Shadowy Opposition

If the Government, in appointing a new Governor for the Central Bank, finally got itself out of an embarrassing tangle the previous week, the Opposition now finds itself in a bind. Well, if not the official parliamentary Opposition, at least the group of UPFA dissident MPs who call themselves the 'Joint Opposition'. This newspaper yet awaits a kind clarification of 'joint', a word which has many connotations none of which could apply to the dissident group.

In a strict sense, the move last week by the dissident UPFA group to 'appoint' a Shadow Cabinet, should embarrass the Opposition as a whole, including the official Opposition. After all, it is a 'best practice' in Westminster-style parliamentary tradition, for the Opposition to maintain a Shadow Cabinet. The Westminster tradition, however, envisages the largest Parliamentary Opposition party forming such a Shadow Cabinet that ensures that their most capable MPs are allotted ministries in accordance with their skills and special interests. In the Sri Lankan case today, it was not the official Opposition that has formed this Shadow Cabinet.

On the one hand, a 'shadow cabinet' attempts to mirror the Government's operational framework in governing the country, thereby enabling the Opposition, especially those 'Shadow Ministers' to learn from the experience of governing according to that framework. It enables Opposition MPs to hone their skills in governance by watching the effectiveness of that particular framework, including that specific choice and line-up of portfolios.

On the other hand, a Shadow Cabinet enables a targeted and systematic monitoring of the various arms of government, including all the key ministries and agencies, in an immediate sense.

This direct one-to-one monitoring of ministries and other executive activity provides, firstly, the citizenry with a constant assessment and critique of on-going governance. Secondly, such immediate critique in Parliament will actually help the Government learn from its mistakes and improve governance.

The official Opposition, led by the TNA and JVP, is itself in an embarrassing position now that more marginal elements in the parliamentary Opposition, namely the UPFA dissidents - many of whom actually have one foot in Government - have, on their own, formed a Shadow Cabinet leaving out the main 'official' Opposition parties. While any group in Opposition has the freedom to appoint its own Shadow Cabinet, in the Sri Lankan case it is the most marginal group, whose members are actually part of a political coalition in Government, which has formed a Shadow Cabinet.

From this perspective, the sheer disunity of the parliamentary Opposition is exposed. It says volumes about the political clout of the TNA and JVP that they have not been able to steer the Opposition collectively towards common strategies for such a task. The TNA and JVP owe it to their constituencies to explain as to why THEY have not set up a Shadow Cabinet for effective governance monitoring.

They must explain how they could, instead, allow a spuriously appointed Shadow Cabinet that is not representative of the official Opposition.

While the official Opposition has its explaining to do to its constituents, the unofficial Opposition group which calls itself the 'Joint Opposition' has now found that its own leader or mentor, the former President and Kurunegala MP Mahinda Rajapaksa, whom it announced as 'shadow Prime Minister', has backed out. The Shadow Cabinet, so auspiciously announced, has not lasted two days.

How can citizens have faith in a mechanism that, clearly, was set up in a shadowy manner, since its presumed head has rejected it while another shadow minister has also swiftly declined his portfolio.

At the same time, there is considerable doubt about the capacities of some of the shadow ministers to fulfil their expected roles.

The very manner in which the Shadow Cabinet seems to have been formed, including the quick withdrawal of the Cabinet head himself along with another 'minister', does not seem at all like the Westminster 'best practice' that it claims to emulate.

What the country, as a whole, sees is a Parliamentary Opposition that is quite divided and is not 'oppositional' in a general sense but only in selected ways according to each group's interests. On the one side, the largest single group in Opposition is actually a set of MPs whose political party is part of the Government. And this group is most concerned not so much with a constant and sustained critique of Government but with the legal and political survival of its members and particularly that of a political family whose head continues to be their mentor even as he and his family also struggle for political survival.

On the other hand, the official Opposition lacks the numerical strength to also maintain a strong critique of government and to give adequate leadership to the various oversight mechanisms in the legislature.

The citizenry, however, may take comfort that by their own choice, the new government is a coalition of the two, traditionally rival, major national political parties - namely the SLFP and UNP - and this has, to date, enabled internal criticism within Government and also ensured a degree of transparency that, as the past shows, cannot be guaranteed under a monolithic one-party government.

Such are the vagaries of liberal democracy.