Sunday Times 2
NM: The political visionary whose warnings echo louder today
View(s):NM, a parliamentarian par excellence, passed away 46 years ago on August 14, 1979, but his contribution to the development of parliamentary politics and his vision to make a country where people could live with human dignity as equals in a democratic country are as relevant today as any time in our post-independence history.
He lived in an era where he and great leaders like Dudley Senanayake, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, M.D. Banda, U.B. Wanninayake, Philip Gunawardena, S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, G.G. Ponnambalam, A. Amirthalingam, Colvin R. de Silva, C.P. de Silva, Sirimavo Bandaranaike and many others were steadfast in maintaining the dignity and decorum of Parliament, upholding human and fundamental rights and democratic rule.
Many wondered how a Trotskyite, a committed socialist, a Marxist as some would say (but he corrected once a foreign journalist who interviewed him to say that he was a socialist and Samasamajist), could also be a crusader for a parliamentary form of government and democracy. NM showed that there was no contradiction. Socialism for him was the ultimate attainment of social justice, which is also the foundation of democracy and liberal values.
N.M. Perera
NM foretold the disastrous consequences of many decisions made by our leaders at the time. Disregarding the ridicule hurled at them by communal extremists, he and the LSSP under his leadership opposed vehemently the introduction of the Citizenship Act of 1949 that deprived Sri Lankan citizenship to thousands of plantation workers of Indian origin.
He opposed the Official Languages Act of 1956, which promulgated Sinhala as the official language of the country. NM proposed parity of status for Sinhala and Tamil languages and brought a private member’s motion in Parliament on this proposal. Again he had to face wide opposition from the communal extremists; he even had to face defeat in the Colombo Municipal Council elections in 1956. In 1978, he opposed the new constitution proposed by J.R. Jayewardene.
What he opposed in the final days of his life remains as relevant today as it was then: the IMF–World Bank prescription for economic recovery and the question of whether an executive presidential system suits a country that had embraced a parliamentary model rooted in British tradition.
When JR in 1978 introduced the new constitution to replace the 1972 constitution and enacted the executive presidential system of government, NM, disregarding his health problems, got onto the road with the progressive forces of the country to oppose this move. He did not stop at that. He published the book “Critical Analysis of the New Constitution”, which stands up to date as the forecast of the future under the presidential system. Six presidents have vowed to do away with this system, but none has done it. NM predicted the reason in the preface to the book (page 15) and states, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely; then the deterioration of the American Republics into dictatorships is easily understood.” The presidential system offers unlimited scope for yielding absolute power, at least for a limited period. But the taste of unlimited power grows with the feeding, and the lust cannot be easily satiated. It is a matter for regret that Sri Lanka, which has amassed considerable experience in parliamentary government and has successfully overcome the teething problems of the early period, should now be thrown down the slope of constitutional confusion, in the end jeopardising democracy itself. What NM predicted has happened. It is up to us to wake up and resurrect our political system, even at this late stage.
- Lal Wijenayake