Maithripala, Ranil & The Democratic Aspirations Of The People June 15, 2015 | Filed under: Colombo Telegraph , Opinion | Posted by: COLOMBO_TELEGRAPH By Sumanasiri Liyanage – Sumanasiri Liyanage One of the main reasons why the people in Sri Lanka decided to topple Mahinda Rajapaksa regime on January 8 was its excessively authoritarian character in governance. Hence, people expected more democratic governance from the new regime. What we understand by ‘democratic change’ may be problematic as democracy is, as Wendy Brown says, “among the most contested and promiscuous term in our modern political vocabulary” (Undoing the Demos). She further writes: “In the political imaginary, ‘democracy’ stands for everything from free elections to free markets, from protests against dictators to law and order, from the centrality of rights to the stability of states, from the voice of the assembled multitude to the protect...