An entitled population

Another fault in us citizens is that we expect to get jobs, school admissions, transfers and promotions through political patronage. We expect business contracts to be facilitated through political patronage. Over the years, we the citizens have come to take for granted that this is the way things are done in Sri Lanka -and politicians who promise to do these things for us (even if the government just does not have the money to finance these things) expect us to keep voting them into office

Last week, I was reading the Sunday Times when I came across the report of a revealing interview with Badulla District MP, Vadivel Suresh.

A former minister in the Maithripala Sirisena Government, Suresh stated unashamedly: “I had to face political setbacks as I lost the election and I was unable to support the people who supported me”. He then went on to say, “The Ministry secretaries did not allow us to work as we wanted and I was unable to give jobs or help people”.

Perhaps the most telling statement he made was: “I had five ministries and 148 institutes under me, I spent much time in Colombo. I failed to take part in funerals and weddings in my electorate. That is the reason for my setback.”

Interestingly, Suresh who left the UNP to join Sajith Premadasa’s SJB now appears to think that hitching his wagon to Ranil Wickremesinghe’s rising star will improve his fortunes and help him get re-elected and grab a minister’s role. He is now planning to re-join the UNP.

What this frank statement of Suresh brought home to me is how democracy works in our country.

Suresh is not the only politician who thinks in this manner. Many of our politicians today have forgotten that they are elected to serve the country – not just the catchers and hangers-on in their electorate who support them to win elections. Today’s politicians thrive at marriages, funerals and almsgivings – and instead of holding them accountable, we citizens pay them pooja, thrust ourselves forward to have selfies taken with them -- and have created a breed of creatures and distributors of largesse who believe themselves entitled to royal treatment.

As Cassius observed in that famous line from

Shakespeare’s Julius

Caesar, however,

“The fault, dear

Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves”. It is we the people who have created this tribe of professional politicians who have dragged our country down into the mess we now find ourselves.

We love to complain about our political leaders -- but even the Rajapaksas could not have on their own created such a disaster without us citizens helping them.

From the time we were given independence from Britain, we the people have harboured unrealistic expectations from our governments -- expectations of free state services such as health and education, expectations of subsidised rice, bread and transport, expectations of under-priced utilities such as water, electricity, petrol and gas. We believed that we were entitled to have all these things provided to us by our governments -- quite forgetting that all government expenditure has to be financed by taxes and loans!

And it was not just we ordinary citizens who believed that we had a right to all these free lunches. Our businesses too expected elected governments to provide subsidised fertilizer, low-interest loans and tax breaks.

Another fault in us citizens is that we expect to get jobs, school admissions, transfers and promotions through political patronage. We expect business contracts to be facilitated through political patronage. Over the years, we the citizens have come to take for granted that this is the way things are done in Sri Lanka -- and politicians who promise to do these things for us (even if the government just does not have the money to finance these things) expect us to keep voting them into office.

Vadivel Suresh summarised it perfectly when he admitted that he lost his seat in parliament because he “was unable to give jobs and help people”.

In the latest issue of the magazine LMD International, respected former national cricketer Roshan Mahanama candidly observed: “Over the years, we have forgotten that politicians are public servants who have been elected to their positions by the vote of the ordinary citizens of this country. We hero-worship them and treat them as if they are superheroes. The fault is ours”.

We Sri Lankans have come to consider ourselves an entitled people -- and our unrealistic expectations have been pandered to by generations of shrewd politicians, who in turn are repeatedly voted into office by us gullible voters. With neither the vision, the wisdom nor the desire to govern this country for the benefit of our people, these politicians have continued (like Vadivel Suresh) to attend weddings, funerals and thovilayas in their electorates, promise their supporters jobs in overstaffed state institutions as well as facilitate school admissions and transfers -- and be repeatedly voted into office where they can continue to enjoy the perks of political power.

A population that has come to believe that it is entitled to heavily subsidised food, utilities, transport, fertiliser, and other things (which cannot be funded by what we as a nation currently earn) has created a breed of selfserving politicians who do not understand or care for basic economics and have probably never heard of the Micawber Principle.

If the country spends more than it earns, it will eventually go bankrupt.

How can our country prosper unless our own attitudes change?