By Tisaranee Gunasekara
"History is the cruellest of the goddesses and she drives her triumphal car over heaps of corpses, not only in war but also in peaceful economic development".
— Fredrick Engels

K. W. Dayananda of Akmeemana was a UNP activist who was killed by the JVP in the run up to the Presidential election of 1988. According to the evidence of his widow, Mrs. Greta Kodituwakku Abeysirigunawardene (34), on 6th Dec. 1988 a group of about 15 people came to her house. "Witness recalled that one of them pulled her husband by his hair and took him outside... The following morning they got information that he was killed on the bund... She went and saw the dismembered body of her husband lying in the marsh, his eye missing, minus teeth, his body bearing deep cuts and a gaping bullet wound on his chest. Besides his body was a poster and witness remembered someone read it giving the reasons for her husband’s killing as voting for the traitorous UNP government, holding office in the government party and for supporting the Presidential election. No Bhikku attended the funeral rites as they too had been threatened." (Daily News 2.7.91).

That was the JVP in 1988/89, meteing violent punishment to anyone who took part in any electoral contest - as contender, activist or voter. Prins Gunasekara in his book ‘A Lost Generation - The Untold Story’ states how the JVP "put out posters threatening to kill the first voter who dared to exercise his/her vote on the polling day, Dec. 19. This threat was carried out on the December 19 at certain polling stations, where a dead body with gun shot injuries was thrown in front of the polling booth" (p. 484).

Today as the country prepares for its first election in the 21st Century, the JVP has become a stern and uncompromising critic of all forms of election violence. A happy turnaround indeed, though this metamorphosis would have been far more credible had the JVP uttered a word of self criticism of its policy during the Provincial Council, Presidential and Parliamentary elections of 1988-89. However this amnesiac conduct in no way justifies the use of violence against the JVP today. (Ironically many of those PA politicians who attempt to condone/excuse the recent killing of an unarmed JVP activist are the very people who loudly condemn President Premadasa for his somewhat belated decision to crack down on armed and violent JVP cadres in 1989). Now that the JVP is back in the political mainstream, it is in the interest of the democratic system to keep them there - and that cannot be done by providing the JVP with more martyrs, during the election season or afterwards.

Irrespective of which of the two main parties forms the next government, an attempt will have to be made to offer some sort of a political package to the Tamil people. This will provide the JVP with an ideal opportunity to don its ‘save the motherland’ garb. If the next government is formed by the PA, the new Constitution will be brought before the parliament once again, if the UNP forms the next government there will be another round of negotiations with the LTTE. In either case the JVP will inevitably take up the ‘patriotic banner’, doubtless with the full backing of the main opposition party (be it the UNP or the PA).

And the context will be one of economic decline and worsening poverty and inequality. According to the latest figures the incidence of households living under poverty is on the rise again. It was 31 in 1985/86, declined to 20 in 1990/91 and started increasing since 1996 and is now at 25. The increase in Gini Coefficient from 0.43 in 1990/91 to 0.46 1995/96 indicates that inequality which declined during the Premadasa period is also on the rise. Thus the nexus which the JVP has historically considered as coterminous with a systemic crisis will be created. According to the JVP’s world view this would warrant decisive intervention - particularly in order to prevent one’s competitors (actual, potential or imagined - in this case the Sihala Urumaya) from seizing the initiative - and the patriotic banner. The final impetus will be provided by the regime if (or rather when) it cracks down on the ‘patriotic’ forces agitating against the ‘betrayal of the motherland’. And the third insurgency will be born.

It is not inevitable, but given the thinking of the leadership of both the PA and the UNP on the two most important problems facing the country, such an outcome is more than likely. The PA is as wedded to its new constitution as the UNP is to negotiations with the LTTE. Since the President is labouring under the delusion that the economy and the living standards of the people actually improved in the last 6 years, she will not see the need to make the necessary economic course corrections in order to stem the rising tide of absolute and relative poverty. The regime’s poverty alleviation programme Samurdhi is an obvious failure and the PA has no alternative to offer - and indeed does not perceive the need for an alternative. Therefore six more years of PA rule will not cause a significant improvement in the economic conditions of the country and the people. The presence of Ronnie de Mel is likely to make the economic management of the PA a little more efficient, but that will not be an antidote for the explosive problem of poverty (particularly since Mr. de Mel was the Finance Minister of the Jayewardene regime which created the socio-economic conditions for the second JVP uprising).

Testimony

Ranil Wickremesinghe’s UNP too has failed to come up with a realistic and credible formula to address the issue of poverty. Therefore the UNP of 2000 will be conceptually and programmatically incapable of emulating the successes of the UNP of Ranasinghe Premadasa (electoral victory, systemic stabilisation and equitable development). This is ironic since all the UNP had to do was to reach out into its Premadasaist past and revive Janasaviya with some improvements. The fact that both poverty and inequality declined during the Premadasa years is the best practical testimony to the success of Janasaviya. A firm promise to re-implement Janasaviya would have provided a sense of hope to the poor, thus keeping them away from various extremist (and potentially destabilising) political formations. The UNP however has refused to do so, offering instead to augment the Samurdhi allowance while remaining silent on the continuation of a number of other important pro-people programmes. (It was left to the Premadasaist Puravasi Peramuna of Sirisena Cooray to pledge the revival of Janasaviya).

At the recent sessions of the UNP, Ranil Wickremesinghe stated that Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore regarded D. S. Senanayake’s Ceylon as a model. The problem with today’s UNP is that it has departed from not only the path of Ranasinghe Premadasa but also that of D. S. Senanayake - and indeed that of the Ceylon National Congress (CNC), the forerunner of the UNP. Michael Roberts in his Nationalism in Economic and Social Thought 1915-1945 (in Sri Lanka Collective Identities Revisited Volume II) offers an excellent synopsis of the socio-economic thinking of the CNC. The CNC’s socioeconomic policies included land reform, direct taxes instead of indirect taxes, state ownership of key areas of the economy and worker and Trade Union rights (minimum wages, the regulation of working hours, the

An election

abolition of child labour, workers right to form associations and workmen’s compensation - 1919/1920/1927). What is instructive is that many of these policies (particularly the rather radical- ones on labour) were adopted long before the emergence of the left movement in Sri Lanka or the introduction of universal franchise.

Poverty alleviation

The CNC’s socio-economic policies were of the same variety as the First and Second New Deal of President Roosevelt and the policies advocated by Sun Yat Sen at the First National Congress of the Kuo Min Tang - statist, pro-labour, pro people (i.e. social democratic in the best sense of the term). D. S. Senanayake adhered to a similar set of policies. He advocated state intervention in economic activities and was explicitly critical of what is known today as policies of neo-liberalism "The government relapsed into the convenience of laissez faire. Laissez faire to a people like us traditionally accustomed to look to the government for help means dangerous drift". He regarded the state to be the "ultimate authority for the well being of the people" and believed that "the equitable distribution of profits between capital and labour....should form the bases of a sound and solid economic structure" (Agriculture and Patriotism - D. S. Senanayake).

The UNP’s adoption of a neo-liberal economic agenda therefore signifies a clear departure not only from the Premadasa policies but also from the policies of the UNP’s founding fathers. It also justifies the JVP’s claim that both major parties are equally unconcerned about the problems of the people and have no viable solutions to offer. Just as those who live in the vicinity of a volcano cannot afford to ignore its rumblings, politicians and policy makers in a country which has experienced two insurgencies in less than two decades cannot afford to de-priorities the issue of poverty. With both major parties failing to offer a viable solution to the problem of poverty, an opportunity is created for various extremist forces to benefit from the exacerbation of absolute and relative poverty and the resultant loss of hope among the victims of this process.

Mistakes

In almost every field the UNP of today seem to be intent on repeating the mistakes of the SLFP of the eighties. The SLFP with its blind adherence to the policies of closed economy, failed to provide hope to that growing segment of the populace marginalised by the economic policies of the Jayewardene regime. Bereft of a viable systemic alternative this segment became an ideal target group and breeding ground for the JVP. This situation changed with the nomination of Ranasinghe Premadasa as the UNP candidate; Premadasa came up with Janasaviya, thereby providing the poor with a democratic, systemic alternative. That is what the UNP of today should have done and has consciously decided not to do.

This error on the socio-economic front has compounded a previous error on the political front - the UNP’s extremist response to the PA’s new Constitution. The PA should not have attempted to get the outgoing parliament to approve, in less than three days, something as critically important as the new Constitution of the country. And the new constitution, despite its many positive aspects, was also an attempt to perpetuate the rule of Ratwatte-Bandaranaikes, if not over the country at least over the SLFP. Thus the absurdity of some of its clauses such as 233(1)(e): "Notwithstanding anything in this Constitution the First President shall be qualified to be elected and to continue as a Member of Parliament whilst holding the office of President!"

The UNP’s manner of opposing the new Constitution was as erroneous and counter productive as the way in which the PA sought to get it approved. The UNP could have opposed the new constitution without resorting to a neo-Sinhala Supremacist line and while occupying the rational, democratic middle ground. Instead it chose to ally with the JVP and the Sinhala hardliners. The UNP leadership wanted to continue this alliance even after the withdrawal of the new Constitution by the PA. A rally was planned in Borella to demand a free and fair elections with the UNP, the JVP and the Sihala Urumaya as key participants. This was the same road travelled by the SLFP in the mid eighties. The SLFP’s alliance with extremist forces contributed to the political destabilisation of the South and eventually sealed that party’s political fate at the crucial Presidential and Parliamentary elections of 1988/1989.

Uncritical attitude

Perhaps the UNP leadership thinks that its uncritical attitude towards the LTTE will preclude the adverse electoral consequences of its neo-D. B. Wijethunga line. The Tamil people in the South do not have to be told that they are sitting on a powder keg which can explode any moment. As Sarte pointed out "racism is a concrete everyday attitude and consequently a man can sincerely hold anti-racist opinions of a universal type while in his deepest recesses he remains a racist - so that one day he will involuntarily behave like one in ordinary life." (Between Existentialism and Marxism). The kind of rhetoric the UNP engaged in during the Constitutional crisis served to heighten ethnic tensions and a sense of ethno phobia. Another race riot will definitely be in the interests of the LTTE but it will not be in the personal and business interests of the Tamil people in the South who will be its targets and victims. Therefore whatever the LTTE may feel about the role played by the UNP during the Constitutional crisis, it is not axiomatic that this sentiment is shared by the Tamil people living in the South - who may be somewhat unwilling to sacrifice their lives and property for Eelam.

The propaganda carried out by the extremist parties during the election campaign will result in more poison entering the innards of our society. It will exacerbate the process begun by the high profile campaign of Sihala Urumaya and its constituent organisations and exacerbated by the rhetoric of the JVP and the UNP during the Constitutional crisis - the construction of a new rationality, or actually the justification and the generalisation of an old irrationality. Lewis Feuer called it the ‘law of ideological irrationalisation’: the diffusion of "neurosis through society by creating and inducing states of anxiety, such that the actions of irrational persons will have the appearance of rationality". (Ideology and the Ideologists). It was a similar process which culminated in the Black July of 1983.

So in the first decade of the new century, we are set to faithfully repeat the mistakes of the 1980’s - on the economic as well as the ethnic front. As a character in Anatole France’s novel, ‘The Gods are Athirst’ commented on his way to the Guillotine, the Bourbons are not the only ones unable to learn from history.