Dispensable democracy: The Ranil doctrine

He has given the divided Opposition a shared anger and a common target

By suffocating the local government elections, and deploying the army with T-56s and body-armour to block the moderate main Opposition the SJB while unleashing tear-gas and Police water-cannon on protesting SJB frontliners in the torrential rain, Ranil turned a fierce electoral contest between the centrist SJB and the leftist JVP-JJB into a two-front pincer by both Oppositional formations protesting in parallel in the streets, against him

Calling Ranil Wickremesinghe a follower of Machiavelli like his distant uncle J.R. Jayewardene, is unfair by all three. JR flipped India into fighting the Tigers who were fighting him, thereby releasing the SL army to fight the JVP. By suffocating the local government elections, and deploying the army with T-56s and body-armour to block the moderate main Opposition the SJB while unleashing tear-gas and Police water-cannon on protesting SJB frontliners in the torrential rain, Ranil turned a fierce electoral contest between the centrist SJB and the leftist JVP-JJB into a two-front pincer by both Oppositional formations protesting in parallel in the streets, against him. 

He has given the divided Opposition a shared anger and a common target. Now there are three spearheads pointed at him: the SJB, the JVP-JJB and the FSP-IUSF. This is no J.R. Jayewardene or even Esmond Wickremesinghe. 

With his administration having an approval rating of barely 10% and a public satisfaction rating of 4%, down from 7% last October (Verite), and 71% wish to vote at a local government election (DM), Ranil’s tough stand is taken on a small, dwindling slab of very thin ice. 

Inessential democracy

The gloves came off with the mask. A leader without a popular mandate, President Wickremesinghe enunciated his unique theory of democracy in his 18 Feb 2023 speech to the District Conference of the Rotary Clubs of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. 

He said that democracy requires economic recovery and stability as a precondition. It needs as (another) precondition, ‘public order’ which requires ‘law and order’. “He underscored that without these essential components, democracy would be replaced by anarchy.” This he will not permit. He will generate economic recovery and stability and maintain law and order, creating a “functioning democratic society” by the end of this year. And we can all vote next year. (President says economy first before polls | Daily FT)

A report on an economics website reads:

“…Treasury officials who met the election commission on Friday has reportedly said only essential expenses are allowed under directions issued and election spending is not part of the list….”

“…On February 06, the cabinet of ministers approved a decision by President Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Minister of Finance ‘to instruct the Secretary to the Treasury to take necessary action to release imprest only for the most essential recurrent expenditure to be incurred to maintain public services until the condition returns to normalcy’.”

The holding of the local government election on schedule as pledged before the Supreme Court, is not regarded as ‘essential’.  

Under the Wickremesinghe presidency, democracy understood as a political system in which the country—the state—is led and governed by representatives freely chosen by the citizenry through competitive elections held periodically and regularly, is not an essential feature and factor which the state coffers are axiomatically meant to bear.

The stipulation ‘until the condition returns to normalcy’ is obviously open-ended and purely whimsical. What is ‘normalcy’ and who decides it? 

So, we shall have to live without state funding of elections and therefore without elections, under the rule of an unelected President who was not even elected to the legislature, ‘until’ normalcy has returned in his personal opinion and to his satisfaction. 

President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s paternal uncle Lakshman Wickremesinghe was an Anglican Bishop of intellectual renown and progressive liberal persuasion. Having graduated with a first-class Honours degree in political science from the University of Peradeniya, he instituted a prize for the best results in political science in the name of his and his brother Esmond’s father, C.L. Wickremesinghe, Ranil’s paternal grandfather. Something of a high bar, the prize isn’t awarded every year and sometimes for years. As a winner of the C.L. Wickremesinghe prize (in a batch with two ‘first classes’, the other being Jayadeva Uyangoda), I can attest that Ranil’s doctrine of democracy and elections is a combustible collection of demonstrable nonsense. 

Here is the truth: 

1. Democratic elections are held in situations of economic depression, recession or volatility. At elections people choose a party or leader to take them out of an economic crisis (e.g., USA 2008). 

2. Elections have been held where there was a far greater danger to public order/law and order than there is now, such as in wartime. Such elections brought us two leaderships (1988, 2005) that won wars in the south and the north. 

3. When an imperative need arose to restore public order, Ranil was never chosen as President by the citizenry. His rivals Chandrika (1999) and Mahinda (2005) were. 

4. It is the postponement of elections (Dec 1982) that took us to the cusp of anarchy. When the electoral cycle resumed (1988-’89) anarchy flared briefly but was snuffed out. Postponement of elections now will provoke blowback and polarization which wreck the very stability and recovery the President ostensibly seeks.

5. We are and have been for almost all of 75 years, a ‘functioning democratic society’. The holding, not the postponement, of elections is the litmus test of such a society. 

Ranil’s notions of how democracy works, when a scheduled election should or shouldn’t be held, who should decide on it and how, reek of arbitrariness and caprice. They are the very stuff of despotism, of tyranny. 

Free memo to Ranil 

President Premadasa appointed me Director, Conflict Studies, Institute of Policy Studies (IPS). My paycheck was from the Ministry of Policy Planning and Implementation which he headed. 

Broadly two types of conflict may impact on a state: political (politically-driven) conflicts and socioeconomic (socioeconomically-driven) conflicts. 

The most explosive political conflicts occur when the people feel alienated from those who govern them, their rulers, and simultaneously feel that the political system does not represent them or afford them a chance of peacefully changing that situation. This is the case of classic democratic revolution against an entrenched ruler and/or closed political order.  

However bad things get, if there is a chance at hand of voting the government or ruler out, or simply ventilating and registering mass disaffection, matters stay short of revolt. If there is no such chance or the chance recedes beyond the horizon, then revolt, rebellion, even revolution become likely.   

There are exceptions. If the government or the system concerned is authoritarian but has delivered the goods in terms of the rapid, undeniably rising prosperity of the majority of the populace, that trade-off forestalls revolt. Authoritarianism can last longer if wealth grows rapidly and is distributed fairly. If not, revolt and rebellion ignite.

If prosperity begins to plummet, or while growing, is grossly unequally and unfairly distributed, revolution occurs (Iran 1979).

The flip side is also true: even if there are plummeting living standards, revolution hardly ever occurs so long as the political system is open and flexible, allowing changes in government. 

The worst-case scenario is of sharply dropping standards of living, increasingly unbearable economic hardship, public perception that the Fat Cats—the crony capitalist corporates—are getting away with it, combined with the non-availability or closure of chances for democratic change (or its initiation).

If there is a convergence of political conflict and socioeconomic conflict, you have a chain-reaction culminating in a cataclysm. 

Main enemy 

The AKD-led JVP-JJB has failed to explain why the ultra- ‘statist socialist’ command economy, Wijeweera-era 1979 party program/‘statement of principles’ (“prathipaththi prakaashanaya”) has not been replaced even in the 21st century at a party congress by a new, different program/ ‘statement of principles’, not merely a succession of documents – ‘plans’ or ‘proposals’-- of lesser status. The 1979 program still adorns the JVP’s English-language website. 

That said, the main danger to electoral democracy and the market economy at this time does not come from the JVP. He who traduces universal franchise and popular sovereignty, the founding principles of the democratic Republic, poses the main threat and is the main enemy. Hitler and fascism won in 1933 because the German Social Democrats and the German Communists kept attacking each other and failed to draw together in time. 

As did Churchill, Roosevelt, de Gaulle and Stalin, Sri Lanka’s Opposition should transcend ideological polarisation at the current moment, to cooperate in the resistance to the threat of lethal, Far Right dictatorship.

The most explosive political conflicts occur when the people feel alienated from those who govern them, their rulers, and simultaneously feel that the political system does not represent them or afford them a chance of peacefully changing that situation. This is the case of classic democratic revolution against an entrenched ruler and/or closed political order

Economic blueprint blues 

Philosopher Slavoj Zizek is fond of quoting with mischievous approval, Joseph Stalin’s reply to the interviewer who queried “which is worse, Comrade Stalin, the Right deviation or the Left deviation?” Stalin’s grim-humoured reply was “they are both worse”.  

That’s exactly my reaction having read the economic policy texts of the JVP-JJB/NPP and the SJB Economic Policy Unit—the ‘Left deviation’ and the ‘Right deviation’ in the Oppositional space. 

The economic manifesto of Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s JJB/NPP defines ‘the 1977 Open economy’ and ‘globalisation’ as the ‘foundation’ of the country’s economic crisis. This, against the backdrop of the unprecedented trauma of the ruination of agriculture and the peasantry, causing food insecurity, semi-malnutrition and shrinkage of export earnings, due to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s lunatic overnight ban on chemical fertiliser-weedicide-pesticide—which was hardly an example of the 1977 Open economy and globalisation. It was the exact opposite. (‘Rapid Response’, Jathika Jana Balavegaya/NPP, pp 4-6.)

In actuality, we suffer not only from an excess of the open economy but also from a deficiency of it. Such are the dialectics of uneven development. A literate Left (which the JVP-JJB isn’t) would know that.  

The Economic Blueprint of the SJB’s Economic Policy Unit contains nothing that Ranil Wickremesinghe couldn’t agree with fundamentally, not least because it takes as framework and positive reference points, policies he initiated or attempted while PM on two earlier occasions. 

Though this document concludes with a section titled ‘Learning from Our Past for Our Future’, there’s absolutely no reference whatsoever in The Blueprint to President Premadasa who led the most rapid economic turnaround by introducing an innovative policy model that balanced growth and equity. The Blueprint prescribes measures that either caused the crisis or would exacerbate it if (re)introduced. 

Let’s examine some key passages:

“Any IMF-supported stabilization program should have four pillars:…(b) unshackling the economy from direct government intervention, (c) export development including removal of the import restriction regime…” 

The authors are unaware that ‘direct government intervention’ drove the 200 garment factories program, the highly successful export-led industrialisation drive of President Premadasa. He insisted on preference in recruitment criteria for those (especially women) coming off the Janasaviya program; three meals a day, including a bun, for the workers; air-conditioning and mini-shrines for multireligious worship. Failure to comply meant no concessional loans as start-up funds from the state banks. Little was left to the free-play of market forces. The Presidency became an engine which drove national development and social upliftment. 

‘Removal of the import restriction regime’ rather than selective, flexible dismantling would surely be unhelpful in managing our balance of payments at this time.   

“Balance of payment difficulties…will be eliminated by adjusting the exchange rate to the equilibrium (market) level. This can be done through a transitional phase of floating the currency to permit market forces to reveal the equilibrium rate, and then stabilising that rate through CBSL intervention in the forex market…. firstly, forex restrictions on current account transactions, quantitative import restrictions, and forced conversion rules must be gradually removed…”

“Floating of the currency permitting market forces to reveal the rate” will send the dollar skyrocketing and crash the rupee, making life even more impossible for the many. 

Removal of “forex restrictions on current account transactions, quantitative import restrictions” will facilitate the exit of foreign currency, not its inflow and retention. 182 academics including ten top international economists have signed a statement which proves that Sri Lanka’s foreign currency problem is one of a huge outflow, a huge drain, through excessive liberalisation of the regulatory framework. 

“…Reform of over 400 SOEs established during the era of socialism and import substitution must be a key reform item…”

Show me a study by a top economist anywhere (e.g., Emeritus Prof Mick Moore) which classifies any period of Ceylon’s or Sri Lanka’s economic history as “the era of socialism”. The Blueprint’s authors can’t tell ‘state capitalism’ from ‘socialism’. They are unaware that state-owned basic industries for Ceylon was a recommendation of the Colonial Industrial Plan (the Balfour Plan) and that more state funds were invested in expanding SOEs during the UNP government of 1965-1970 under Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake and Industries Minister Philip Gunawardena than under either of the two previous SLFP administrations of SWRD and Sirimavo Bandaranaike.  

“The bulk of Sri Lanka’s land is state owned, and the private land market is inefficient…This prevents land being utilised to generate capital…”

The proposal on land is the opposite of that of Premadasa’s Presidential Task Force on Land Re-distribution which freely distributed 350,000 hectares state lands to the landless, for purposes of agriculture and/or housebuilding. After Premadasa’s assassination, the next UNP Government, under Ranil (2001-4), didn’t distribute the remaining 450,000 hectares. 

“…Sri Lanka’s labour market is also notoriously inefficient: public recruitment is excessive, and termination of employment in both the public and private sectors is almost impossible…Urgent steps must be taken to create an efficient labour market by enacting new legislation.”

This is a recipe for rampant corporate farming as well as the scrapping of labour legislation. President Premadasa managed his export-led industrialisation drive quite well without touching labour laws. As a former (elected) Chairman of the ILO, I can guarantee that there will be pushback from the international labour federations which are quite influential with western legislatures.

“Create funded pension schemes, expanding pensions beyond public sector to a national scheme.”

What’s a ‘national scheme’ ‘beyond public sector’? The private sector, driven by private profit, is hardly ‘national’. This proposal mimics the policy of privatising pension funds adopted by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet which detonated the huge uprising of 2019-2020. Sri Lanka’s experience with private finance companies shows the grave dangers to retirees of such a reckless gamble. (Solving Chile’s Crisis Starts With Fixing Its Pension System (americasquarterly.org)

“Philosophically, we, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), believe in a social market economy: a fusion of economic liberalism emphasizing individual freedom and autonomy, and political freedom emphasizing equity and social justice.”

The SJB’s (elected) leader Sajith Premadasa always defines his party –including in his address to the SJB’s 2nd Convention—as standing for Social Democracy and a social market economy; pledges Ranasinghe Premadasa policies as the developmental path; and eschews neoliberalism and free-market fundamentalism. 

The Blueprint and its authors never use the terms ‘Social Democracy’, ‘Social Democratic’, or ‘Premadasa development model/paradigm/policies’. 

The Economic Blueprint/EPU doesn’t take the stance of the best team that the Sri Lankan people could have to secure the best deal for them from the IMF while buffering their living standards—which is the position Sajith takes—but auditions for the quite different role of the best local partners/managers the IMF could have in Sri Lanka. 

There is a nexus between Ranil’s politics and economics. Ranil’s politics cannot be fought while continuing his economics, and by those who share his economic ideology. Give me Howard Nicholas and Nishan de Mel on any given day.