Maithripala and the ‘Missing Element’

Majority of those who support Mr. Maithripala Serisena, common candidate for 2015 Presidential Election in Sri Lanka, may not be pleased to hear that ‘something is terribly missing’ in his approach in creating a good governance for future Sri Lanka. Those who want to abolish executive presidency and its organic evil have legitimate reasons to support him, and I too have no objection in restoring democracy and good-governance in the country. But we have temporarily forgotten a significant aspect that decides the future shape of our country where corruption and malpractices have further devastated the living conditions of public. However, more than anything else, ethnic otherness and power devolution cannot simply be put off from the public discourse for immediate strategic reasons. If we forget that important element from the discursive public sphere now, there is no way that it can be debated with its own complexity drawing public attention. We all already know that something important is actually (deliberately) missing in his political approach but we simply disavow it. My effort in this small article is to remind you of the risk of being negligent about what is not debated at this moment as to what should be done in future (if he wins the election) to bring back real democracy.

In modern psychoanalysis, ‘the missing element’ represents Object a; ‘the void at which the symbolic order remains perpetually riven’ (McMillan 2012: 55-56). Here, Object a signals the limit point of symbolic order and its possibility of suture.  In this context, what is missing in Maithripala’s campaign (මෛත්‍රිපාල සහ ‘මගහැරුණු මුලදර්මය’) and his political manifesto is the attention that should be given to the ethnic Other, which historically caused all this catastrophic end that we experience today. The real symbolic order for the nation can be achieved only through a proper power sharing solution which we lacked after independence. One can claim that the silence over the 13th Amendment can be strategic until the election is won, but such strand is misleading and cunning. The reason why I claim it is cunning is that the complexity of this issue is not taken up in the public sphere.   As long as you delay or escape or avoid this issue being taken up argumentatively in the public arena, considering the diverse groups that Maithripala is supported today to win this election, it will be really difficult to take it up later.

ඔබේ අදහස කියන්න...