The regular policymaker-profile has changed after the ascension of this Government. There is no doubt that a cohort of administrators and policymakers hitherto left out of the loop when it came to exercising power, are now at the helm of affairs.
Most of the individuals comprising this brand new slate of State policymakers and administrators were hitherto marking time in the peripheries, or were not in the running at all when it came to administrative or policymaking posts.
Today, those who have been marginalised before due perhaps to a myriad of reasons, which may include their schools, castes and regional affiliations, are in the saddle.
The now time worn work by various authors on some of the reasons for the insurgencies of 71 and 89, indicates that there was an educated but marginalised group of persons who were essentially drawn to these ill-advised putsches for power. The recently deceased Victor Ivan, former JVP frontliner, has written how the underprivileged were hamstrung, by many considerations including regional affiliation and caste.
firebrands
These firebrands could be identified often, even by their names. There were the names that were uncommon in general parlance, the Gamanayakes, the Uyangodas and the Bopages.
Some would say that to identify a cohort that was starting to strain at the leash, is to create a romantic sounding revolutionary myth. They would say it is a ‘mythisisation’ borne out of an isolated set of facts. But the existence of this cohort of persons, University educated perhaps, and struggling against the established order, is incontrovertible.
Today, this cohort of persons plays a lead role in administration. This week saw the passing of Ken Balendra formerly of John Keels, and Harry Jayawardena of Aitken Spence and Stassens. These people were a world away from the cohort that now runs the country, a hitherto unrecognised group of people, who at best were confined to a few academic spaces, TV discussions, and inter-party parleys.
Now, these names are at the helm. The holders of such family names are for the most part recognisable as folk that were not mainstream in the past. Does the ascension of this new cohort, signify the breaking of a (class?) glass ceiling?
It does, and it does more than that. This cohort represents people who have always thought of themselves as deserving but left out. They were only aspirational people, if the reader would get the drift. If they harboured a sense of grievance, it was because their circumstances always left an unfulfilled legacy down the line, generation after generation, no matter how aspirational they had become due to education, and other acquired attributes.
Is this cohort diffident, even shy and retiring maybe? When in power, they may be. When in takeover mode, when they fought so many campaigns styling themselves as a Movement and not a mere political party, these people were the quintessential outsiders.
Now, they are in power. They have acquired power by perseverance, and are acutely aware that the system that yielded power to them is resentful, at least sometimes on a class basis. They are also aware that industry, or the commercial world is still helmed by the Balendra and Harry Jayawardena types.
To that extent, there is a mismatch between who wields power, and who still holds its levers. This is not to say that all the important levers of power are held by the captains of industry so called, who still have those ‘recognisable names.’ But, there is still a tug o’ war between those who have yielded power to hitherto marginalised folks, and those of the old wealthier class cohort that continues to dominate business and trade.
But the most important question for the people is whether those who were hitherto in the academic niche — not by choice — could perform now that they are in power? The revolution they have mounted is essentially silent. There is no noise being made about the fact that there is an ascendency of a new cohort, that was always eager, but never got the chance to prove themselves.
In the rural and semi-rural environs where most of these folk hail from, the people they represent may be extremely familiar to them, and vice versa. These voters may be stunned to have some persons of their own class, or their own regional and societal background, being in power.
This is probably why a lot of questions are being asked. Are these new persons in the saddle too shy to wield the power they have, or too self-conscious? On the flip side, it is asked, do they have the confidence, or do they need the confidence?
articulation
It is presumed, the new folks in power have decided to answer all of these questions by their actions rather than through articulation. They will not probably take the bait of having to be judged against the considerable baggage that society thinks, comes with their background.
They have also had to work seamlessly with the established elite in the corridors of power.
This latter breed is not entirely extinct, even though now they are a rarified commodity. But people seem to always be judging the new people, as if to say, you with those unfamiliar names have to prove yourselves ten times better to stand a chance.
Well, that may be an exaggeration, but the reader gets the drift. But this is not a game of cricket. When the new pace bowling daredevils such as Lasith Malinga took the cricketing world by storm, their backgrounds became back-stories at best.
But power, raw exercise of State power, is a different ballgame altogether. Class undercurrents and the perceived divide between the moneyed and the usurper class, makes for much more interesting and much understated outcomes.
Of course, civil servants, scientists, decision makers and economists have hailed from the same backgrounds as the folk now essentially running the country. But hitherto, these folk were not manning the policymaking and policy implementation apparatus in such large numbers.
Now, the world is their oyster, or so the commentators say. But there is hardly a blip on the radar. People see that the expected earthquake did not happen. There has been a seamless transfer of power, instead.
This has made the analysts watch the situation harder, and sort of made them curiouser and curiouser. They want to know if all these new people with the new and somewhat strange names, comprising that cohort from hitherto semi-vocal academic dovecotes, could shed their diffidence, the weight of their underprivileged backgrounds, and come into their own.
For their part, the voters are unrelenting. For them, nomenclature changes don’t matter, and who does what in which job is only by way of distant detail. Those who have come into new positions seem to be acutely aware of that aspect of their reality.
It is why they are not making an advertisement of who they are. There is no loud message about a revolution, a silent one or otherwise. People don’t ask questions about the background of the persons who decide on their foreign policy or domestic policy, they just seem to want good results.
This is unfamiliar terrain in a way for the new cohort that is in power. Their background — their back-story — always preceded them, in whatever they did. Now this situation suddenly seems not to obtain any more, and that, of course, would have been a good thing, except that history would factor in the details of how a new cohort, out from the cold as it were, performed when challenged to do so.
These are interesting times indeed. While history is being written about how a class transformation took place, and how the entire society was greeted by a shockwave of change after an economic meltdown, there is still the challenge of performance.
Will the voters see that their lot improves? They would want to make sure that if there was a revolution, it was not confined to image, and that it made a real difference in their pocketbooks, that place where all revolutions are germinated, no matter who leads the Movement at a given time.
