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| Sunday, 20 June 2004 |
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The social contract under siege Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake In last week's column, we argued that diverse forms of violence in our society ranging from the knifing of an undergraduate to unruliness among Members of Parliament was the result of the breakdown of the social contract, which alone gives a sense of purpose and thrust to a society and binds its diverse interest groups together.
This is particularly valid in a democracy because no democracy can work if the Opposition does not recognise the fact that a Government has been elected to power for a certain period by the free vote of the people and that the Government should be permitted to carry out the programme of work for which it had received a mandate from the electorate. Conversely, the Government has to respect and recognise the Opposition's right to dissent and oppose the Government in the interests of that section of the electorate which voted for it as long as the Opposition does not resort to extra-parliamentary manoeuvres. In that sense, it is a peculiar situation which has emerged in Sri Lanka today. In power is a Government which has percentage-wise and even in terms of the old first-past-the-post system received a clear majority from the people, but because of the hybrid electoral system with which the country is saddled, has been deprived of a majority in Parliament. On the opposite pole is an Opposition which, although enjoying a majority, cannot form a Government because of the diverse nature of the policies which each Opposition party upholds. Now one would have thought that the very logic of parliamentary democracy would require that the Opposition should permit the Government (although lacking a clear majority) to carry out its mandate. But from the word go, it was clear that the Opposition was intent on taking on an adversarial stance and this was nowhere more evident than in the election of the Speaker where the Government's nominee was beaten by a single vote. No textbook on democratic politics says that the Speaker should belong to the Government party, but in societies such as ours, where antagonistic politics is the norm, this situation will naturally facilitate greatly the work of the House. That Parliament has stultified itself by electing a Speaker from the Opposition (a fear which we expressed in this column at the time) has been borne out by the paralysis which has beset the present Parliament from its inception. The situation has been further compounded by the entry of a political party composed entirely of bhikkhus. The Jathika Hela Urumaya speaks the language of Buddhism, but its political positions are no less adversarial than that of any traditional political party of laymen. It entered Parliament knowing well that it could not form a Government, but it was hoped at the time even by its critics that its MPs would play a restraining role in the context of the highly polarised adversarial politics of our time. But its every move since the General Election has been dictated by narrow political motives and what is more, it has demonstrated that it is not ready to entertain dissidence within its parliamentary ranks by its dubious conduct in the purported resignation of Ven. Kataluwe Ratanaseeha Thera and its unholy haste in trying to induct the Ven. Akmeemana Dayarathana Thera in his place. Here they have shown an instinct for the political jugular which even seasoned lay politicians might envy. Demarcating line In the absence of a social contract which recognises the mutual rights and obligations of the Government and the Opposition and the fine demarcating line between the two, Parliament has reached the stalemate that it has become today. The danger here is that quite apart from Parliament being paralysed, this disunity among the political parties of the South can have far-reaching and deleterious consequences on the proposed negotiations between the Government and the LTTE on the National Question. For whatever settlement is reached between these two parties will have to be placed before the Parliament and the people and at least a broad consensus will be necessary among the Southern political forces if a final agreement is to be reached. It will be widely conceded by dispassionate observers that the erosion of this social contract began with the 1978 Constitution which, instead of introducing a new Constitution through a Constituent Assembly (as it was done in 1972 and is being contemplated today), imposed the Executive Presidency (itself a hybrid of the French and American systems) on the existing Constitution. It was done in a situation where the principal opposition party in the South, the SLFP had been decimated and reduced to eight seats in Parliament and the leading opposition party, the TULF had no interest in Constitution-making which they saw as a Sinhalese game. It is well known that President Jayewardene, the architect and first beneficiary of the 1978 Constitution, wanted a strong Executive, which would not be swayed by the passing winds to which a turbulent legislature could be subject. Hence his decision to abolish by-elections and nominate MPs whenever a vacancy arose, the extreme form of which, of course, was the freezing of the Parliament in its then existing form following the Referendum of 1982. In a political sense therefore, he subordinated the Legislature to the overarching needs of the Executive. The social contract was first breached here because let along the Opposition in Parliament, the social and political forces in the country at large were not prepared for so drastic a tinkering with the democratic political machinery which had hitherto existed in however unsatisfactory a form. When there was strong opposition from the Left political parties and trade unions, these were suppressed by resorting not so much to conventional Police methods, but by recourse to unofficial goon squads. Protests by university students over the Education White Paper introduced by the then Minister of Education Ranil Wickremesinghe were similarly crushed. The Police and Army were used to suppress the acts of anarchism and individual terrorism in the North by Tamil youth who had taken up arms against the State. Open market economy All this was done with the single-minded purpose of ushering in a Singapore-style prosperity through the mechanism of the open market economy and the country's incorporation into the global capitalist economy which was then enjoying its high noon under the twin auspices of President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher. That this chimera was dissipated by the fierceness of the LTTE's rebellion is a different story. The point is that this drastic departure from all the old constitutional structures and democratic parliamentary norms had managed to alienate large sections of society from the mainstream of national life. The Tamils had become disenchanted and marginalised as never before. Large sections of the Southern polity too were driven to the fringes of civic life. This included the politically-conscious sections of the intelligentsia, university students and workers organised in trade unions. Anybody deviating from the straight and narrow path was treated with the Big Stick. This sense of deep-seated alienation was also reflected within Parliament. Parliamentary debates were becoming bitter and acrimonious as never before. The small parliamentary opposition from 1977 to 1988, which was further reduced when the TULF opted out in 1983, was constantly subjected to barracking, jeering and insults by Government ranks. The deprivation of former Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike's civic rights for an offence not defined in any statute was an unprecedented deviation from the norms of decent ethical politics. As a result, politics in Sri Lanka during the last few decades has moved more and more away from that consensus which is the hallmark of the social contract and has become increasingly antagonistic and adversarial. What is more, the present electoral system has ensured that no single political party is able to command a majority on its own so that small parties which represent sectional interests enjoy a power quite disproportionate to their numbers in Parliament. While this can be welcomed as giving a place in the sun to sectional interests, what happens in reality is a sordid game of intrigue to win over the small parties to form a Government, strengthening the feeling among extremist Sinhala sections that the major parties are at the mercy of communal political parties such as the Ceylon Workers Congress or the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress. The entry of sections of the Maha Sangha into Parliament, far from alleviating the tensions in the House, has introduced another point of conflict. If the Sri Lankan polity as a whole is not able to address these issues dispassionately and re-negotiate the social contract, it will be placing the whole process of an open society in jeopardy. |
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