KARACHI:
On 14 November, a fight broke out in the Sri Lankan Parliament. When the Speaker tried to call a vote, a group of MPs heckled him and rushed the podium. A rival faction tried to push the hecklers back. Men traded punches. One brandished a knife; and a lawmaker managed to cut himself trying to steal the Speaker’s microphone and ended up in the hospital.
The chaos was the result of a constitutional crisis that erupted in October, when the country’s president, Maithripala Sirisena, tried to oust the then PM and replace him with a former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa. Lawmakers and citizens protested while Sirisena dissolved the Parliament, until the Supreme Court ruled his decision as unconstitutional. The stalemate finally broke in December when Sirisena reinstated the deposed PM, Ranil Wickremesinghe, in the face of concerted opposition from the judiciary and the parliament.
Until recently, Sri Lanka, one of Asia’s oldest democracies, seemed to be moving in a safe direction. The country’s bloody civil war had ended in 2009, and its 2015 election seemed to signal a new phase of liberalisation. Violence and unrest had subsided, militaries had left the streets and returned to their barracks, and major insurgencies were contained. But even today democratic gains are less secure than they appear. The façade of democracy, that most other countries in South Asia are also holding up, has disillusioned the citizens. They continue to believe in a false democratic reality even though an indirect authoritarian rule still persists in the country.
Mohammad Usman
Islamabad
Published in The Express Tribune, November 25th, 2020.
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