by R. M. B. Senanayake
Everybody is talking of ensuring a free and fair election. But how is it to be? Can there be a free & fair election in a one-party state? Soeharto called it guided democracy and ruled as a dictator for many years. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has succeeded in prolonging his rule and has become a virtual dictator. Milosoevic has just held an election in which he has been defeated but will not accept the result and wants a second round of election.

Our own predicament really began in 1970 with the victory of the United Left Front. The Marxists for the first time entered a government. They believed not in the continuance of democracy but in undermining it so that they could like the Bolsheviks of Russia in 1917 that seized power from the Mensheviks, undermine the democratic constituent party, the SLFP and grab power themselves from within. Remember the Jacobins of the French Revolution — Danton, Marat & Robespierre. They seized power by sending to the guillotine thousands of members of the established elite first branding them as enemies of the revolution. They replaced them with the members of the sans culottes of Paris. In 1917 the Bolsheviks realized that although they were in a minority in the Kerensky Government they could capture power by strategically placing their men in positions of authority. It was possible for them to undermine the government and seize power. After seizing power the Bolshevils proceeded to establish a one party state in the name of the proletariat. Thereafter every Communist Party, which came to power, established a monopoly of power and confined recruitment to the bureaucracy to members of the Communist Party. The Communist Party and the government are the same. When such a situation is created there can be no democracy. Nor can there be any peaceful change of government thereafter. We have more or less reached the same situation and the police are no longer the police of the state but the Gestapo of the People’s Alliance party as was demonstrated by the behaviour of the CID. The local police stations are the arms of the ruling politicians. That is why the PA has no holds barred to retain power. The PA is unlikely to allow a peaceful change of government. Democracy in the liberal democratic sense is dead although the people have been fooled by the facade of it.

Capturing the machinery of the state

When the United Front Government came to power in 1970 the trade unionists thought the revolution had arrived and they hounded out the managers of the state corporations dike the CTB, the Leather Corporation, the Insurance Corporation etc, after branding them as reactionary UNP supporters although they were recruited on merit and belonged to the bureaucracy. The directors of such corporations were appointed from the new ruling parties. A practice of political patronage, which had got established earlier even by the parties that believed in democracy. In the 1960’s a defeated candidate of the SLFP had packed the CWE with thousands of placemen. This practice now came to be widely adopted in several state corporations like the Petroleum Corporation, the CTB, the Port Cargo Corporation, the Fisheries Corporation. The Leftists realized the potential to capture power through this practice of placemen, but Felix Dias Bandaranaike took the recruitment of staff to the public service under his wing when the Prime Minister realized what was likely to happen if they were not checkmated. But the Leftists knew how to undermine the democratic institutions like the politically neutral bureaucracy. So political rights were granted to public servants, foreshadowing what the Samurdhi animators do today in canvassing for the ruling party which appointed them to such posts. But this was not enough. In democracies there is always some tension between the bureaucracy and the political executive, the Ministers, since each is intended to the a check on the other, the ministers confining themselves to the formulation of policy and implementing them through the bureaucracy according to the law, without interfering in the internal administration of the departments. The appointments, transfers and discipline of the officials in a democracy are left in the hands of an independent Public Service Commission. This democratic institutional pattern would not do for the Leftists. The claim could always be made that the bureaucracy must carry out the will of the people, the people being none other than the politician. So the independent Public Service Commission had to be stripped of its power and the officials subject to the politician. The appointments, transfers, discipline of the public service were vested in the Cabinet and in individual Ministers by the Constitution of 1972. Politicians love power and will not give up any power that they enjoy. So the 1978 Constitution of J. R. Jayewardene continued the subordination of the bureaucracy to the politician and the practice of confining the public Service to those of their party sympathizers. President Premadasa carried on regardless. Democratic traditions could raise their head only under President Wijetunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. They held a free and fair election without consolidating and perpetuating their power as they very well could have done given the institutional environment of politicization. The PA has strengthened the same politicized environment and they are now in a position to retain power using the resources and staff of the state since the staff belongs to the party by and large. So the conditions for retaining power are present and only international displeasure will prevent them from making a go for it.

With the legal provision in place the politicians set about transferring to the "pool" those officials who were inclined to follow the law and the public interest rather than the whimsies of the politicians. It also made way for those of the ruling party or who were sycophants. Since these officials were Beholden to the minister they could be depended on to be loyal lackeys. It was only the other day that Minister Alavi Mowlana took out a demonstration around Lipton Circus against officials whom he branded as UNP reactionaries and demanded that they be removed from their jobs. Such are the tactics of would be Jacobins. Police Inspectors who try to uphold the law, discharging their duties as impartial peace officers would feel threatened by such antics. One Deputy Minister gave a clear signal who was the boss by sitting in the chair of the Officer-in-Charge of a Police station. So the politicians of the PA expect the police to be partisan to overlook the violations of the law by the PA politicians and act only against the politicians of the rival parties. Some police personnel have gone out of the way to endear themselves to the local warlords, by shooting the supporters of the rival parties. Two JVP supporters and one UNP supporter have been killed and one homicide is the work of a Police Inspector. Private property particularly vehicles insured mainly with the government owned Insurance Corporation are being destroyed to be compensated from the funds of the policy holders and the government. Peaceful protests run the risk of being fired on by the Police. Selective justice is now the practice of the police. Those who dare to complain against the PA politicians and their supporters run the risk of being charged for their trouble and ending up in the remand prison. If the aggrieved people carry out a peaceful protest against such police atrocities they run the risk of being shot down like dogs as in China during the Tiananmen Square incident and also being charged for some infringement of the Emergency Regulations as well. Such is the pitiable plight of the opposition candidates and their supporters. Those who still expect a free & fair election are naive. As the fight for the head table in the feasting has become desperate every party and particularly the ruling PA has cast all norms to the wind. The PA needs to exercise repression to stand any chance of holding on to its parliamentary majority.

The quest to perpetuate power

Our leaders since 1970’s have shown a marked desire to perpetuate themselves in power, no doubt being delighted by the exercise of power, which has paid them off so richly. Sirimavo Bandaranaike extended her term of office by two years in 1975. Parliament was sovereign and so could extend its term of office was the argument although it was a violation of the people’s right to the franchise. J. R. Jayewardene disqualified his rival and proceeded to hold a referendum to extend the term of parliament, a little better but alas still a violation of the people’s right to the franchise. A spurious excuse was proffered of a Naxalite plot. Then came Premadasa who showed how to win elections in the midst of widespread violence if one already was in power. He proceeded to rule like a dictator and suppressed dissent and dispatched his critics to oblivion. Richard de Zoysa made the supreme sacrifice. Would President Premadasa have held a free & fair election when his term of office expired? Many people would have doubted it. Prabhakaran removed any such speculation by eliminating him altogether. Even the mild President Wijetunga sought to stay on by negotiating a deal with the late Ashraff whom he got down from Ampara by helicopter.

The time has come to consider many things of Kings and cabbages, as Alice in Wonderland would have said. Do we vote for bread and cakes as promised by the politicians or do we vote for good governance, for freedom and for equal rights?

Democracy has been under threat from both the left and the right and almost from 1956. The threat from the Jacobins in all parties cannot be ignored unless they clearly enunciate that they will not appoint large numbers of placemen to the machinery of government — the bureaucracy and the police. No political party has said so in clear and unambiguous terms. No party has promised a meritocracy, which is so necessary for development as well as for peace in a plural society. Democracy cannot survive if public servants are placemen of the ruling party and they occupy slots in the Elections Department, man polling stations, work in the Government Press, which prints ballot papers and in the Police Department where they are expected to maintain law & order as peace officers.

Martyrs for Democracy

Eternal vigilance it is said is the price of freedom. The tree of liberty has to be nourished by the blood of martyrs said Jefferson a Founder of the American Constitution. Civil society has never adequately honored the martyrs of democracy in our land. There was Lalith Athuladmudali who bravely introduced the motion to impeach President Premadasa. There were those voters who defied the JVP and voted in 1989. The run up to this election has already produced martyrs from both the UNP and the JVP. The public should build a memorial for them inscribing their names. The people have rightly honored Susanthika Jayasinghe who brought fame for the country in spite of the harassment of those who guided the destinies of our sportsmen & women, a crying indictment of them indeed. They should honor the heroes of democracy too.

Where there is no vision the people perish

Where there is no vision the people perish. Has any leader formulated and held out a vision for the country and its people. Our vision should be to establish a truly democratic country where everyone can live in peace with goodwill to all men, a country where each one is free to pursue his or her own goals of happiness where every one is having the minimum of food, clothing & shelter and every one contributes to the common good by working. This requires good governance by those ruling the country. Good governance requires not only public spirited men & women but also strong democratic institutions — a free press, independent judiciary, a politically neutral public service which implements public policy without fear or favor, accountable politicians. We have to build such institutions not merely by passing laws to establish them but by seeing them function in the spirit intended. It is easy to follow the letter of the law instead of its spirit as we see so often in dealings with the public service. The liberal democratic type of society we still have is not perfect. But it has one great merit — the ability to change our rulers through peaceful means once every 5 years through free and fair elections. It is this institution that is in danger. It cannot exist in isolation of other democratic institutions like the rule of law and recruitment to the public service on merit rather than on political patronage. Whatever elements of democracy we had in our pre-colonial traditions of government. We certainly lacked this kind of freedom except perhaps to the nobility and clergy and even to them within the bounds of the sovereign’s tolerance. This was so even in Europe in the Middle Ages. But we now have a liberal democratic society and we should preserve these institutions and their values. There is certainly room for greater equality of incomes but it is only in a democracy that there is even the possibility of making society more equitable rather than in a one party state whether the party its rightist or leftist, which degenerates quickly to a dictatorship. Nor should we tolerate a dictatorship masquerading as a democracy as we have done since the 1970s. There are still many people who lack sufficient food, health care and decent housing. But freedom provides infinitely more opportunities for people to choose their own future.

Depreciating Money

This election should not be about bread or cakes, not about the salary increases to government servants or pensioners or Samurdhi beneficiaries, not about the revival of Janasaviya or the increase of Samurdhi benefits. Even from an economic point of view there is much to say against the bust up of our income without providing for the future. We must invest a part of our income to increase our income in the future rounds of the income cycle. This is essential even to maintain our income unchanged since inflation has come to stay and no party even promises to keep the cost of living low. Instead they promise to raise our incomes. But what matters is not the income in money terms but in real terms or the real income. If the entire increase in money income promised by the politicians goes to pay for the same basket of goods as we purchased all along, there has been no increase in real income and the politicians have tricked us. So the politicians must tell us how they propose to find the money to raise the salaries etc. If they resort to borrowing from the Central Bank the modern equivalent of printing notes like the Tudor kings in England did, our economic condition, our real incomes could even worsen. This year and even last year, the PA Government has funded almost 1/3 of its budget by resorting to such borrowing while exempting themselves from income tax and giving themselves extraordinary perks not found anywhere else in the world. In a country like Switzerland where the per capita income is among the highest in the world the Ministers travel to their offices by public transport. In Israel another high income country the Ministers use the bicycle to go to their offices. The party leaders should state how many ministers they intend to have and how much they will spend on them. Why haven’t the panics promised to abolish the numerous perks of the politicians? The money disbursed by politicians and the bureaucracy in the name of poverty alleviation has not alleviated poverty either. In the past we have voted for free rice, free education, free health, for Janasaviya and other monetary benefits and have been cheated by the politicians. Man doesn’t live by bread alone. We have to use our vote wisely — for whoever promises to uphold democratic rights like freedom of the press, whoever promises to bring peace not war equal rights not special rights for some even if it’s the majority of the population.