SAARC Summit Stuck to Status Quoism

The 15th SAARC Summit due to be held in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo from August 1-3 will definitely be a ritual practice as it has for 23 years. The reason is clear: no new leadership change has occurred to replace the corrupt and change-resisting ruling cliques in the SAARC member countries.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), consisting of Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Maldives, India and Bhutan, was set up in 1985 with a good vision of making South Asia a prosperous and democratically civilized region.

Things opposite the vision have happened: only ruling class members and their affiliates have become prosperous while the majority have grown needy. Instead of getting democratically civilized, the South Asian politics has grown wilder and massacre-oriented. Again, the reason is apparent: resistance against change options and forceful maintenance of status quoism.

Despite a good vision, every SAARC Summit has been an elite gathering that periodically attempts to quell mass discontent in the South Asian countries through renewed paper commitments and declarations.

However, commitments and declarations repainted every Summit have not but substantially damaged peoples' belief in the ways South Asian democracy functions.

South Asian democracy tightly held by elitists, status quoists and feudal war lords has been highly miscultured in the form of man-hunt-man enterprise that gives impetus to anarchy and ultra-individualism.

The growing anarchy and ultra-individualism in South Asia have put human rights at apparent risks. In this region, political leaders, insensitive towards mass sufferings, illicitly amass wealth and shamelessly lie to their peoples.

Moreover, most of the South Asian countries have been going through political instability for several decades. Their political exercises have generally been degenerated to the level of family quarrels.

Unforgettable in the South Asian politics is the growing criminalization of political mindset. The political nexus with international smuggling and criminal networks, as analysts believe, has heightened impunity to an alarming level.

Although South Asian elite rulers have been talking about terrorism in their recent Summits, they have never been able to say what terrorism is and how to combat it. They have appeared to have copied the Pentagon rhetoric as far as their speeches about terrorism are concerned.

In fact, South Asian elite rulers have mostly been terrorized by the change-seeking voices of the working class people, who are the greatest terrorists' to them.

As the working class people are the greatest 'terrorists' to the South Asian ruling classes, they agree to unite against the working class voices that demand human rights and democracy.

Thus, SAARC Summit is stuck to status quoism as the establishments are against genuine changes. They work to change their own lives better.

However, South Asian peoples can learn enough to generate and culture transformative leaderships capable of changing peoples' lives better. This is a positive potential with the South Asian masses.

First published in www.groundreport.com/mohannepali