System of patronage dies hard | Daily News

System of patronage dies hard

People waiting in a queue to purchase LP Gas.
People waiting in a queue to purchase LP Gas.

People who do two or three jobs — or gigs as they are called in the modern economy — are dehumanized due to the severe pressures on their time. But yet, they used to manage, even if such lifestyles were inconvenient.

However, the regular shortages of essentials have now ensured that they cannot do three jobs simultaneously because a large part of their efforts are spent on queue-standing. What would this era be known as in the future?

That’s unknown, but this would be a historically highlighted period which would be seen as a crossroads faced by the nation.

But the people of the country are culturally attuning themselves to a different lifestyle. Are they essentially docile? Or are they industrious? The people have made a silent contribution to the economy of this country with little help from the policymakers.

Though for example Japanese workers are known to be industrious, the Sri Lankan workforce has been known to be rights-oriented, argumentative, and retiring. This is not a country in which workers have made much political inroads. It’s because the people have distractions — bread and circuses.

Give the people bread and circuses, said a Roman emperor. What if the bread is dear? Then give them circuses. This has been easy in a country where everything including politics is entertainment. However, the bread and circus mantra is no longer workable in this country. This is because politics suddenly for the first time became existential.

NETWORK

There is a considerable amount of female involvement in the current protest movement. It’s because the housewives are not housewives anymore — they are daily wage earners, helpers, caterers and what have you, because that’s the only way they can make ends meet. The country has come to a point where the leadership promises small victories. Such as three meals a day.

Gone are the days when cars were offered as rewards for being patient with politicians and policy. The campaign slogans used to be that voting for us would enable you to buy a ‘cool set of wheels.’

That’s no longer in the equation. Now the promises are much more simple. Stay the course with us, they say, and you would be able to have three meals a day.

However, essentially the system has not imploded. Law and order has not broken down, mostly, even though there are severe strains on the social fabric. What is this down to? Is it due to the discipline of the masses, or the dedication of the Armed Forces, the Police and other arms of law enforcement?

It is partially because Sri Lankans have been used to a political subculture of patronage. Sri Lankans are used to politicians and bureaucrats holding sway, and this has been hard-wired into the system. Today, the political upheaval on the ground is making that system untenable but it is still dying hard — this system of a ‘network of favours.’

ALIGHT

This is the other side of systemic dysfunction that is not talked about when there are political upheavals as significant as what we are facing today. All those who are involved in protests, and political activity of a strident and committed sort today, are talking about major changes to the system.

But yet these very people know it is better if there is somebody in an influential position who can ‘put in a word’ if say a bank loan is being applied for. If a child is to be admitted to a good school, a chit from a politician has been seen as the best way to make that happen.

For a brief moment there may have been people who thought that the recent ‘mob rule’ has secured them the power that they wanted. But then they realized that mobs are easy to crackdown on. This is what has happened today.

Politicians are using the chit system to apprehend some people who they say were attacking their homes and setting their offices alight. This is the chit system turned on its head against the people.

But it is still the chit system. The people need something more than the wrath of the mob against the system.

So far the vast majority are clutching at straws and hoping against hope that there would be a miracle that would bring about systemic change. But the vestiges of the general political order that the country has been used to still remain.

There is a hope that people can construct a superstructure over the structure that remains, and call that a new arrangement which has brought about systemic overhaul. But that in effect is not systemic change. It is an extension of the system of patronage that remains.

How is the system of patronage eradicated? It is best addressed by transitioning the political culture that the people are used to.

But that’s where there is no palpable progress. Even if there are revolutions or uprisings and quasi-uprisings, people in Sri Lanka have been known to always settle back into the usual patronage-system that they were used to.

For example, there was a notion that the uprising of the 1990s would lead to the realization that the youth need a new beginning where jobs etc. are not doled out on the chit system or its equivalent. But after a Youth Commission so-called was appointed and many recommendations considered, the system settled back to the same ways of doing things in short order.

VYING

It seems that the abortive nature of the then uprising was taken as a signal that the system had beaten back a challenge. Politicians became more emboldened and were not at all inclined to reconsider the system of patronage. The system of preferences and preferential votes made it easier for those who acted as the brokers for patronage politics to solidify their positions and dole out the patronage wielded by their political masters with a vengeance.

But yet even as the system became rotten to the core, this veneer became shinier. Even though jobs were doled out on the basis of patronage, the bureaucracy etc. acted as if none of these things had happened and that the system was in fact squeaky clean. It wasn’t — and it would get worse each passing year.

This time around with the events that have transpired after the economic meltdown, there seems to be a sense of shock among the people who were used to all these ingrained systems such as the system of patronage. They may have been used to a system that worked against them fundamentally, but even so, it was a ‘system.’ It was a way of life for most people who did not know any better, and therefore this sudden dysfunction in society is not seen as a means through which new solutions could evolve.

People are caught between wishing for systemic change and wishing also that things would settle back to the ‘normal’ that they were used to. Among the old ways that they want back is the then system of patronage which they were used to ‘working’ with at the bottom end. Even though they were vying for scraps that were ladled out from the head table by politicians, they’d rather have the scraps than have a new clean and merit-respecting system that they were not used to.

Not everyone thinks this way of course, and the youth of today for instance are caught in the crossroads. Perhaps their fathers and uncles and other elders want to see them too settled off comfortably in jobs etc. through the system of patronage, but all of a sudden they find that the entire system has become dysfunctional and is currently waiting for some kind of direction.

The adults are shellshocked, and the youth cannot look up to the adults and can’t quite find the way all by themselves. So never mind the systemic change, there is a political culture-shock that has struck most people and affected them badly. Where they go from here is now an open question.


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