The politics of paradox

Tentative notes for the present

Antonio Gramsci, from the Prison Notebooks.

This is a moment for political action and this is a moment for a politics of paradox.

Is there an old? Importantly, is there a new? What will the new babe in about 50 years? We do not know.

The new is in the present, and the new is in the future. Our democratic action is about today and is for the future.

Do we raise our voice against the manipulation of the constitution, the wilful readings and misreadings of it? Yes. As Savi Hensman says, “when the powerful tear up the rule book”, violence against the people is not far off. We need to raise our voice, loud and clear against it, for it suits them to tear it up and that is the impasse of the old, through which fascism slips in.

We need to rally our forces and form our own voice too, against the rule book at the same time. For we are not scared of Fascism. We will not let it happen. Reactionary forces like the UNP and the coalition and national government will let it happen, pave way for it with their myopic self-interested politics. With neo-liberal trends overrunning the country without any understanding of where we are at the moment, liberal and neo-liberal forces will assume another face. Fascism will walk in, smoothly, with some protest. Let us not let it happen.

The task ahead:

Do we support a political party that best represents a people’s voice? Yes.

Do we form independent alliances, and form a collective voice against party loyalties and party politics? Yes again.

The mundane and the immediate:

Do we support the action of reconvening of the Parliament? Yes, again, for it is the only representative body we have at the moment. Not heeding it is making way for fascism.

Do we attend UNP rallies? Maybe, yes. Not sure, but will be sympathetic to those who did under the circumstances

Do we attend JVP rallies? Yes, sure, but do so without compromising on people’s demands, policies that do not speak of the minorities, and do not heed democratic practices.

Do we see JVP as the force to align with? Can it be reformed? I seriously doubt it, for it is too much turned toward the centre and is fighting for a place in the centre.

Do we support the TNA? No, but appreciate that it did not cross over.

Do we support the FSP? No. It does not offer anything, either at the centre or the periphery, and will not, until it becomes a truly people’s democratic party.

Do we maintain our critique of these parties and stay outside their platforms and Banners, but support some of the policies? Yes, if that’s the only way.

Do we keep aligned to a politics of the marginal, the minorities, the working class, migrant workers, housemaids, plantation workers, the peasants, the fishing people, the landless and the displaced, women, students and youth? Yes, for they and we are the people.

Sivamohan Sumathy is attached to the Department of English, University of Peradeniya and is a writer, filmmaker and

political subject

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear