CBK Presidency: Seamier side of the 'opened' society
She is a near perfect host, and a very gregarious person. Guests are bowled over when they approach the dinner area and find their President is standing by the table, handing out the plates.

That's Chandrika Kumaratunga. Last week saw her 59th birthday, and somebody had made an assessment of her Presidency. She was portrayed in a better light than the Presidents before her. There was something mentioned to the effect that she opened up what used to be a closed and authoritarian system.

She is a good host -- a wonderful person with an interesting charm -- but is she a good President? Even if we judge Presidencies by their relative merits, Chandrika Kumaratunga rates rather middling. But the point is not whether she was better or worse than previous Presidents but whether she was - in sum -- good for the country??

A President who dissolves a parliament midstream -- or what's the word mid-term? - can she be characterised as anything other than being authoritarian?? I do not know how some other writers make these assessments, but she is quite authoritarian in my book. If she sacks a government that can show a majority in parliament, and then replaces it with one that does not seem to be able to show a majority despite all the hubris -- now is such a President authoritarian or not??

If she appoints to parliament persons who are right out of any list -- national list or candidates list --- and if such persons happen to have names such as Mervyn De Silva -- then how does that lend to notions of her commitment to open society?? The writer who assessed her Presidency in a newspaper last week says "even her most partisan critics will concede that she has not been guilty of excessive use of Presidential powers as some of her predecessors.''

Now how did he get that one so completely wrong?? On the contrary some of her non partisan critics such as myself, who have no truck with any administration, be it the Moragodaist type of the UNP or of any other, still think that this President has used her Presidential powers excessively. If sacking a majority government is not one example, what is?? She puts Mervyn De Silva in parliament, and keeps Sarath Silva as Chief Justice. Need we say more?? Well not at least to those who know the real meaning of the word authoritarian.

Now Kumaratunga is trying one of the oldest authoritarian tricks in her profession. She wants to rule the country for longer than she is welcome to - - and this is right down the alley of those such as Junius Richard Jayewardene and Sirimavo Bandaranaike before her. They all came to grief of course as we all know, but how does that compare anyway even in terms of relative merits??

Well, birthday encomiums seem to say a great deal about our political culture. We are happy with whatever little we have got - - even though that's close to downright bad or is, even by a generous standard, nothing more than mediocre. But then we try to compare such a performance with a few bad or mediocre ones before that to dress up a Presidency that has relatively nothing in terms of real solid achievement to show for it.

The Kumaratunga Presidency has not come close to solving the national conflict in ten years -- and this Presidency has failed to take the Sri Lankan economy in any direction, a welfarist socialist direction or a supply side direction that could make Sri Lanka even remotely comparable to some of the competing economies of the region.

If we talk relative merits this is not to say that she doesn't have her strengths. She despite all her faults, her "idiosyncrasies'' (coming late in mention in this column) and her rather garrulous nature for a person who occupies the office of President, has leadership qualities as opposed to very little that's reposed say in the person of Ranil Wickremesinghe her opposite number. She does not also excessively palaver the Tigers or boot-lick the international community.

But, even friends like Gunadasa Amarasekera, we mustn't forget, refer to her as "that liberal windbag.' The operative word there is not so much the first in my mind but the second. Windbag?? It connotes some things this writer wants to lay his finger on. There has been a good deal of noise that has been made during the Kumaratunga Presidency, and in coming to this aspect, we have to refer to the current moment in time.

Kumaratunga recently changed governments in an orgy of rhetorical excess that has rarely seen a parallel in recent times. But then what does she come up with? A dangerously polarised parliament, a runaway rupee against the dollar and an economy that is fast hitting the skids.

Now what does all this matter to the guys who write the glowing encomiums? For them who do not shop -- we suppose the cost of living matters not a lot. But that seems to be the condition of this country. We are happy with all the abstractions. "Her every action and those of her Government were being meticulously scrutinised by the print and electronic media which had been spawned as never before by the advent of her Government," says the writer of last week's glowing report. Now that's the kind of detail that qualifies perfectly as an abstraction. Those with reasonable memories will remember that Premadasa was barracked by the media the Ravyas and the Sulangas and the robust alternative press of his time. They curried him to the point where the current Editor of the Ravaya who was also the then Editor says that he feels sorry now they gave Premadasa such a tough deal

So it's not as if Kumaratunga has somehow performed the democratic version of the Houdini act - retrieved an open society from one that was hopelessly closed and shut-in. But, we need to look at the next side of her Presidency which is the more important side. She inherited a robust economy that should have continued to grow at least close to the 8 per cent per year that was the digit when Wijetunge relinquished office. If that trend continued, Sri Lanka would have by now had an infrastructure worthy of a Newly Industrialised Nation, and a quality of life that Asia could be proud of.

We have neither. Instead we still have a constitution which, bad as it is, now seems to have its worst side manifested. We have a Tiger making sickening and threatening noises. Our social contract is threatening to implode because Parliament is in a moribund death dance and all this is scaring the hell out of investors. But yet if we are to hear it from the experts we have a good ten-year President. Ever wondered why Sri Lanka is still Sri Lanka, while Malaysia, for instance, is an economic powerhouse?

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