Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

17 November 2021

 

DIFFERENTLY ABLED MINORITY

Disabled is now Differently abled. This would be true because of the way their / our structure is balanced to maintain their/our sovereignty.  Likewise, minorities. Those who feel the pain of discrimination to the extent they have anxiety that their sovereignty is at risk of being damaged would oppose to ensure restoration of their own sovereignty and no more. The rest happens through Natural Justice.

In his– Colombo Telegraph article ‘Non Consultative Decision Making Will Not Work’, Dr Jehan Perera states:

 

“Sri Lanka has a democratic political system in which the weight of numbers predominates through the principle of majority rule. This reflects the popular belief is that majority rule is the primary element of democracy. But this creates a problem with respect for minority rights in all parts of the country.”

 

The parallel of this in terms of an individual would be that the bigger the body, the stronger the power. Up to a point this works. But beyond that it weakens the body, leave alone the mind. Likewise, majority power often breeds complacency. Opposition in democracy is facilitated to practice Equal Opportunity to ensure that majority ‘value’ is kept at 50% of the whole. The smaller the numbers the deeper the powers need to be. Since minorities are limited to smaller areas of influence – it is easier for them to go deeper into their issues, relative to majority who have wider areas of Responsibility. That is the fundamental responsibility of a citizen of minority status. One who fails to do so accepts junior status and therefore assimilates with majority.

Dr Perera goes on to state:

[However, a fundamental feature of a democracy is consultation with the people. As it is impractical to consult with all of the people, the democratic system provides for elected representatives of the people to be consulted. However, this feature has been absent in the constitution making process so far as complaints by government ministers that they are being treated as lamp posts, suggests.]

I disagree. When a citizen votes and the politician receives that vote on the basis of her/his belief in the voter – there is a continuous flow of Energy from the voter to the Politician. Consultation on the other hand would lead to ‘shows of merit’ which would have the effect of slowing down the belief based silent communication. In Resource Management, Performance indicators stem from this silent communication from one owner to another. They do not need proof. This is illustrated as follows:

The NSW Auditor General - Mr. Sendt wrote on 20 November 2003 in response to my Public demand for him to pay his Dues as an Accountant:

Ms Param, I fully understand that auditors are not to participate in the management of the entities they audit. That is basic. What I said in my report is that external financial reports only give a partial view of the performance of many public entities. Such entities are not established to earn a profit or a return on assets, but to provide services to the public. So to give a true and fair view of how well they are providing services, they also produce non-financial performance indicators. If financial reports are required to be audited – to give the public confidence in their accuracy – then so too should the performance indicators. I fail to see how you can state that this is participating in the management of the entity.

Bob Sendt

NSW Auditor General

My response to the above indicates the deep wisdom I have in Audit and Compliance, largely based on my Sri Lankan training:

Thank you Mr. Sendt for  the prompt response. Most progressive organizations produce both – Financial and Non-Financial Performance Indicators. They  are both for MANAGEMENT purposes and reflect the THINKING and WORK_IN_PROGRESS. If you use Performance Indicators – then you are thinking with them. This is like the Executive Government participating in the Judicial process. Your Non-Financial Reports are the Legal records that these organizations are required to maintain – such as the Recruitment and Employee Assessment records. Where there is a big gap between Law and Practice – it requires YOUR staff to do the additional work. Taking the Performance Indicators distracts you away from this work. It is in breach of the Doctrine of Separation of  Powers. These organizations must be allowed to confidentially do the cooking and it’s up to your staff to do the spy work from the finished product to the LAW and not to their dreams and goals. You are seeking the short path because your staff are not trained to find out from the client staff what is going on. Staff often ‘hide’ information from you because you are third party. So they should. That way your staff would improve their skills. Using client-staff’s work-in-progress deters your staff from thinking through their own specialty = AUDIT on the basis of existing LAW. Then we would become a uniform society instead of a diverse society challenging each other – you within the existing law and the operational staff towards tomorrow’s laws. Challenging leads to creativity – as you can see from me. Gandhi also said that the night he was thrown out of the first class compartment of the South African RAILWAYS was his most creative experience.

You need to get the client organization to publish their non-financial reports that are mandatorily maintained. Public service organizations primarily make goodwill. This can also be positive or negative – profits or losses. They are collected together and are balanced with the total costs through Common Funds. It will be useful for you to develop a standard dollar value for these legal requirements so the People can SEE and know the Truth. Your role is not to help them make a profit but to report whether they are and how much. How about doing one on UNSW? Or State Rail?

Thank you again for responding. It has helped deeply.

Regards,

Gaja ( effectively in custody)

Now let us look at the relevant analysis by Dr Jehan Perera:

[The problem on the ground remains that governmental decision making has failed to be pluralistic on both symbolic and substantive matters of importance to the minority communities. This is primarily due to the structures of the state failing to discourage ethnic majoritarianism whether at the central level or provincial level. So far the Sri Lankan state has not been prepared to shift away from a system of government in which an ethnic and religious majority can decide on behalf of minorities. This is due to the absence of understanding of democracy as being a consultative process with all of the citizenry and not just with the majority who have voted the government to power. It is this unresolved problem that has made the minorities question their status in the country which needs to be resolved early for the progress of the country. The expert committee needs to deal with this challenge prior to releasing their draft constitution. Or else, the opposition generated by the Presidential Task Force on One Country, One Law is likely to be replicated on a larger scale.]

The majority who voted for the government are taken as the group that empowers the government directly. If the government catered to minorities then they would fail as a democratic government and would start developing minority government mentality. It is the duty of minority in Opposition to develop their alternate system without acting in breach of the existing law. Reliable Administration leads to this. Below is an Australian experience in this regard:

Tamil Diaspora leader 1 – said in relation to Immigrants: When John Howard PM of Australia spoke about boat people, Bob Hawke former PM of Australia said "we are all boat people ", that was a very good hit , Bob Hawke was a Rhodes scholar 

The above is the parallel of Jehan’s ‘consultation process. I responded as follows to show how to open the pathway of Belief:

Gaja: I used my pain to sue John Howard for not acting as per my complaints of racial discrimination. I lost the case because the government hired expensive lawyers. But my work got raised to Energy level because mine was genuine and I believed that he was ultimately responsible. The genuine believer’s pain has exponential power. John Howard was defeated due to my pain also. We must pool pain to defeat unjust politicians

At the same time, Mr Philip Ruddock who regularly responded to my communications when he was Attorney General retained his seat and continued to be in Parliament. Mr Howard’s punishment was the parallel of Mrs Bandaranaike losing her civil rights through Parliament’s majority vote. The Australian action confirmed successful democracy at voter level. A voter who is more democratic than the elected member of government is a Governor. Hence the promotion of My Government philosophy.

Dr Jehan Perera states:

[The manner of work of the expert committee corresponds to the general government working style of not being consultative but engaging in top-down decision making, by trusted insider groups with only a minimum of consultation outside that insider group. However, a fundamental feature of a democracy is consultation with the people. As it is impractical to consult with all of the people, the democratic system provides for elected representatives of the people to be consulted. However, this feature has been absent in the constitution making process so far as complaints by government ministers that they are being treated as lamp posts, suggests.]

This then opens the pathway of ‘protests’ by the People – which is already happening from various angles. The Mahinda Rajapaksa government knows the power of this. Hence their reconciliatory actions during the past few weeks. That is a strong indicator that the internal war is behind us and that the minorities have become true Equals. This confirms the real success of democracy where minorities are differently structured Equals – proceeding towards self governance.

By the way – as an active writer who gets space in mainstream media – has Dr Jehan Perera raised his voice in favour of differently abled writers like myself? When the answer is ‘yes’ then his work would naturally defeat the government and promote the Opposition.