Black Swans in Sri Lanka

Well! Swans are not species of Lanka. (I have to confess that I’m not an expert on study of birds, so there may be something that I don’t know about birds in Sri Lanka). Anyway, I relate my post this time to the recent developments that took place in the Sri Lankan political landscape. Also I guess this may be the answer to my friend from UAE who was enquiring me about the recent developments (he’s keen as he is heavily invested in Sri Lankan capital markets!). I prefer to not write about politics due to many reasons, but I have to accept the fact that it’s part of our everyday endeavors and hence can’t be just ignored.

In an unprecedented move, as the ruling government announced early presidential elections, the General Secretary of the ruling president’s party as well as the Health minister of the government defected the party to join forces with others to contest as the presidential (Common) candidate. It should be emphasized that this incident was never predicted by anyone, the event in fact carries a massive impact and finally now we concoct that it was more predictable than it was. As a matter of fact, these three principal characteristics makes the event qualified to be called A BLACK SWAN, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb pointed out in his award winning book “the Black Swan”. As per Taleb, Black Swans are:

• Outliers, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations (the question who is the common candidate was never answered until defection of ruling party member);
• It carries an extreme impact (this event had the extreme impact of shaking the ruling party and invigorating all the opposition parties and their sentiments and has the potential to even topple the ruling government. Also the event has changed drastically the investor sentiment in the CSE); and
• In spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable (also called as retrospective predictability).

History’s repetition of itself!                                                                                                        

I wonder for myself, when I look at Sri Lankan politics, that it’s true that history repeats. 

Further, What we dealt with over the last few years and currently dealing with in terms of politics is a result of the opposition’s inability to play a formidable role over the past decade or so inasmuch as we say it is the fault of the ruling regime (another way to look at the same problem, I guess).  

I narrate my expectation via the 2010 movie Black Swan the plot of which can be read here.

I hope that if the common candidate becomes the president of Sri Lanka in January next year that he remains a White Swan rather than becoming a Black Swan who is not acting on behalf of the citizens but the people who surrounded him to be appointed as the president. (Because we know that the people around him have shown that they were utter failures as leaders of this nation). Or if the current regime continues that the opposition exert the same pressure on the regime to act for the benefit of the citizens. (As they are doing right now). 

As the saying in Sinhalese go “INGURU DEELA MISRIS GATHTHA WAGE” or in English “like, getting chili to replace ginger”, I hope we as the constituents in the country will not have to face something like this by replacing ruling president with the common candidate. ( if that was the wish of the majority of voters) Why I’m saying this is because all this time we tried to replace existing with the hope of a better outcome which never happened. (we ended up in even worse situations). 

Bottomline

I hope for nonviolent resistance leading to peaceful transition to the desired state which ensures law and order, inculcates good governance, drives economic growth, maintains peaceful environment in the country, etc.