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Any attempt by Gota to derail, dilute or delay the Constitutional amendment aimed at rolling back the 20th Amendment enhances the risk of being thrown out of office not so much on that issue but by an irresistible tsunami of violent mass protest born of a despair so widespread the military cannot contain it - Pic by Ruwan Walpola
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If there is an acute food shortage, the people will come for Gota because it was his signature fertiliser ban that caused the shortage. Even now, the foreign exchange shortage would not have been so acute if tea export earnings hadn’t collapsed due to the ban.
But he, like Prabhakaran in 2009, rejects a negotiated exit. Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe confirms that the Sri Lankan economy will undergo its worst contraction in history. It will be a very short list of Presidents and Prime Ministers globally –if any—who survived even far fewer extreme contractions. Certainly, there were none who were re-elected, many had to resign mid-term, and even the dictator Pinochet’s rule started rocking (mass rioting, an assassination attempt) and ended a few years later.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa must execute an orderly retreat.
Any attempt by Gota to derail, dilute or delay the Constitutional amendment aimed at rolling back the 20th Amendment enhances the risk of being thrown out of office not so much on that issue but by an irresistible tsunami of violent mass protest born of a despair so widespread the military cannot contain it.
The likely popular uprising will have two prongs: the peasantry, due to the continuing absence of subsidised chemical fertiliser, and the urban masses, lacking food supplies owing to the crash of agriculture.
Ranil as Kerensky
I supported Ranil Wickremesinghe in 1993-1997, and opposed him for a quarter-century since, but I sincerely wish him the very best of luck. It is he, not Minister Ali Sabry, who is now the nightwatchman.
If the PM uses his brilliant ex-Trotskyist-turned-Cold Warrior intellectual father’s excellent library, he would understand that he could become a Kerensky, who, unlike the original one, has not taken over after the Tsar’s ouster but is serving under the Tsar and perceived as his prop.
The Kerensky administration didn’t last because it couldn’t meet the basic needs of the people: ‘Land, Peace, Bread’. Similarly, the Wickremesinghe administration cannot fulfil, quickly enough, the basic needs of Fuel, Gas, Medicine, Fertiliser.
During the recent four-day parliamentary debate the only MP who presented a practical policy perspective for economic crisis-management was not Prime Minister Wickremesinghe but ‘outlier’ Patali Champika Ranawake of the 43 Brigade and SJB alliance.
Price of Parliament’s failure
The 21st Amendment to the Constitution produced by the Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe committee is a measured power-shift from the hyper-centralised executive presidency, a de-concentration of power pragmatic enough to secure a parliamentary two-thirds majority with no clauses requiring a Referendum. It is the first, fastest chance to shift the needle towards the separation of powers and checks-and-balances.
The BASL’s statement contains an excellent critique of the Wijeyadasa draft which could be accommodated as amendments moved by the Opposition. The BASL’s text neither raises the demand for the abolition of the executive presidency, nor uses it as a measuring rod for rejecting Wijeyadasa’s draft.
The SJB’s opposition to the Wijeyadasa draft is not completely coincident with the BASL statement. Rather, it counterposes the abolition of the executive presidency to the Wijeyadasa text. It is rejectionist and maximalist.
Reforming the presidency is a moderate-centrist position. Abolition is not. It is an extreme position. The (Buddha-inspired) Middle Path between the autocratic post-20th Amendment presidency and its opposite extreme, the total abolition of the executive presidency, is a structurally-reformed presidency.
Outright rejection of the Wijeyadasa text is not a moderate position. The Middle Path between the Wijeyadasa text and the abolition of the executive presidency is critical yet constructive engagement with the proposal on the table, with consensus the objective.
Abolition would be a protracted process, and worse, a non-starter because the SLPP and SLFP will not vote for it. The Wijeyadasa amendment would bring with it SLPP votes and a quick process because it issues from the Cabinet.
The SJB, TNA and JVP should introduce the BASL’s suggestions as amendments, but should desist from anything that would require a referendum which could abort a speedy reform and buy time for the status-quo.
If the 21st Amendment cannot make it through the gates to the finish-line, there may not be a second chance for civilian democracy, which may either be overrun by an uprising of the people which could turn savagely violent and destructive, or be placed in suspended animation by an unavoidable military intervention intended to restore stability and order of the most basic Hobbesian sort.
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Opposition’s opportunity and obligation
The Opposition should push the limits of possible consensus but demonstrate moderation and responsibility to settle for one. The intensifying crisis is not the time for a polarisation, especially one that the Opposition doesn’t have the numbers to win.
The Government Parliamentary Group might shoot down the 21st Amendment as taking away too much power from the presidency or may resist attempts to accommodate the BASL’s points. That would be counterfeit because such a victory means nothing outside the House, and counterproductive because it further delegitimises the Government while heightening hatred towards government parliamentarians.
The Opposition could divide, with the larger segment obstructing the amendment on the grounds that it fails to go far enough. A split in the Opposition would strengthen the regime. This would discredit the democratic alternative as a whole and enhance the extra-parliamentary, anti-systemic Opposition, putting paid to prospects for stability or even systemic survival.
If the SJB-TNA-JVP Opposition votes against the incoming 21st Amendment instead of reasonably tweaking it, it would be making a mistake that so tragically doomed iconic democratic revolutions.
Theodore S. Hamerow is the author of ‘Restoration, Revolution, Reaction: Economics and Politics in Germany 1815-1871’ (Princeton 1958). In an essay entitled ‘1848’ on the liberal-democratic German Revolution of that year, a tragic landmark defeat that provided the backdrop for the rise of Nazism in the next century, Hamerow quotes Charles Schurz, a youthful militant of that revolution, who reflectively concluded in his memoirs that:
“The Frankfurt Parliament suffered from…a lack of that political experience and insight which recognize that the better is often the enemy of the good, and that the true statesman will beware of forfeiting the favourable moment by endangering the achievement of the essential through an obstinate insistence on the less essential.” (T. Hamerow, ‘The Responsibility of Power’, Doubleday, New York, 1967 pp. 145-161)
In Sri Lanka today, “the essential” is to outrun the explosion that is imminent. The “essential” is the demonstration to the public of the Parliament’s continued relevance; of the continued functioning of the democratic institutions and process in achieving results; of the ability of democratic institutions to rapidly produce reform and improvement; of the possibility of consensus among democratic parties.
The “essential” is to show that the democratic institutions, processes and personalities can go halfway in meeting the demands and aspirations of the citizens’ revolt led by the youth.
The Opposition must not vote against this 21st Amendment, thereby “forfeiting the favourable moment” and “endangering the achievement of the essential through an obstinate insistence on the less essential.”
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SJB parameters
It is downright reckless to fight a battle on this issue and lose, thereby exhibiting weakness, or to win a pyrrhic victory, prolonging the autocratic 20th Amendment and entrenching Gotabaya.
It is also irrational, because all reliable indicators of public opinion show that the highest degree of consensus is that Gota and the Rajapaksas should go and the 20th Amendment should be scrapped. That is far wider than the consensus for scrapping the executive presidency. A referendum on the issue is not merely unviable at the moment, it would be needlessly divisive and diversionary—displacing (yet again) the focus of the struggle away from Go Home Gota.
In 2015, Ranil Wickremesinghe, the UNP and TNA wanted the abolition of the executive presidency. When the Supreme Court aptly tossed back the original draft legislation presented by Wickremesinghe, flagging those provisions that required a two-thirds majority, it was President Sirisena who in a masterful display of consensus-building, got the 19th Amendment through. It proved to have dangerous gaps from a national security point of view which caused the backlash resulting in the 20th Amendment. Amendments moved by Field Marshal Fonseka, the SJB chairman could plug those gaps.
The country’s ‘death dive’ began with Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s hyper-concentration of power through the 20th Amendment. Reason tells us that’s the problem to be fixed, rather than dismantle the system as a whole. Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa should work closely with SLFP leader and ex-President Maithripala Sirisena to pilot the structural reform through, thereby drawing the SJB and SLFP closer in a broad coalition of moderates; a coalition which can offer a rational, realistic progressive alternative, re-building the democratic centre.
Ranil Wickremesinghe was wrong to accept the Prime Ministership and serve unconditionally under Gotabaya Rajapaksa whom the vast majority of citizens want to see the back of, like, yesterday. The SJB mustn’t commit the opposite error. If it wishes to abolish the executive presidency it must first seek and obtain a parliamentary mandate for it at an election. It certainly doesn’t have the votes for it presently in parliament and therefore should not hold to ransom a reformist constitutional effort to dismantle or seriously dent the 20th Amendment.
The abolition of the 20th Amendment, the post of PM for the Opposition Leader, a timeline for early elections and a dialogue on the transitioning-out of President GR should be sufficient to assume co-responsibility for managing the national crisis. A ‘historic compromise’, to use the celebrated phrase of Enrico Berlinguer (the famous Italian communist leader and Euro-Communist giant); a power-sharing agreement of all major parties, is urgently necessary for crisis-management and conflict-prevention. The 21st Amendment could be a bridge.
If not, Sri Lanka which has a failed economy but is not yet a failed state, will have a failed parliament. Then, only extra-parliamentary, anti-systemic change will remain an option.
Weakening the State
When the facts show that all discriminatory legislation against the Tamils was enacted during the decades Ceylon/Sri Lanka had a Westminster model, why is the TNA so stridently insistent on the abolition of the executive presidency under which there was hardly any such legislation, several discriminatory acts were actually reversed, and provincial level devolution pushed through? An answer suggests itself when one extrapolates the result: the centrifugal weakening of the state and the automatic if surreptitious upscaling of the 13th Amendment to federal proportions.
When the evidence over decades shows a great many more leftwing Presidents (including former guerrillas and political prisoners of dictatorships) than Prime Ministers, why is it that the JVP-NPP and FSP-IUSF insist on the abolition of the executive presidency rather than of the autocratic 20th Amendment?
The outcome of the JVP and FSP demand would be to weaken the state itself; to implant a weak model of state, prone to deadlock, indecision and debility in crisis-management, preventing the implementation of a de-radicalising Rooseveltian New Deal (such as President Premadasa’s programs). Perhaps that’s the plan.
Leftism or Anarchism?
The Aragalaya –including the FSP-IUSF and the JVP-NPP—fell into a trap by opening a second front against a secondary enemy, Mahinda, thereby giving the main enemy time and space. The militant IUSF march deviated to Temple Trees and MynaGoGama appeared two weeks before 9 May. That diversion created the opening for Ranil’s return, the resultant stalling of the Aragalaya and shrinkage of the GGG.
In a reload, a new hashtag calls for everyone to march on Colombo as soon as the O-level exam ends. Surely the correct moment for such a mega-march would not be early June as urged, but August-September when the collapse of agriculture coincides with food shortages, making for a worker-peasant undergirded urban-rural alliance? The drivers of the exercise seem unaware of Friedrich Engels’ sardonic admonition that “impatience must not be mistaken for a theoretical argument”.
It takes both the Police riot squads and the army to handle student demonstrations in the city—demonstrations by single contingents of students (e.g., HND) who have now mastered the tactic of climbing onto water-cannons. What happens when all contingents of university students converge in Colombo? And when unorganised others go spontaneously searching for food supplies and targets of perceived affluence?
Practice in street-fighting tactics is impressive, but the Left’s refusal to denounce barbaric lynch-mob killings have caused the romantic-idealistic mask to drop, and the system – including, most importantly, the hard-drive of the state—to comprehend the character of the challenge, the real stakes involved.
A huge wave of a scarcity-driven social uprising which the Aragalaya Left can surf is capable of drowning the system, but that’s the system of governance and the economy, not necessarily the state. Even if several soldiers break ranks and join the protestors, and/or some of the rifles carried by the Police and infantry are wrenched away during demonstrations, that won’t change the essential equation of hard power.
Hostile towards the Gotabaya autocracy and the Rajapaksa clan, the world community will not support Sri Lanka to the fullest extent possible unless this country presents a new face as its leader and logo. That does not mean that the Big Powers will alter their cold evaluation of the implications of a JVP or FSP takeover of state power on this strategically situated island.
In a crunch, the equation between the Sri Lankan and neighbouring militaries could become manifest.
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Contending vanguards
As we can see from behaviour patterns and dynamics already in evidence, an emerging scenario is of a Hobbesian “war of all against all” where life would turn “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. This is what made Hobbes argue strongly for public order and a State—the Leviathan—to enforce it, as the basis of all else; indeed, of civilised life itself. The problem is that Sri Lanka hasn’t had a ‘smart state’ since 2010. But the state has smart components.
In Sri Lanka today there aren’t just two formations of a vanguard type, formations which can play a vanguard role, the JVP-NPP and the FSP-IUSF. There are three. The third is the Sri Lankan armed forces.
While the JVP and FSP are nihilistic about 74 years of post-Independence history which they want to “put an end to”, and are destructive in their practices, a contrastingly constructive, confident discourse is articulated by the Army Commander, Maj-Gen Shavendra Silva in recent TV interviews. Determined Churchillianism doesn’t come from the PM but from the Army chief. Emanating from an institution with its own coherent narrative and the credibility of a proven record of success in crisis and adversity, this practical, positive, motivational perspective could seize the public imagination.
If Sri Lanka has a failed economy, a failed Parliament, dysfunctional political parties and a morally, ethically and behaviourally unconstrained anti-systemic Left, but is not yet a failed state, it is because the state contains components which have not failed and have been functional and successful. These may kick-in to regenerate the system by re-configuring the model (not tearing-down the system or sinking what remains of the economy), thereby saving Sri Lanka. Again.
Outright rejection of the Wijeyadasa text is not a moderate position. The Middle Path between the Wijeyadasa text and the abolition of the executive presidency is critical yet constructive engagement with the proposal on the table, with consensus the objective