Many, many people have been having their say and offering their opinions on this: in newspaper columns, on digital platforms, on panel discussions and all kinds of groups and symposia. My own opinion is that we get the leaders we elect, and we bear the consequences of their choices: we, who choose those who lead us.
If we have chosen our leaders on emotional grounds, rather than rational principles, and if we have elected ministers who are not qualified or even concerned to make effective choices for the benefit of the country, the dire consequences will teach us to choose differently in future. Not only to choose different people, but to choose leaders on more informed grounds, and with clearer awareness of the direct impact of bad choices, on we who choose.
This is not easy to do, given the far from rigorous and transparent selection process by which people empowered to make decisions which affect the nation have been appointed. The quality of the ministerial candidates, their level of education, their life experience, their codes of conduct, their track record in work, their contribution to the country, their moral integrity - are all being considered now, after the fact, as if for the first time. Are those who represent us, truly representative of us?
What many ministers have in common seems to be a heightened sense of their rights and entitlements, rather than awareness of their responsibilities to the country and their fellow citizens. We have seen on video the low level of personal conduct indulged in by many of them even in public: violence, both physical and verbal, sexism, loss of equanimity, arrogance and disrespect. This conduct is unbecoming: and I don’t just mean that it looks bad. Conduct like this in their position as representatives of the country will literally result in their own discredit, and the undermining of respect for the office they hold.
What has been going on - in a drawn out and messy and colorful way - since the end of April this year has been a vocal demand for change - not only in terms of specific personnel but in the political processes and structures of governance by which they rule, and the extent of the damage they can cause in their term of leadership.
The economic crisis which is bedevilling the citizenry in multiple ways is felt differentially, but it is felt by all. The rise in opportunistic crime, the reluctance of overseas investors to commit themselves in a situation where they don’t know if their investments will be misused, or misappropriated, the breakdown of public health services and the closing down of small and medium enterprise businesses are all symptoms of the underlying condition: system failure.
Faced with total societal collapse, and with no power to change things and no rescue remedy in sight, many people resort to escapism of different kinds.
An interesting case study of this occurred last week, when former MP Hirunika Premachandra led a protest outside the Prime Minister’s private residence. The media, instead of highlighting the reason for the protest itself, chose to publish photos of this lady which focused on her saree blouse and the parts of her body which it contained. The populace, their sexism and misogyny uppermost, were effectively distracted.
Truly, the curse of superficiality is afflicting every aspect of this nation.
Ms. Premachandra’s own fighting response, graphic in its detailed references to breastfeeding, was published on her social media platforms, and was much praised by some sections of the public:
‘I am proud of my breasts! I breastfed three beautiful kids. I nurtured them, comforted them and dedicated my whole body for them. I am sure people who make fun of my exposed breasts (due to the clash with the police) also sucked their mothers’ nipples until (it’s) raw when they were infants.
Anyway, when you are done talking, making memes and laughing about my breasts, there was ANOTHER civilian died in a queue... Just so you know!’
Her comment shows her awareness of the national tendency to resort to crude humor and trifling irrelevancy. The initial point of her protest was engulfed by misogynist mockery on social media, which led the PM, against whom she was protesting, to speak up to paradoxically protect her against their insults.
The Daily Mirror quoted the PM as saying that ‘motherhood should not be insulted in a decent society’, and described him as making an ‘appeal to the social media activists and users not to publish photos of Hirunika Premachandra who is a mother of three, causing insult to her.’
Motherhood is indeed a sacred concept. It is also a central pillar of patriarchy, in which women’s worth and value are defined by (and limited to) their capacity to bear children. It is fused with nationalism in countries like Sri Lanka, which many proudly call their ‘Motherland’. Yet in this same country which apparently holds mothers in such respect, the violence against women and girls is one of the highest in the world. Would she be entitled to less respect if she had fewer children, or more respect if she had more children?
Ms. Premachandra is also famous for hugging police personnel in the course of their duties. This may seem like a trivial point, until one notices that the former FLOTUS, Michelle Obama, was also noted for her warm (and inclusive) hugs during public engagements. She even describes herself as ‘Hugger In Chief’ on her public Twitter profile. In her husband’s term of office, Ms. Obama was described as ‘looking like a man’ and also criticised for working out at the gym and revealing her toned upper arms in sleeveless tops and dresses. Her husband, approving of his wife’s commitment to personal health and fitness, and clearly proud of her physique, commented she had the ‘right to bare arms’. A comment that, in the context of recent debate in that country regarding gun law reform, does not seem very humorous, today.
We can see how fertile women and virile men are made into icons in global popular culture. Anthropologists and sociologists and biologists all over the world can explain the reason why. But in the world of contemporary social media, these attributes are augmented on media platforms, and then decried and debased by an army of reliable professional detractors, fuelled by predictable and easily manipulated social bias, and a malicious desire for petty mischief. Would we prefer to be hugged - or hurt? Hit up or shut down?
Years ago, I heard of an old Sinhalese village story in which an elderly mother rebuked her son, who had recently been given an important position in their region, as an overseer of food distribution during a time of famine. This lady, fainting with hunger, stood in a queue along with everyone else, and petitioned her son for food. He, acutely aware in a way no minister seems to be today, that he would be held accountable for any favouritism shown to his relatives, said she would be allocated exactly the same amount of measured rice as everyone else. The lady then shamed him by calling out in the public assembly, asking if she, his mother, had ever measured the life giving milk she had fed him from her breasts.
Ms. Premachandra may - in her defence - be invoking her right to the only respect this society accords women: the rights of a mother, the giver of life. But women and girls are entitled to respect no matter what their marital status is, or whether they have children or not.
In a more representative and modern political and governance process, where there would be far greater female participation and many more female ministers and leaders of corporations, winning public respect through their effective leadership, such situations would not occur - in which women are routinely trivialized and the valid concerns of the public requesting better leadership are continually diminished.
As in any failing system, whether a human body, or a sociopolitical one, many negative factors have become normalized. We would need to intervene and rapidly normalize some positives if we want to see some change for the better.
