy Post Office. According to one news story, the Mahanayakas sent out letters inviting the clergy for an unprecedented gathering of the Sangha in Kandy, on Thursday, 18 February. The letters were stamped and mailed at the post office on Friday, 12 February. The letters never left the Kandy Post Office! Perhaps this was the first deliberate violation of mail-trust in Sri Lanka’s postal history. Nothing further needs to be said on this matter.

The government has created another record for all the wrong reason. After dissolving parliament for the April election, the government had it recalled to extend the emergency regulations which otherwise would have lapsed. I am not sure if such a recall of parliament has ever happened in Sri Lanka since parliamentary government began in 1947. Under the earlier constitutions and conventions, the declaration of emergency during an election automatically triggered the recall of parliament to deal with the ‘real’ emergency situation. The declaration of emergency was powerful enough to “resurrect a dead parliament”, G. G. Ponnambalam once waxed eloquent in the Supreme Court. The present government, on the other hand, resurrected a dead parliament to prevent the emergency regulation from falling dead. And the old parliament will be in recall even as a new parliament is being elected. Amidst all this, Sri Lankan democracy stands confused and diminished.