Thread by @yudhanjaya

Notes from watching all this protest footage: actual people's protests / rallies in #SriLanka are usually far smaller than political party rallies.
Suggests multiple things:
1. Political parties have serious protest infrastructure (comms, money/incentives)

2. Very little of this protest infrastructure was actually used for the #gohomerajapakses protests. We have a few parties stepping in, such as SLMC in Addalaichenai, but none of the usual SJB/JVP shenanigans. Either these politicos, when push comes to shove, are afraid...

... or they are simply not smart tor competent enough to carpe diem.
3. Political protests are largely theatre, a trading of time in exchange for money, usually achieved by bussing in large numbers of people to a central location to give the impression of popular support.

4. None of the so-called opposition is actually opposed enough to give a damn (or they are devastatingly incompetent). This bodes ill for the next elections.

5. Even traditional protest organisers (for example, the IUSF) are absent from the arena. We've seen more action from them in response to private universities going up.

6. There is one possible alt hypothesis here (or than complicity or incompetence): nobody wants to take charge.
Like it or not, hard times are coming. @TeamWatchDog we've been predicting a decade-long recovery phase required, with serious reforms.

7. So maybe nobody wants to be in a position where they have to make hard calls. But this brings us back to my original point: why bother running for power if the only thing you are really good at is PR? Why crave the throne if you cannot make hard decisions?

8. I can only conclude that our system of political incentives in #SriLanka is completely stupid.
Not only do we incentivise cronyism and nepotism, we consistently select the best PR people. Not the best administrators. We optimise purely for public image.

9. And over the decades it's gotten so bad that the PR people themselves confuse their own PR skill with their admin capacity. In simple terms, this would be like the copywriter for a company believing themselves to be a product engineer because they wrote the marketing copy.

10. All they can really do is doodle away waiting for someone to come up with a product (an image of Sri Lanka, a plan, a vision) they can sell (to the people of Sri Lanka).
(Not shitting on copywriters, mind: been one myself. This is an analogy).

11. This is not just a failure of the Rajapaksa regime. We're talking multiple political parties, multiple governments, hundreds and thousands of people whose only real ability is to speak really loudly in front of a microphone.

12. This system can never produce anyone competent, except as outliers or accidents.
To dispel popular rhetoric, there is no 'king' or 'righteous leader' that emerges from this test. Such a creature would be woefully outclassed in this PR game.

13. Maybe all we can do is strengthen the institutions that prevent the ultimate winners from fucking up too hard, and keep going from fuck-up to fuck-up. Laws, journalism, courts that are the equivalent of a rubber room around clown central.