The Political Column

29th December 1996

Continuity or change?

By Rajpal Abeynayake


The People's Alliance counts two years in power. The UNP seems subdued, tamed. The Tiger has had a few of its teeth knocked out. But while growth rates nosedive, the government seems to be in a hurry to define itself. Apart from vicious ethnic violence, for the country, 1996 was business as usual. The contradiction in the statement is obvious and deliberate but normal. Is this continuity, then, or change?

If good wine needs no bush, why did the People's Alliance Government take out substantially blue full colour advertisements in the newspapers to proclaim that 'all is well'. Cassandra's notwithstanding?

The full page PA advertisements appeared almost at the fag end of the year, bearing the message that the economy is buoyant, that everything is basically under control, (so why the panic?)

The Kumaratunga government completed its second year, thanks to a Presidency that its leaders had solemnly promised to destroy. But, the achievement was that the government had held the day. Chandrika Kumaratunga, the youngest, and famously the most inexperienced to occupy the hot seat of the Sri Lankan presidency, showed that the UNP can be ousted, and kept there. Times have changed.

The radical element that carried this government to office on its shoulders had jettisoned their champions. Pinch yourself to see if this is true. The intellectual rat pack, (with names sounding as if they belong as footnotes in the hall of fame for also-rans) are in high dudgeon. But it is too early in the life of this government for them to be frothing mad.

On an even assessment, the government got less trouble from the LTTE than it would have expected. This is apart from two vicious bombs that were aimed at clear civilian targets in Colombo.

Chandrika Kumaratunga, the world's most endangered woman, lives to fight another year, a solid achievement. Who says the PA Government is without achievements?

The PA Government hit the nadir of its tenure in the middle of the year when the comically inept mandarins of the CEB bureaucracy let the lights go out on the country. For a government that was at the crossroads between Mahathir style development and Castro style regimentation, the power cut could not have come at a worse moment. The PA, to face the facts, is an ideological powerhouse compared to the UNP.

Chandrika Kumaratunga bisects two era's that of the egalitarian welfarist time of the Bandaranaike's and the attendant leftists, and of the rapacious but relatively bountiful period installed by Jayewardene and his cohorts.

To engineer the future from here, would require an achiever in the mould of Lee Kwan Yew, or an ideologue in the mould of Mao. The PA Government does not have either ideologues or technocrats. Not that the UNP had any either. J R Jayewardene had a 'sense of direction', because vision is too respectable a word to append to his brand of planning.

The PA is more in the image of 'government as custodian' in that sense. Chandrika Kumaratunga happened and stumbled on power. It's doubtful that she nursed a burning ambition in the manner that JR Jayewardene did, from the time he pushed for power with the Pushcannons he formed in Law College. (Refer de Silva and Wriggins).

Chandrika Kumaratunga on the other hand wore a shalwar and gravitated from one scene of radical irreverence to another. Undoubtedly, she was a romantic in outlook. She married the talented but insubstantial Vijaya Kumaratunga, and then made several nods at the social circuits of the cultural elite. She also lived a very normal matter of fact life, domiciling herself in pedestrian Polhengoda, and riding a double cab in that era in which she was fond of positioning herself as Vijaya Kumaratunga's sidekick.

In these times, it is likely that the lifestyles of the upper middle class and the middle class made an impression on her psyche. That is probably why she seldom rides an ideological high horse, and is more content to project a down to earth style of minding the shop.

The whole PA has been minding the shop. This year, for example, the PA minded the shop by not rocking the boat. Two clich's but conveys the point. (There were some exceptions.)

The PA has been fighting the war, and getting the aid, but has not made any Herculean attempts at attracting investment or engineering groundbreaking social legislation. Approaching the middle of its tenure, quite obviously the PA strategy of blaming every crisis on the UNP has lost credibility. The PA has been fighting, Bill Clinton style, to keep scandal under wraps. Thawakkal and the Galle port issue embarrassed the PA and sundered its 'schoolboy in love with schoolgirl' image.

When the PA removed the diesel subsidy in the latter part of this year, the government was making a concession to the fact that the bitter pill cannot be avoided. The expected snowball effect prevailed. When the President queried the Minister of Trade on the high price of coconuts at a weekly Cabinet meeting, the technocratic Mr. Wickremeratne went into bluff and bluster mode. The President said she had done her homework and checked the prices. At eighteen rupees a coconut, she knew there was something wrong that could not be set right with a package and new legislation on marital rape.

Classically analysed, the PA is up against the forces of capitalist survival.

The forces of capitalism are trammeled by slogan shouting labour who have the indirect if not implied fiat of the current Minister of Labour. For example, the Koreans who attempted to privatise Oruwela steel were greeted by workers who booed cussed scratched and spat.

For a government almost committed to maintaining worker privilege, tactics of worker suppression that the UNP deployed are necessarily repugnant. But, the patronage system that a left of centre government would ideally practise, has a notoriously limited reach. Strikes may pacify the Oruwela steel workers, but they have a deep-going psychological impact on the investor mind.

The capitalist machine has been determined to get the PA out of the seats of power from the time of its installation. To that extent, the President is right. There has been a conspiracy against the PA Government.

But the conspiracy has not been political. On the other hand, it has been brutally and nakedly capitalistic. The managers of the economy don't want the PA. The fact that most of them back the UNP is only incidental.

But, the PA Government has around four more years to set the economy back on track.

If the PA could get a better handle on the war that the UNP could, then, would it be impossible for the PA to turn the economy around?

If the PA is to do that, it has to risk losing part of its constituency. The PA can get tough on labour, the PA can pursue privatisation with a vengeance and make concessions to business that will not necessarily be popular with the labour force. The PA will have to do all these things very loud and very clear if it's to change its image as a welfarist government that mollycoddles the radical elements of society.

If the PA sends a clear message on the issues of labour and such, then it loses indubitably one of its favourite vote banks. But, in the face of weak opposition, the PA could offset these losses by gaining the confidence of a whole swathe of the middle class.

It's a gamble the PA has to take. But, that will be several times better than losing money on large advertisements.

So, in spite of the dip in the economy, politics as usual was for the most part the factor that made this year similar to any other that had preceded it in the recent past. For example, when political violence flared up in the North-western province, it was business as usual because the collective national psyche had adapted itself to the fact that post independence Sri Lanka politics is violent. The perpetrators could be from any side of the divide.

The violent trend that was seen in Negombo has abated. But, politics might have come a full circle.

It used to be that the UNP was the thugs corporation. The thuggery went with the image and the territory.

Lee Kwan Yew was described by a Britisher who was surveying the future of Singapore as the smartest man in his country 'albeit a bit of a thug.' Several politicians during the UNP regime would have privately cherished that description.

But, come UNP under Wijetunga, the image changed. It was as if the thugs thought they couldn't work for a spineless gangland boss.

It gave room for free elections, and the ability to chase the UNP out of power.

So where have all the thugs gone now? Politicians on both sides of the divide knew that factors such as caste and thuggery hover over the terra firma of Sri Lankan politics. These are factors in local politics that can hardly be wished away.

The incidents in Negombo in that context were not unusual to practised observers of the Sri Lankan political scene. But, the eruptions in the North-western belt could congeal into political intimidation which was more readily associated with the UNP.

The PA may be made up of a milder lot than the UNP, but, the temptations of power could transmogrify the PA from saviour to savage.

But, all that thuggery will be needed by the PA when elections approach. The PA has shown itself not averse to many of the stratagems of the UNP, such as intimidation of the media and the moulding of the judiciary in its own image. If the PA adopts the thugs corporation, starting Negombo, it will be another case of continuity via change...

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