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| Alternative proposals to devolve power within
a unitary state by P. S. Mahawatte The LTTE has been consistent in rejecting any political solutions that will not grant them Eelam. The Sinhalese majority community will never agree to the division of this country and this is not surprising because the Sinhalese have only this tiny country to live in. Their attempts and hopes that by economically weakening the country by prolonging this brutal war the Sinhalese may relent has only made them more resolute to eradicate this terrorist menace however long it may take or whatever it may cost. The LTTE has made it quite clear that they are claiming to be the sole political representatives of the Tamil people and they have demonstrated this by brutally killing their political opponents. They are even demanding that those who got elected to office at the last elections held in the North should resign. If they refused to do so they would be killed without any care for world opinion. In spite of this disregard for civilised norms, some countries supported by NGO's continue to allow them to raise funds in their countries knowing fully well that such funds would be used to murder innocent people. The Tamils in the North and some parts of the East are at the mercy of these LTTE terrorists and live in constant fear for their lives and the forced conscription of their teenage children. This enforced submission of the Tamil people should not be construed as supporting the LTTE. Mr. Siddharathan, the Wanni district MP says that if we could offer "something comprehensive" it would not be difficult to alienate the Tamils from the LTTE. Terrorists Sri Lankan governments have bent over backwards to talk to these terrorists and they used the duration of these talks to replenish their stocks of arms and men. As soon as they were ready, they abandoned talks and commenced their brutal killings. No Sri Lankan government could place any further trust in the LTTE and agree to anymore discussions. This war has to be brought to an end. The following proposals will help to alienate the Tamils from the LTTE as their aspirations have been duly addressed. The devolution proposals outlined below envisages that the government will defeat and disarm the terrorists so that these proposals can be implemented smoothly in the North and some parts of the East. In the meantime these can be implemented in other regions. The LTTE should be given the opportunity to regroup as a democratic political party and get political power from the people as the J.V.P is now attempting to do. These proposals have been designed to give effect to the aspirations of the minority communities of not only being responsible for the administration and development of their respective regions but also to actively participate in National Legislature by constitutional right. In a Felix Dias Bandaranaike Memorial lecture, Mr. Nihal Jayawickrama said on the theme "Things to ponder in Constitution making" I quote "Regional autonomy is not an end in itself. It seems to me that the greater the degree of autonomy enjoyed by a region, the stronger should the bond be between the autonomous region and the centre. There must be genuine participation by any regional entity in government at the Centre. In other words the Tamil and Muslim communities of the North and the East will need to be assured constitutionally of not token or fortuitious but genuine representation both in the national legislature and in the Central govt." Proposals 3. These proposals will ensure the following aspirations of all communities living in this country:- a. The right of every citizen to live in any part of Sri Lanka and the right to own property in any part of Sri Lnka. b. The right to engage in legitimate business, trade or vocation in any part of Sri Lanka. c. The right to practice one's religion and culture and the right to be educated in any recognised medium. These are only very broad categories which will promote ethnic harmony and trust and respect among the communities living in Sri Lanka. Although there has been several informative articles and letters published in the national newspapers mostly pointing out the dangers and repercussions of the 'Package' proposed by the government, no attempt was made to advance any alternative proposals. I have attempted to do this and hope that the core proposals will be acceptable to all communities and help to usher in the peace that we all are hoping for. I have worked out the details of its implementation and could be made available if required. Proposals This system was imposed upon the people. It was perhaps meant to appease the Tamil people. Even that was a total failure. Whatever benefits envisaged by the architects of this system has not been realised by the people. It has only increased the number of politicians and their cronies, promoting political enemies and violence in the name of serving the people. Do a small country like ours need so many layers of local government bodies to service the needs of the people? The failure of the Provincial Council system with considerable duplication of functions is clearly evident from the various Presidential Mobile Services conducted in various parts of the country with much fanfare to service the needs of the people. Billions of rupees could, be saved by the abolition of this system without in any way inconvincing the public. Abolish the Executive Presidential system: All parties are agreed on this. It was once thought that a "little bit of dictatorship" could bring discipline and development. All major political parties are now wanting to abolish this system as unsuitable and dangerous. Demarcate the country into regions in a such a manner that each region shall be an administrative unit. The regions to be identified as Region one, Region two and so on. Introduce regional administration and development councils (RADC) in each region. The Council will consist of:- Chief Minister The number of members to be determined according to size of region. The chief minister shall be the regional organiser of the political party who wins the most number of seats of that region in Parliamentary elections. The Prime Minister shall invite the Chief Minister to join the Cabinet of Ministers even though he/she may not be of the same political party. Council Members will be those who poll the highest preferential votes in the region and qualify to get elected to parliament. If members of more than one party get elected the regional leaders of these political parties will get elected to the Council. Genuine The relevant feature of this proposal is that all Regional Council members are also Members of Parliament and will give them 'genuine representation in the National Legislature'. This concept of having Cabinet Ministers belonging to other political parties is operative even in the present cabinet. Demarcate into regions or districts whichever unit is more conducive to administrate. 4.1 Regional governors will be appointed by the Prime Minister. The Regional Governor on the recommendation of the Chief Minister of the region shall appoint Regional Ministers from those elected to the Regional Council. The Number of Ministers to be limited to the essential functions needed to serve the people and the administration of the region. These could be Health; Industries: Educational facilities; Agriculture and Lands; Local government; Transport and Highways. The portfolios of Finance and National Security should be reserved for the Chief Minister. Jurisdiction of the Regional Councils: All local government bodies shall come under the jurisdiction of the Council. The Regional Ministers will prepare functional budgets in respect of their ministries. These will be discussed and approved by the Council. On approval the Chief Minister shall prepare a Master Budget for his region and with recommendations for raising revenue that can be obtained from the Region submit to Cabinet for discussion and approval. The Chief Minister who will also be in the Cabinet will be able to justify the budget plans for his region and obtain cabinet approval. All these Cabinet approved regional budgets will be used by the Finance Minister of the Central Government to prepare the National budget with the necessary revenue raising proposals. When parliament approves the National Budget, the Minister of Finance will make available the funds approved for each region and appoint a Regional Finance Treasury Secretary to administrate the finances as per the budgets. The public servants now centralised in Colombo will be transferred to Regions. Simple The Package offered by the government was not readily accepted by the Tamil political parties inspite of the fears expressed by the Sinhala people that this package would give almost independence and even Eelam, could be attributed to their aspirations of 'genuine participation in government at the centre' not being provided for. The above proposals have taken into account these aspirations of the minority communities. My only interest as an ordinary citizen in spending time to formulate this system is to find a solution acceptable to all communities and save this country from slow strangulation and the ultimate dissolution of this blessed country that have been in existence for over 2500 years as a civilised nation. I only hope that it is all not in vain. If the authorities are satisfied that these proposals will usher in peace and harmony among all communities, then they must courageously promulgate the necessary legislation and submit to parliament for approval. It may not be possible to implement these proposals effectively in the North due to some areas in the North being still under the control of the LTTE. But these could be implemented in other regions, whilst employing all military effort to eliminate the terrorists and make it safe for holding of free elections. When the people in the North see for themselves the peace and harmony prevailing in the regions where these proposals have been implemented, the Tamil people will revolt against these terrorists to defeat them. |
| L E G A L W A T C H Suspension of the Electoral Process By
Nayana While not presuming to predict the outcome of any legal challenge that may be made against one or both of these Presidential orders, we propose to discuss the relevant issues in the public interest, as the postponement of elections is a matter that affects the rights of all citizens and on which, accordingly, all citizens should have a right to be informed and to express their views. Section 2 of the Public Security Ordinance provides that "where, in view of the existence or imminence of a state of public emergency, the President is of opinion that it is expedient to do so in the interests of public security and the preservation of public order or for the maintenance of supplies and services essential to the life of the community, the President may, by proclamation published in the Gazette, declare that the provisions of Part II of this Ordinance shall ......... come into operation." Ordinance The argument of the Government is that public security (which includes security in those parts of the country in which elections are not scheduled such as the North-East) will be seriously prejudiced if the already over-stretched police and armed forces have to be used for election duties at this time. The argument of critics is that the power to make regulations under the PSO was never intended for such a drastic measure as the postponement of a poll. In this respect the Government may be helped by Article 155 of the 1978 Constitution which accords to emergency regulations a position of pre-eminence, allowing such regulations to override, amend or suspend the operation of any law except the provisions of the Constitution itself. In respect of the first Gazette proclaiming the Island-wide state of emergency, the argument put forward by critics is that the Government must be able to show some actual deterioration in the security situation to justify the proclamation. However, this may be met with reference to the words "existence or imminence of a state of public emergency" which are used in Section 2 of the PSO. The Government could argue that the forthcoming elections constitute an imminent threat to public security which requires it to assume emergency powers. The public of this country are no strangers to elections held under a state of emergency, the most recent example being last year’s local government elections. However, in the present instance the Government has used its powers under the state of emergency to postpone the elections. The text of the Regulation issued under Section 5 of the PSO which appears in Gazette Extraordinary No.1039/5 of 4 August 1998 is as follows: "For so long, and so long only, as Part II of the Public Security Ordinance is in operation in a Province for which a Provincial Council specified in Column 1 of the Schedule hereto has been established, such part of the Notice under Section 22 of the Provincial Councils Elections Act No.2 of 1988, published in the Gazette specified in the corresponding entry in Column 2 of the Schedule hereto, as relates to the dates of the poll for the holding of elections to such Provincial Council, shall be deemed for all purposes to be of no effect." The Five The rhetorical introduction - "For so long, and so long only" - seems to indicate that the maker of the order is acutely conscious of the unfavourable response it is likely to generate. In fact, rhetoric seems to have triumphed over logic, because the notice fixing the date of the elections cannot be suspended "for so long" as the state of emergency lasts; it ceases to be operative the moment the date mentioned in the notice has passed and a fresh notice will have to be issued at such time as a new date is fixed. Any extension of the five year term of the Provincial Councils would have required an amendment to the Constitution since Article 154E states that: "A provincial council shall, unless sooner dissolved, continue for a period of five years from the date appointed for its first meeting and the expiration of the said period of five years shall operate as a dissolution of the council." To circumvent this difficulty the Government allowed the Councils to stand dissolved at the end of their term and allowed the Commissioner of Elections to commence the steps required for the holding of elections for fresh Councils. These steps are taken in terms of the Provincial Councils Elections A.0ct No.2 of 1988 which is a simple Act of Parliament. The Government will therefore argue that it is acting within its powers in using emergency regulations to suspend or override the operation of a law other than a provision of the Constitution, as it is allowed to do by the terms of the Constitution itself. However this may be a little too glib for its critics who could say that the Government is seeking to do indirectly what it is forbidden to do directly. The Thirteenth Amendment from which Article 154E is quoted above, makes no provision for the postponement of elections to Provincial Councils. Article 154J contains its own directions on the use of emergency regulations which, it may even be argued, supersede the provisions of the older Article 155 when it comes to the use of the PSO in relation to the Provincial Council system. Article 154J states as follows: "Upon the making of a proclamation under the Public Security Ordinance ...... on the ground that the maintenance of essential supplies and services is threatened by war or external aggression or armed rebellion, the President may give directions to any (provincial) Governor as to the manner in which the executive power exercisable by the Governor is to be exercised". This Article cannot be invoked by the Government in the present situation, as the powers which have been suspended or overridden are not those of the Provincial Governor but those of the Commissioner of Elections. On the other hand, any Court hearing a challenge to the postponement of Provincial Council elections will also have to consider what significance is to be attached to the fact that the "franchise" which is one of the attributes of the "sovereignity of the people" in Article 4 of the Constitution, is defined to include the right to vote at presidential and parliamentary elections and a referendum, but not provincial or local elections. The Thirteenth Amendment did not amend this definition whereas the Government’s draft new constitution includes the right to vote at Regional Council elections as part of the franchise, indicating that this lacuna has been noticed. Even if the Government succeeds in postponing provincial polls, Article 4(d) of the Constitution, together with Article 83 dealing with moves to extend the term of Parliament or the Presidency, may serve as a guarantee that a government will not be able legally to avoid parliamentary or presidential elections using the same device. Meanwhile an anxious nation will no doubt watch for the political consequences of the Government’s current move which has enabled it to dispose of four opposition-controlled Councils, leaving PA appointed Governors as the de facto persons in charge for an indefinite period, while also halting, for the time being, the emerging electoral challenge of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna which was evidenced in last year’s local government elections. The 1978 Constitution has done more for this Government that the Government is likely to give it credit for. A question remains as to how well it has served this nation. |
| The European Union - monetary reform and
expansion by
Dr. Stanley Kalpage The European Union has its origin in the Schumann Declaration of May 1950. French foreign minister Rober Schumann and German Chancellor Konard Adenauer had proposed that a community of interest be established between France and Germany, enemies in World War 2, in the shape of a jointly managed market in coal and steel under the control of an independent authority. The treaty establishing the first European Community, the European Coals and Steel Community (ECSC), was eventually signed in Paris in April 1951. The six ECSC members consisted of France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg. The Treaties of Rome (1957) established two other Communities - the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). In 1967, these were merged, with a single executive, into one European Community (EC). In 1973, EC membership was expanded to nine with the addition of Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom. In the 1980s more southern European members were admitted as Greece, Spain and Portugal took their place among the concert of democratic nations. European Union (EU) To join the EU, a country needs a solid democracy, a proper judiciary, a functioning civil service, a real market economy - and a library of EU rules embedded in its own law. The Maastricht Treaty strengthened the EC by preparing the way for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), a common foreign and security policy and co-operation on justice and police affairs. To prepare for changes in monetary policy and currency change, the Maastricht Treaty created the European Monetary Institute (EMI), as a transitional body. With a population of 370 million people and a territorial reach from Crete in the south to the arctic circle in the north, the European Union has a gross national product which is 10 percent higher than the USA and 64 percent higher than that of Japan. Cardiff Summit Harmonisation of pricing within the countries using the common currency, already being referred to as "euroland", will mean a stronger, more competitive Europe. Some predict that the euro would some-day unseat the US dollar. Enthusiasts argue it will end the privileges Americans have reaped from having the world's only reserve currency - such as steering the international monetary system and running unlimited trade deficits. When the euro is introduced on 1 January 1999, the European Central Bank (ECB), successor to the EMI, will take control of monetary policy. The six-member committee of the EDB will be chaired by a President. After a tussle for the presidency between Germany and France, a compromise arrangement has been worked out for Wim Duisenburg of the Netherlands to resign after four years of his six-year term of office and for France's Jean-Claude Trichet to move in as president for the next six years. A Common Currency A single currency removes the need for travellers to change money when travelling within the European Union. The ordinary citizen also gets a strong and stable currency backed by the combined economic power of the EU and its Member States. By 1 January 2002, the people of the 11 countries in the EMU will be using euros only, throwing away their marks, francs, liras and other national currencies. A single currency should sharpen a sense of common European identity. For a start, the euro will belong to Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. This group of countries accounts for 19.4% of the world's GDP, against 19.6% for the United States and 7.7% for Japan. It is responsible for 18.6% of world trade, not counting internal trade, whereas America has 16.6% and Japan 8.2%. Thus the euro will at once become the world's second currency, in time, it may challenge the American dollar for supremacy. Design of the Euro But the Eurocrats might have added yet another bit of symbolism to the bridges on their bills to show them burning. For there is no going back from the decision in Brussels last May to lock exchange rates of the 11 charter members to the single continental currency. When European Union government leaders confirmed the participation of their eleven countries in the EMU in Brussels, they launched a process that is virtually unstoppable; on New Year's Day 1999, the newly-created European Central Bank takes over monetary policy from the member countries. By 1 July 2002, the euro replaces marks, francs, schielings, lira, markka, pesetas, gulden, escudos, punts and perhaps drachmas. Only a few holdouts will remain, notably Britain's pound sterling, but those will be mere regional curiosities, secondary to a euro that may eventually stand alongside the dollar as a global reserve currency. Possible repercussions But historians and economists warn that the consequences of EMU could be the very opposite. The advent of the euro could be "the biggest strategic blunder in Europe since 1914 and the Treaty of Versailles," says Emannuel Todd, a French sociologist and demographer who predicted in his 1976 book "The Final Fall", almost to the year the demise of the USSR. "The euro is based on the false premise that European societies are similar, and that their various components are prone to convergence and harmonisation... the euro will no longer exist as of 2005". Even more drastic is the widely debated view of Martin Feldstein, a Harvard economist, who warns that EMU will lead European nations into conflict among themselves and with the United States - and could even result in a new European war. Expansion of the EU Negotiations with five more - Poland, Hungary, The Czech Republic, Slovenia and Estonia - have already begun. Membership could occur sometime in the first half of the next decade. Negotiations will begin later with a second group of post-communist East European countries - Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Latvia and Lithuania. Those left out in the cold will be Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, The Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Albania and Turkey. The debate within the EU over the admission of Turkey, which considers itself to be a European country, resonates with references to "culture" and "civilization". Extending the union eastwards could well mean replacing the old European Club, originally launched by France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries in 1948, with a loose confederation of European nations deployed around a central core of more integrated members. A two-tier Europe seems inevitable as the union expands eastwards. |
| The
Idiocy of Globalization Janaranjana Mithrasena My thoughts were drawn to these reflections a couple of weeks ago at a workshop organised by the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science where powerful and presumably knowledgeable people gathered to enlighten us about globalization and agriculture. But before commenting on those Petronian thoughts that anticipated the tenor of these speeches that claimed to describe an allegedly immutable and "brand new" phenomenon, let me give a quick run down of the verbal "nourishment" that was dished out along with the free lunch generously proffered by the sponsors of the event, Abans Environmental Services (Pvt.) Ltd. I had decided to take up a long-standing invitation from that inimitable companion of my youthful excursions along the uneven and difficult terrain of left-wing politics, Ignatius Almeida, and arrived in Colombo planning to read the poetry, tragic or otherwise that time had written on the face of the city and the faces of its citizens, to visit old friends and chat until evening and maybe to visit the public library and the national archives. Seminar-goer After all here I was come all the way from a small village in Ampara where agriculture and life were not seen as two unconnected or different things, about to hear, hopefully, how we fit into the much celebrated and talked about global village, globalized and packeted for the capitalist market by, wait for it, a "People's Alliance". Before the workshop proper, we were treated to some introductory comments from the SLAAS top order and two senior ministers, D.M. Jayaratne, Minister of Agriculture and Lands, and G.L. Peiris, Minister of, more waiting here, Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Ethnic Affairs and National Integration and Deputy Minister of Finance. At the outset, Prof. A.D.V. de S. Indraratne, General President, SLAAS, informed us that the SLAAS general theme for this year was "Globalization and South Asia: Retrospect and Prospects" and that this was how the title of this workshop had arrived. Sadly, as the workshop progressed it became quite evident that there was little "retrospect" and that the prospects, as such were articulated by those erudite scholars, remained rather bleak. But I am getting ahead of my story. Prof. Indraratne emphasized two things (and these were echoed bymore than a few of the speakers who followed him to the rostrum: a) globalization has come to stay, and b) the importance of agriculture in our economy cannot be denied. The first, it occurred to me, was a brash and unqualified statement that carried the unmistakable tone of submission (unsuccessfully painted as celebration) and the second was something that did not need a workshop to figure out. Prof. Ranjith Senaratne, President of SLAAS (Section B), outlined the scope and objectives of the workshop. He sounded an ominous note, claiming that this was the "crucial hour" in the matter of making our agriculture competitive in the liberalized global economy. A bit surprising that, considering that he had just produced a bunch of statistics to prove that liberalization over the last twenty years had done zilch for us. Speaking of "crucial" hours, I wondered where the good professor was and what he did during those dark hours when representatives of the government signed on to the GATT a few years ago. He certainly had the numbers and probably was aware of the consequences of agreeing to allow multinationals to carve up the world. I decided that regardless of that history, it was commendable that he had organized this workshop, which I hoped would generate something more than a lament of what had already taken place and legislated. And my hopes were raised listening to Minister Jayaratne, who laid the political economy of policy "recommendations" proffered by organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank, the dubiousness of whose agendas are an open book. Mr. Jayaratne quite clearly pointed his finger at the IMF referring to the East Asian debacle, implying that we could well do without the "advice" of experts from such bodies. That his government doesn't seem to share his views and lacks the political commitment to adjust its policies in the face of the patent failure of IMF recommendations all over the world, is certainly lamentable. Whereas all the other speakers were happy to say that globalization was here to stay and to describe the phenomenon in purely economic terms and even this using the surreptitious tools relating to the market that describes both the designs of capital as well as the poverty of economic theory, the Minister was bold enough to say that globalization was nothing less than the matter of the powerful imposing their will on the powerless. The "powerlessness", however, is a matter of opinion and I for one take the view that the characterization is itself disempowering and more than that negates and indeed conceals the struggles of peoples all over the world to secure control over their resources and lives, cultures included. Outside He elaborated that globalization essentially means moves towards free trade, the liberalization of markets and consumption. He demonstrated that he was savvy to the language of globalization by providing a perceptive analysis of that bastardized term, comparative advantage. Again, he explained the political economy of comparative advantage and how one gets or does not get one's prices right, depending on one's commitment to protect the people and safeguard the national interest. Using the example of cheap prices of Indian agricultural produce, he explained how State intervention gives the Indian farmer a competitive edge in the international market. He did not forget, as a lot of academics, planners and politicians are wont to do, that the USA is one of the biggest providers of subsidies to domestic agriculture and how the IMF is mum about such things. He even mentioned the importance of extension services in the business of surviving globalization. Unfortunately he chose not to get into the story of how and why agricultural extension was more or less dismantled as demanded by the IMF gurus, an entertaining narrative (whichever way one looks at it) that I was looking forward to, given the wide canvas the Minister was painting on. Research, well the devolving and privatization of it, a subject on which I believe Dr. Nissanka Seneviratne wrote a thought provoking paper a few years ago when everyone was going gaga about the restructuring of the Department of Agriculture, was also not touched on. Nevertheless, all in all, it was a insightful presentation and one which, as the workshop went on, one came to appreciate even more, given the utterly servile and, in more ways than one, puerile efforts of the "intellectuals" that hogged the podium. Prof. G.L. Peiris was, as he always seems to be, a riot! He walked in late and listening to him I figured that the body and other searches that we were subjected to, in keeping with the times I suppose (even pens were examined), was more to do with him than with us, "us" including Mr. Jayaratne. Clearly such protection and personal security is a hazard faced by "globalization velendas" who go about selling national assets, including sovereignty. It was also clear that Dr. Peiris was totally unaware that he was addressing not the kept members of a govt. parliamentary group but people who knew what's going on. He should have had someone who understood the subject ghost his speech. He was even a teeny-weeny bit ungracious to his colleague, all of whose initiatives in this field, he claimed, had been made "under the guidance of Her Excellency the President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga", and even towards Her Excellency: he had, by his account, presented the last (and previous) budget on behalf of Her Excellency, in her capacity as Minister of Finance, but he seemed to derive satisfaction from his failure to conceal that it was all his own work, - not something that you and I would not do our best to conceal but there it was. Figures But Dr. Peiris wouldn't let the dogs lie, preferring instead to gambol among them like a playful pup who was certain of not being harmed by them. He came up with grand statements of how much his - sorry, Her - budget had done for agricultural marketing - tax and tariff incentives for the import of lorries, small tractors and refrigeration plants (the latter was rich, his example being the post-harvest loss of wattakka in the absence of refrigeration): all this in the interests of improving our infrastructure for marketing the poor farmers' produce. He failed to make any mention of how the PA government accelerated the dismantling of the Paddy Marketing Board that the UNP had commenced. Not a word either about the characterisation by Mr Mangala Samaraweera , another of his colleagues, of a Sinhalese organisation purchasing paddy from farmers in Polonnaruwa, at prices better than those this government would offer, as "racist". Perhaps all these people would rather that Sea Street traders run the economy and are annoyed that Tamil racist "moderates" failed to find a Sinhala frontman to cover a Tamil racist take-over of Galle Harbour (though they have succeeded in finding such for the take-over of formal State power). Dr Peiris did mention that Sri Lanka had dismantled all tariff and non-tariff barriers except an import licensing requirement with respect to wheat. He did not bother to explain why he/she had removed such protection for our farmers who produce rice, onions, potatoes or chillies. Or that the PA government subsidised the wheat farmers of North America to the tune of Rs. 4 billion a year. And I was more than a little irked when he kept bragging about the stuff his government is supposed to have done for 'the agricultural sector' for the simple reason that when one refers to agriculture as a sector one invariably misses the people who constitute the sector. 'For whom?' Since no questions or comments on the Ministers' speeches were permitted at this workshop, we seek through your columns, a reply to these questions from Dr. Peiris or from any member of this government, a minister, MP, or the President - anybody at all. We would especially like Dr. Peiris to tell us the quantum of subsidy that his government has given to our farmers, directly or indirectly, and by how much they have been taxed, and how. Figures, please. And while he is at it, let us also have the numbers about the subsidies granted to multinational capital. The tax breaks included, ok? Dr. Peiris also made some statements about getting our exchange rates "right"; they sounded as if they had come from the "hodi potha" of the IMF/WB, leaving his audience in no doubt that he read, and digested, that one. We would like him to explain to us how interest rates are "right" if they are above the rate of inflation! It is a rate of inflation, we must remember, that has been directly escalated by a GST that is higher than the rate of interest - and has to be paid daily by every consumer in this country (except of course those in the "Tamil homelands" who pay nothing to this government by way of taxes). Would Dr. Peiris (or his Minister) be kind enough to let the public know how much GST has reached the coffers of the Treasury in the first quarter of its application? And how much should have been? (The traders have collected it off us, of that we are painfully aware). He said that his was not an arrogant government, stressing that it was always open to suggestions. I couldn't help thinking that he was right in that. It is not arrogant. It is quiescent and subservient even, to the "suggestions" of the IMF and the World Bank and arrogant only to the citizens of this country who voted it in to power! The funny thing about politicians is that they go out of their way to say what they think are the right things to say , but long-winded speechmakers, like Dr. Pieris inevitably trip themselves up. Backbone Sounded as if are farmers were structurally located some distance away from the ventricles and the aorta. I mean, how could he, while worshipping the farmer and applauding his/her contribution to culture, vilify protectionism in the same breath? And this, not half an hour after the subject minister had explained to us how protectionism had produced a"comparative advantage" for the Indian farmer vis-a-vis his/her Sri Lankan counterpart? Dr. Peiris was loud and clear: "protectionism is against the spirit of the age"! What spirit of the age was he talking about, I wonder? Does he not know that this "spirit" of the age, which is constituted of hidden hands and other ephemeral and/or mythical entities, goes about in broad daylight protecting big bucks, i.e. multinational capital? He certainly exuded that "spirit" and I hope somebody gives him a gold medal for exuding it so vigorously in a non-compos mentis way. Obviously this doctor needs to do some serious study of the body organs of the human being, their specific locations and relative merits before he uses them in analogies to enhance his pleas of "not-guilty". And he better take a course in medieval worship systems before he goes about waving ghosts and gonibillas at people who are intimately aware of the fictitious nature of the tools and concepts of classical economic theory. If G.L. Peiris' account of the state of our agriculture vis-a-vis globalization was hard to swallow, what the academics had to offer, even after a cup of tea, was as bad. Each and everyone who spoke seemed to think globalization was cast in stone. Phrases such as "it has come to stay", "it is a reality that we have to accept", "this is now a unipolar world", "we have to meet the new economic order" and "globalization is a fact" filled the stifling air of economism. Dr. Saman Kelegama of the Institute of Policy Studies, and Dr. Anura Ekanayake, Director General (Development), Ministry of Plantation Industries, qualified their portrayal of this "fact" by mentioning the absence of an ideological opposition to capitalism. The former adopted a tone of celebration disguised as optimism, whereas the latter's take was more of a lament, the one exhibiting the confusion that Petronius talks of and the other the demoralisation. Given the strange fascination that these people seem to have with this globalization, it would be useful to examine the concept a little. A member of the audience asked what seemed to be the most pertinent question after the experts, in whose heads the globalization of idiocy seemed to have taken root, had had their say. The gentleman, invoking Lenin's famous thesis on capitalism and imperialism, pointed out that what was on the table was merely the adoption by them of a new and, to all appearances, for those experts, a sanctified, name. Which of course brings us to Caius Petronius' thesis. Capitalism was always a global phenomenon, in its current articulation, it was merely playing out the processes anticipated by Marx; feeding itself by the necessary means of expanding markets, seeking out every nook and cranny where exchanges take place and drawing them within its tentacles. Of course, Marx, with his feet stiffly planted in the material, wobbled on the matter of culture and failed to see that the economic process was accompanied and in a sense preceded by a logic of ethos, an error which all the speakers, by accident or design did not attempt to correct. It is not by accident after all that in the liberalization age human settlements under many irrigation schemes have resulted in the erasure of place names, communities being given identification numbers, a phenomenon reminiscent of Mr.Gradgrind's version of utilatarianism in Dickens' "Hard Times". The point is that regardless of the diversification touted by the likes of G.L.Peiris, certain kinds of mono-cultures such as Western Syphilisation are given the green light by people like him. Let's face it folks, we are pariahs in the Global Village, less than second class citizens of a world in which, uniformed in Judeo-Christian virtue, the white tribes have fought two global wars in this century. Extraction of
value This whole liberalisation of markets thing is supposed to produce a more efficient allocation of resources and also, it is supposed to be more efficient in terms of exploiting comparative advantage, according to Dr. Kelegama. He might have forgotten that the comparative advantage that Sri Lanka can boast of is nothing more than cheap labour, easy access to resources in the absence of appropriate legislation and a penchant of relevant officers, to turn a blind eye towards those who transgress the laws that do exist. Easily disciplined labour, efficiently controlled by persons who use the manuals of the Green Berets to pillow their dreams, and abundant resources waiting to be pounced on, not least those which are now categorized under that interesting term "indigenous knowledge". "Efficiency" is a contested concept, even among those who subscribe to marketism. As is "productivity". Who defines these, on what foundation, on what assumptions, with the inclusion of which factors and the exclusion of which, are rarely if at all, mentioned when economists and other modernist social scientists toss these terms around. The application of these concepts to the analysis of social phenomenon is heavily predicated on the matter of exchanges between human beings and these exchanges are but a minute fraction of all exchanges, biotic and abiotic: that alone would suffice to tear apart the equation-filled theories of emancipation hand-booked by the World Bank and the IMF. All these fairy tales of progress are encased in all the myths of modernism and that a few centuries of this drive have brought about not just illusions of development but realities of destruction, the magnitude of which is amply being demonstrated by the antics of El Nino! These matters were left alone by the wise men on the podium. Whereas G.L. Peiris was smart enough to attempt the concealment of his master's voice in loud and wild allusions wrapped in convoluted rhetoric, Dr. N. Ranaweera, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, speaking on the "challenges facing domestic agriculture in the next decade" was quite unabashed in his one-to-one rendering of the IMF formula, of course preceded by some preliminary and by now customary salutations to our farmers. Thick and ugly Dr. Ranaweera insisted that we take up the imperial challenge on their terms. All well and good, provided of course that we do something to ensure that the rules are complied with by the USA, the EU, Japan and others and also that they work for us. If that were not possible, as seems to be the case, we must adopt our own rules. Such a challenge seemed to be way beyond the imagination of not just Dr. Ranaweera but the entire bunch of whiz-kids. Given the current poverty line of the academic enterprise he was happy to suggest that we do our best to enhance productivity (again that incomplete and flawed idea) by improving technology. This was taken to mean that we develop better seed varieties through research. Now this was strange news indeed. It is possible that this gentleman, who has spent a good number of years in the Department in his capacity as a researcher, was not aware that with the conclusion of the GATT negotiations and the coming into operation of TRIPS protocol, fiddling around with genes was comprehensively handed over to the transnational likes of Cargills. And the research industry, privatised as it more or less is, is beholden to the selfsame interests. Surely he ought to know that knowledge production is not value-free, that it is profitable to produce market-friendly reports and that intellectual integrity was the silenced victim of the processes he is was talking about? And of course, he did mention "comparative advantage", that dirty word, again! To his credit, he did mention, among the things he thought we should keep in mind, food security and farmer incomes. I got the impression that this man knew his onions (and probably his potatoes, chillies and rice as well, not to mention which side of the bread was, is and hopefully will continue to be buttered). After all, if food security (especially at the household level) and its twin, in this age of exchange value, farmer incomes, are threatened, the possibility of the general population saying "to hell with all you global village idiots, let's fight it out once and for all" invariably looms large. This is certainly the common feeling in my neck of the woods in eastern Uva. And when the allegedly hidden hand of the market gets a couple of fingers nicked, transnational capital and its darlings don't say "ouch!!", - they get the UN to impose "sanctions". Nevertheless, contrary to the pessimism voiced by Dr.Ekanayake about the absence of an alternative ideology, people do fight and not necessarily along Marxist lines which, we must not forget, run parallel to their modernist comrade, capitalism's, chosen path and strive towards the same developmental telos, the western metropolis. Old Man Almeida, as we meandered through the several barriers that encircle the gated communities of power on our way back, showing off his remaining few teeth as he mildly smiled, observed that the bright-eyed chappies had got so tangled up for a simple reason: taking globalization as god-given, you know, carved in stone like the ten commandments, entrapped in demand and supply curves, they could not see anything beyond the god-forsaken logic of capitalism! Erroneous conceptualisation necessarily produces faulty answers. The law of impermanence implies that nothing remains the same and by extension, nothing is sacrosanct. Globalization being no exception. Globalization is not new. Neither has it remained the same across time. Neither is it eternal. And there can be a restructuring of the global system that is not as perverse as what we have now. Large sections of the world's population can neither demand from nor supply to the capitalist market, or if they can, are compelled to so engage in circumstances that are pitifully weighed against them. What this means is that there exists a need for alternatives vision for the future which is concretely expressed by struggles all over the world that are not reported in the capitalist media, but violently responded to by the military apparatus being put in place in supposedly sovereign countries by the capitalist machine. The "critical mass" required to overthrow 'globalisation' is gathering strength in industrialised societies as well. Ignatius told me that there was an excellent talk given by Dr.Vandana Shiva a couple of months ago in Colombo, where she laid bare the whole globalization agenda and capitalism's new wave of cannibals engaged this time around, in bio-piracy and bio-prospecting, among other things. He gave me a small booklet published by the Movement for the Protection of Indigenous Seeds containing her speech. Dr. Vandana Shiva The business of using the answers that are enshrined in our cultural heritage and accessing them before they are pirated and patented may well be the real challenge that we face today. |
| The decaying dynamics of our democratic
institutions Text of the speech by Mr. Jayadeva Uyangoda at the launch of the book " A dialogue on economic and social problems" published by Marga Institute. In this age of electronic communication, it may seem somewhat ironic that we celebrate the release of a book. However much the Internet has intruded into the everyday life of a few of us in Sri Lankan society, the printed word is still the dominant mode of communication, education and the dissemination of even the basic knowledge of things around us. Books continue to remain a socially necessary medium of exchanging ideas and knowledge. And particularly this book, A Dialogue on Economic and Social Problems, published by Marga Institute is a socially necessary intervention at a time when the means of knowledge on many contemporary policy issues are not available. The Marga series of publications is a part of its public education program which is conceived with an important objective in mind. It aims at promoting an informed public discussion on social, political and economic issues of contemporary relevance. The present book in Sinhala deals with eleven economic and political themes that include unemployment, social welfare and economic development, budgetary policy of the government, privatization, foreign aid and foreign investment, democracy and authoritarianism, human rights, proportional representation, political parties and the media. One of its commendable features is the seriousness with which themes are discussed, while relating them to the contemporary Sri Lanka's challenges in development, democracy and ethnic conflict resolution. Marga Institute has a rich legacy of working towards the goal of bridging the knowledge gap that exists in our society. The series of translations Marga undertook in the seventies covered seminal literary and academic texts that were not available to the Sinhala educated intelligentsia. Due to resource restrictions, that project did not continue. While the world around us is changing rapidly, the knowledge gap continues to widen its boundaries in our vernacular cultures. BBC, CNN The question involved here is a fairly serious one: even when means of knowledge are easily available, why do many members in our society refuse to tap them? Is there some antipathy inherent in our vernacular intellectual cultures towards means of knowledge? Let me narrate to you another experience I frequently encounter. As a part of my professional work, I mark answer scripts of candidates who sit for examinations of higher degrees. I am often saddened by the sheer lack of understanding among many of postgraduate candidates of such everyday concepts as poverty alleviation, structural adjustment programs and globalization, as patently demonstrated in their examination papers. Recently while marking some answer scripts of a group of Master's candidates of one of our universities, I asked myself: Don't these people at least read the feature articles so regularly appear in the Daily News and The Island? Don't they read the easily available journals like, the People's Bank's Economic Review? What can a university do when those who seek higher education don't even read newspapers properly? No time It would be extremely interesting to find out the number of our university students in the English Literature Special Courses who would make it a habit to go to the British Council and the American Centre to read the latest issues of the Times Literary Supplement and the New York Review of Books. Our intellectual culture is a culture of excuses. When you ask these members of our intelligentsia as to why they don't have acquired a regular habit of reading, they will offer you many excuses. 'No time' (welawa ne) is the most common of the excuses. When an intellectual culture tolerates excuses, it will never be able to produce a social will to knowledge. Being a university teacher, I am constantly confronted with the sad reality that vast numbers of young men and women who receive what is euphemistically called higher education have absolutely no access to the knowledge they are supposed to acquire. The reason is a very simple one. There exists an insurmountable language barrier to knowledge. It is absolutely sad to walk into a university library and then observe how students, who are receiving higher education, use the library space primarily as a facility that offers them a chair and a table so that they can concentrate on the notes taken down in the class room in Sinhalese or Tamil. Gravity When teaching the new theoretical concepts, I would tell my students to go to the library and read the English texts. I would also explain to my students that the Sinhalese terms that have specifically been coined have no particularly theoretical or philosophical meaning in the Sinhalese language and therefore to understand them they must read the original texts. Except for one or two students, others cannot even make an effort, because access to modern knowledge in social sciences and the humanities requires a considerably high degree of proficiency in the English language. The modern theoretical language is almost like a dialect within the English language itself. Would translations to vernacular languages of major texts of modern knowledge be a solution? May be, but it is a solution replete with problems. No commercial publishing house would undertake translation of academic books, because of the extremely limited nature of the domestic market. The state had a fairly extensive translation program in the late fifties and the sixties, and now the state has no interest at all in reviving that venture. Then of course, there is the problem of the incapacity of the Sinhala language to capture modern ideas. All of us are supposed to be great lovers of our own vernacular languages; but in the Sinhalese culture, we have not made a systematic effort to develop the Sinhalese language as a tool of modern knowledge. Translation of academic texts is not an art in the Sinhalese intellectual culture. To cite once again my own experience, a few years ago I was involved in a translation project and I obtained the assistance of those who had bi-lingual skills. When the translations reached me, I found that most Sinhalese sentences did not make any sense. The reason was a simple one. The translators knew the Sinhalese language adequately, but they were not sensitive to the grammar, style and the rules of communicability, specific to the Sinhalese language. In brief, they did not appear to consider translation as a creative writing practice. Policy issues Approaching public issues from the perspectives of partisan or group interests is perhaps an unavoidable hazard inherent in the democratic political process. Ours is a political culture, a characterized by the presence in its midst of fears and anxieties about reform and change. In the present historical context, Sri Lankan society is facing the challenge of effecting fundamental reforms in its political structures, economic processes and the social order. When reforms come to the centre of the historical agenda of a society, uncertainty of the future emerges as a major social-psychological force. Some kind of a generalized anomie appears to have intruded into our collective psyche and its symptoms manifest themselves in a variety of contradictory forms. A dispassionate observer may even by merely watching how our legislature behaves recognize the extent to which a process of structural atomization has set in within our polity. Trivialization of the public debate, quite ironically, has become the professional expertise among the top managers of our democratic institutions. Unrealistic In symbolic as well as real terms, the legislature and the executive have effectively alienated themselves from the citizen. When a huge gap, dotted by crude security barriers guarded by armed men, exists between the people and their elected representatives who are holding public office, one begins to ask a variety of questions about the way in which our democratic system has assumed a peculiarly indigenous form. For example, have our political leaders taken any meaningful steps to restore public confidence in democratic institutions? Isn't our system of governance incapacitated by the inability of public institutions to modernize themselves? Isn't the coercive apparatus of the state, the formidable presence of which is now so visible at every street corner of our capital city, the only public institution that the political leaders appear to care about? Haven't our political leaders repeatedly let down the majority of citizens who elected new regimes with the hope of democratic renewal? These are unpleasant questions. However, the strength of democracy as a system of public culture is that it provides the citizen the space as well as the right to ask such unpleasant questions. A citizenry capable of bringing unpleasant political questions to the centre of the political debate is a great asset to a democracy. And an informed and vigilant citizenry can debate unpleasant political questions without trivializing the issues involved. That, to my mind, constitutes the most useful outcome of the kind of public education program that the Marga Institute has initiated. In Sri Lanka's specific context, the project of promoting a well-informed, educated and vigilant citizenry requires for its fruition certain radical changes in the entire public policy-making process. What can an educated, watchful and informed citizen do in the political process? She can at best make series of rational choices about her representatives at frequently held elections. She can write to the letters column of the newspapers, expressing dissent as well as despair. She can read the weakened opposition press and laugh at the follies of men and women in power. But the citizen has absolutely no way to influence, or take part in, the public policy-making process. Our legislative process, from parliament to pradeshiya sabhas, is so assembly-centered that people are absolutely excluded from the way the laws, statutes and regulations are made. The state's most powerful branch, the executive, is no better. Actually, the present tendency is for the executive to make vital policy decisions through small caucuses of technocrats which are called task forces. In the absence of public consultation in law-making and the making of the public policy, the citizen's vigilance merely ends up in despair and cynicism. The point I am making is not meant to undervalue the task of public education on political and other policy issues. Rather, my critique is that the way in which our system of democratic governance is organized does not enable the democratic institutions themselves to benefit from an educated and informed citizen. It has reduced the citizen to the status of a mere onlooker, a passive recipient of decisions made by a small elite the members of which may not necessarily be elected representatives. It does not provide the citizen an effective mechanism for meaningful participation in the affairs of governance. When there is a structural vacuum in a democratic polity, even the educated and informed citizen may run the risk of being herself attracted to trivia which comes, usually every Sunday morning, in the form of public debate. I know that my voice is one of despair. And in despair, I value even small efforts being made by those who are concerned with the issues that trouble me. Hence my deep appreciation of the endeavour which the Marga Institute has undertaken to widen the terms and content of our public debate. |
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