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| Sunday, 27 June 2004 |
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Prising open the closed political system by Ajith Samaranayake How does President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga compare with the
previous holders of this office? What defining characteristics The most relevant fact here, of course, is that the Executive Presidency itself was something of a novelty, if not a freak occurrence, imposed on the country through the indomitable will of one man, the first President His Excellency Junius Richard Jayewardene, to give him his full name, so amply reflective of the era which produced him and the tastes of the urban upper middle class to which he was born. Mr. Jayewardene did not make any secret of the fact that he desired to depart from the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy which was an article of faith for the political class of his time and generation and wanted a Presidency which would not be swayed by the winds of change blowing in from a turbulent Parliament. He believed that it was only such a Presidency which would be able to bring about radical change of a type which might well be subverted by a legislature which would be exposed to the populist influences of the day. Even if one is charitable to President Jayewardene and believes that what he envisaged was something on the lines of a benevolent despotism, what he produced in actuality was a type of constitutional authoritarianism. By abolishing by-elections and perpetuating the Parliament elected in 1977 through the Referendum of 1982, he ensured that he would act unfettered upto 1988 when he completed his second term and gave way to his successor, President Ranasinghe Premadasa. Virulent violence President Premadasa inherited a country which in his own picturesque Sinhala idiom which was so much his hallmark was burning at both ends ('depaththen avulunu vilakkuvak' literally meaning a torch lit at both ends which conveys the earthy Sinhala meaning better). The Indian Peace Keeping Force had been brought to contain the LTTE in the North and East, but this had given rise to a fresh outburst of virulent violence on the part of the Tigers. In the South, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna had taken advantage of the resentment against the Indians to start a campaign of violence which had virtually brought the conventional organs of State security to its knees. In these circumstances, Mr. Premadasa (who anyway encountered the hostility of the traditional UNP elite) was driven to resort to populist political and economic measures, somewhat departing from the neo-capitalist prescriptions of his predecessor, in a bid to win over the JVP while in an attempt to woo the LTTE, he asked the Indians brusquely to leave Sri Lanka and began negotiations with the Tigers. Both Presidents Jayewardene and Premadasa had subordinated the processes of parliamentary democracy and an open society to their goals of economic prosperity based on open market economic policies and liberalisation of trade, diverting sharply from the Welfare State which had been the cornerstone of the post-independence Sri Lankan state both under the UNP and SLFP regimes. That their vision was blurred by domestic rebellions which had brought the whole social process virtually to the point of collapse is a different story and forms a sub-plot of our national tragedy. But the point is that in 1994 when Mrs. Kumaratunga first became Prime Minister and later President (after the lacklustre but restful interregnum of President Wijetunga), she had to first address herself to the question of restoring parliamentary democracy and an open society which had been so mercilessly mauled by the first two Presidents. That she largely managed to accomplish this within the constraints of the Third Eelam war begun by the LTTE and the neo-capitalist economic and social policies imposed on her by her predecessors is little appreciated by her critics. To the National Question which was the dominant issue of the day, she brought an objective outlook based on the recognition of the rights of the Tamil people which deviated sharply, not merely from the prevailing Sinhala politics of the day, but also those of her own SLFP. The Constitution which she offered has been recognised by dispassionate observers as the most far-reaching settlement offered to the Tamil people by any Sinhala political regime. Revanchist capitalist order On the economic front, she would have liked an open economy with a more human face, but here she was hedged in by the forces and agencies of a revanchist capitalist order whose writ ran unchallenged all over the globe. What is more, her every action and those of her Government were being meticulously scrutinised by the print and electronic media which had been spawned as never before by the advent of her Government. It is pertinent to keep in mind in this context that the licence to telecast and broadcast news to the private television and radio stations had been given for the first time by her first Media Minister the late Dharmasiri Senanayake. That she had to steer her ship through the rocks and shoals of a renewed war and a rejuvenated parliamentary opposition with only a single-seat majority behind her was a testimony to her political instincts. That she did offer a path-breaking constitutional settlement to the Tamil people and restored the institutions of an open society was a testimony to her statesmanship. That she was able to juggle these disparate and often mutually irreconcilable factors was a testimony to her dexterity. Now in her second term (interrupted by the two-year UNF interlude), she faces the challenge of completing her mission though stymied by a Parliament in which she still lacks a majority. The National Question continues to be the dominant issue and while real negotiations have still to get off the ground, she brings to this major problem of the day the political seriousness and the non-communal outlook which has always characterised her position on this issue. On the economic front, while the open market economy remains dominant, her second Presidency can be expected to be marked by a less accommodating stance towards the rigid conditionalities laid down by the aid-giving agencies and a revised outlook towards neo-liberal economic prescriptions. In both instances, the fact that the JVP, which has been responsible for two anti-systematic assaults, is part of her Government and for the first time part of the political mainstream is of vital significance. Here she has further extended the democratic political space which she began during her first tenure. Naturally like any leader, she has not been without her flaws. On a personal level, these have been her idiosyncratic ways and lack of punctuality while on a political level, she has not always been able to keep in check some of her more exuberant Cabinet Ministers, MPs and other supporters. She has been assailed by her critics for not dismantling the Executive Presidency as she promised, but even her most partisan critics will concede that she has not been guilty of excessive use of presidential powers as some of her predecessors. Anyway, all these have been leavened by her personal charm and her spontaneity of spirit which are in sharp contrast to the staid ways which we normally associate with venerable heads of state. Defining characteristics But to return to the yardsticks which we cited at the beginning, what have been President Kumaratunga's defining characteristics as President and how does she measure against her predecessors? There is no doubt that while she has not abolished the Executive Presidency, she has softened its sharper edges by seeking to open up the closed political system of the late 1970s and 1980s and extend the frontiers of the open society. The rapid expansion of the privately-owned media and the active intervention of civil society groups and lobbies in the polity were the direct result of these actions. There is a greater public debate than ever before on the issues of the day. Herself reared in a social democratic tradition and a liberal political and social culture, President Kumaratunga has sought to take Sri Lanka back to her liberal democratic roots withered by the authoritarian rule of nearly two decades and restore consensual politics. Paradoxically enough, the very criticisms and attacks (sometimes of a venomously personal nature) that she has to face are the measure of this freeing and opening up of a closed and claustrophobic system in which President Kumaratunga can take some pardonable personal pride. However, a word of caution on the new restraints she faces might not be inappropriate. The lack of a clear-cut majority in Parliament means that the President will have to extend the parameters of her consensual politics. She will have to accommodate the Opposition just as the Opposition will have to reciprocate her. This reaching out to the opposing political forces will enhance rather than diminish her reputation. |
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has she
brought to bear on the office of President and in what way has she
influenced the course of Sri Lanka's history during her tenure? These are
surely pertinent questions on the occasion of her 59th birth anniversary,
which falls on Tuesday the 29th, and her second tenure of office as the
President of the Republic.
