Addressing chairpersons of district coordination committees and officials concerned, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake urged them to ‘prioritise basic and urgent needs of the people at the district level’. The meeting focused on identifying essential infrastructure requirements and other critical development needs, and ensuring their implementation through the forthcoming budget allocations.
On the face of it, the President’s directives sound innocent to the point of being innocuous. It is so because governments are expected to address the basic and urgent needs of the people. It becomes innocuous in context as every President in Dissanayake’s place has said the same thing at such meetings that they had presided over in their time.
In political terms, however, the President’s reference to ‘district level’ prioritisation of people’s needs and developmental targets does not sound as innocuous – or, innocent, either. This owes to Dissanayake’s post-election promise to turn to the promised constitutional reforms from his third year in office. It translates as the long run-up to the next Presidential Election, circa 2029 and mid-way for his re-election bid.
Delayed, not denied
By no means can Dissanayake and his ruling JVP-NPP combine to deny a constitutional discourse. It is more so, given the political climate that they themselves had set in long before last year’s twin polls and the Aragalaya protests that set the scope and direction for the nation’s politico-electoral future, as it stood in 2022.
Maybe, the Government can delay a final outcome, as Presidents Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (CBK), Mahinda Rajapaksa, Maithripala Sirisena, Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe had done in their time. If they decide not to press forward with the ‘promise reforms’, whose concept and content still seem too vague for the ruling elite of this government, they can always find a way out.
However, in case the Government has nothing else to offer in terms of administrative achievements, Team Dissanayake cannot hope to convince the people, especially the Sinhala-Buddhist ethnic majority, without a substantive approach and conclusion to the constitutional discourse that has become a joke through the past three-plus decades.
It is here, the Government leaders may be pushed into opening up the constitutional discourse earlier than Dissanayake might have planned. Should it happen, there are inevitable questions that they need to answer and find answers for. Rather, they need to lay out their own ideas and plans out in the open, however couched in ideological mumbo-jumbo they otherwise might be.
The President’s urging officials to address the people’s urgent needs at the district level should thus kick-start speculation about the why and when of his statement. The simple question is this: Is President Dissanayake signalling an early end to the Provincial Councils and the revival of the District Development Councils, which pre-dated the other, pre-1987? Is he indicating giving up on 13A, on which there is a general consensus for the record, though on implementation, every government since then has been found wanting in matters of implementation?
Unique animal
The centre-left polity in the country is a unique animal, of adapting international communist ideology sans appendages based on religion and god that the other one has shunned all along. Within this was born a heady cocktail that aimed at capturing the imagination of the nation’s poor, who could do with centre-left socio-political mitigation.
Yet, owing to poverty-induced illiteracy and ignorance of varying degrees, they remained rooted in unshakable religious beliefs, god and Buddhism. It has been so in the case of the three minority ethnicities, too, namely, Sri Lankan Tamils, Muslims and Upcountry Tamils. But the majority has also been majoritarian in attitude and approach in accepting the religion, language and culture of the other three, and expect them to fall in line, only because they have had the numbers – nothing more, nothing less.
What the centre-left polity in the country did was to add a heavy dose of ‘nationalism’, which was rooted not in ideology but in social realities. Thus, you have for long had ‘left nationalism’ in this country, where the nationalist credentials did not flow from history or social divisions. Instead, it has had its roots out and out in religion and language. ‘Sinhala-Buddhist Left-nationalism’ has been the name of the game.
Over the years, the JVP has mastered the art, causing the death or departure of multiple other ‘left, nationalist’ parties – but without being able to add their traditional voter strength to its kitty. Those votes went to a ‘middle-of-the-road’ SLFP, which was born at the right time over a wrong issue, and provided the cushion for centre-left leaders and cadres in the post-Independence years.
What was at first the Bandaranaike family vote-bank, and later became the ‘Mahinda vote-bank’, which alone helped the JVP-NPP and candidate Dissanayake to clear the twin-elections last year, belonged there. Today, most of those voters are left in identity, not necessarily ideology. Most of them are most definitely ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist’ as the nation has understood.
Exposition, exploitation
Ironically, again in the post
-Independence context, nationalism in the Ceylonese /
Sri Lankan context has centred more on religion and language than on any theoretical construct. The more Ceylon became Sri Lanka, the greater has been such exposition, exploitation.
It is thus that the two Republican Constitutions of 1972 and 1978 have done more harm than good. At once, the First Republican Constitution of Sirimavo Bandaranaike gave the nation a long title, ‘Democratic Socialist Republic’. The Opposition UNP of the time, with its laissez-faire, open-market democratic approach to politics and governance, did oppose the identification of the post-dominion Sri Lanka as a ‘socialist’ republic.
Yet, when JRJ came up with his Second Republican Constitution just six years later in 1978, he was careful not to remove the ‘socialist’ tag even while going all out with his Economic Reforms process that were/are capitalist in form and content. If today, the economy is in a mess, economists and academics should ponder over the contribution of this ‘identity-less identity’ that the name and title of the Constitution still carries.
Today, thus, the JVP-NPP Government too continues to carry the ‘socialist’ tag, and rightfully so, but only in the context of their past principles. In power, they too are as ‘market-driven’ as the UNP dispensations were and as morphed as the SLFP and breakaway SLPP became. Sticking to the IMF norms in matters of economy is only one such sign, and its effects are beginning to be felt under the JVP-NPP regime, with which the common man had not associated government policy with, any time in the past.
Fashionable phrase
At the end of it all, for all ‘nationalists’ of the Sinhala-Buddhist hue — right, left or centrist – the ‘unitary’ Constitution and the continued dominance of the Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarianism have become the only hallmarks of their ‘nationalist’ war-cries, loud or not. It is ironic that before Ceylon became Sri Lanka, circa 1972 and before ‘unitary’ Constitution became a fashionable phrase, there was greater harmonisation in societal terms than ever since.
In Sri Lanka’s case, such idioms have been used to idealise concepts that do not fit the ground reality and have made idiots of the common man. All of it stands out even more when you consider that the ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists’ who want to be seen (only) as ‘Sri Lankan nationalists’ want the ‘unitary’ tag to remain, but want the Executive Presidency that is the symbol of such a constitutional character to go.
This dichotomy has also ruled the constitutional contradictions that have visited and vitiated every other attempt at statute-change from CBK’s days. No one wants to bell the cat, nor pet it.
One, they have not been able to put their finger on the contradiction. And when they do, they will still stick to the duality/dichotomy as they just cannot afford to antagonise the ‘Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian, nationalist’ constituency.
This is true as much of the Right, Left and centrist political forces in the country, even though the elitist perception is that the centre-left could convince and carry the constituency if they wished, if they willed. In an electoral democracy, they cannot afford to take chances, take that risk.
This now applies to the ruling combine and President Dissanayake. Little do they acknowledge that they won elected power twice in a matter of months last year, not because of their ‘nationalist’ politics and propaganda dating back to the late eighties, but to larger issues of economic mismanagement, where they too are yet to come to grips with.
(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)