It's circus time with clowns and all

We, the lucky citizens of this country have been afforded the spectacle of S. B. Dissanayake and G. L. Peiris et al on the one hand turning green from blue and the solitary Anura Bandaranaike undergoing the reverse colour change after finally realizing that blood is thicker than water.

These theatrics have their accompaniments- TV talk-shows, charges and countercharges, letters of demand from various lawyers and impromptu complaints to the Bribery Commission. The clowns must surely be loving every second of it- for any publicity is good publicity in these days of the 'manaapa' battle where one has to fight for every square inch of wall space.

So, there is S. B. Dissanayake adroitly dodging questions about election rigging but saying tongue in cheek, "I know how we won the last election" and that "I only read out a statement prepared by someone else about the UNP's links with the LTTE'. And you and I, the average voter, enjoy the spectacle, titillated by the man's candour and his uncanny ability to justify everything he did. If he's good enough for the UNP, we ask, why should we bother to disagree?

Of course, the Bandaranaike Empire strikes back. The (in)famous Hanguranketha Walauwa is promptly photographed and publicized over state-owned television and the newspapers courtesy the Sri Lanka Air Force at a cost of over a hundred thousand rupees of taxpayers' money but then who cares because a picture is worth over a thousand words! The President, you know, was not aware of the Hanguranketha Maaligawa all these years- if not she would surely have questioned what it was worth and had SB sacked forthwith, believe me!

Just in case you get the wrong idea, the UNP is no different. Wijepala Mendis is found "guilty" by a PA-appointed Commission and explanation is called for from his own party, the UNP. When he is about to be sacked, he crosses over to the PA and lo and behold, he is welcomed with open arms and the land deals which he was first accused of pale into insignificance. Now, he has returned to the UNP and what a surprise it will be if those land deals surface again!

And lest they be forgotten, we must also mention those who cross-over to serve: the Ronnie de Mels, the Thondamans and the Hakeems. These selfless sons of the nation are born for the sole purpose of serving us, so much so that they simply don't take a break. If they fear that defeat is imminent for their party, they change loyalties not because they are selfish or opportunistic but to serve us better with the next regime. Ah, how blessed must we be to have such patriotic men and women? Then, why complain? Be satisfied with what we've got because for all this to be possible we must be a great democracy. So, enjoy what is being paraded before you and await the next episode- who knows, Karu Jayasuriya may cross-over to the SLFP at the next election and we might then have the good fortune of seeing aerial photographs of his house!

Other side of executive presidency

By Victor Ivan

Wild plantains (Atikehel) are a tasty food for the polecats. But the polecats who eat them greedily, have to pay heavily for it. The Executive Presidential System existing in Sri Lanka is like wild plantains. The taste of its power is very sweet. However, those who enjoy it greedily because of its taste alone find it difficult to digest it.

Analysing the pros and cons of the Executive Presidential System at a time when the Constitution of 1978 was adopted, Dr. N. M. Perera said that its smooth functioning at a time when the UNP had a 5/6th majority in Parliament would not be found in a subsequent Parliament. He said that at a time when there would be a right wing President and a left wing legislature or a left wing President and a right wing legislature, the resultant crisis would bring the entire political system into disrepute.

Although the author of that Constitution introduced a system of Proportional Representation, he in a most cunning manner made use of the power given by the 5/6th majority. 

However, with the introduction of the Proportional Representation System in 1989, there was a change in the picture. Although the President was elected from one party and he had got a working majority in Parliament, the Executive Presidential System faced a serious crisis when there was an impeachment levelled against President Premadasa. This showed that there would be a conflict between the President and the legislature even when they belong to the same party. This was something that Dr. N.M. Perera had predicted.

Mr. Wijetunge who succeeded President Premadasa after his assassination, did not show his power to the People's Alliance who achieved parliamentary power at the election of 1994. He did not play with his power in nominating a person to the post of Prime Minister or in nominating the Cabinet. He became a nominal President and permitted those who came to power to function without his interference.

Ms. Kumaratunga who came to power subsequently was able to function without a crisis in her first term of office, but assembled in that very first term all the factors necessary for a future explosion. To conduct such a system successfully, it would be essential to follow a policy of compassion towards the Cabinet colleagues and the parliamentary group, and in addition, it would be essential to follow a policy that was conducive to the dignity of the opposition party.

Although her parliamentary power was extremely limited, her conduct was even more arrogant than that of J.R. Jayewardene who had the backing of a 5/6th majority- she oppressed the opposition to the maximum extent. No election held during her administration was fair. There was rampant corruption and violence in every one of them. Her attitude towards Cabinet Ministers and MPs was not marked by trust or respect. All of them were loyal to her not due to any respect towards her but due to fear.

It was not the opposition but a group in the government party itself who took the lead in the rebellion against Mr. Premadasa. Although the impeachment against him proved to be a bogus one and he was able to overcome it, it was able to push him to a position of impotence. 

Ms. Kumaratunga has several important lessons to learn from that incident. She does not appear to have learned any of them. She should have known from the very beginning that when she was in the habit of not showing any respect to her Ministers and MPs, there was the possibility of their rising against her when the opportunity came. She should have known that placing selected and trusted colleagues in all important and strategic positions, would not prevent a rebellion by her parliamentary party colleagues.

Her second term started at a time when all the conditions were ripe for an internal rebellion. The outcome of the subsequent parliamentary election contributed to worsen the situation. Eventually, what emerged was a weak government, formed by a number of parties brought together with difficulty. 

At a time when the internal contradictions of the government were growing, she removed the SLMC leader from the Cabinet. When he and seven others crossed over to the opposition, the government lost even the slender majority it had. At the same time Ms. Kumaratunga got caught in the trap made by the Constitution itself. 

This resulted in proroguing Parliament without permitting the no-confidence motion to be debated because it was not possible for her to permit the opposition to form a government if the no-confidence motion was carried out. She knew that if the motion was activated, a group of those who were with her, too, would join her opponents and move towards expelling her. Her assessment of the matter was correct. The attitude of the opposition parties towards her was not conciliatory because her policy towards them was continuously oppressive. The groups who were to join the opposition.

Although she has dissolved Parliament and announced elections, she will, for her own security inevitably do the maximum to prevent the opposition winning the election. However, to the extent that her opponents are oppressed at this election, their opposition to her will grow further. If the opposition wins at this election, the new government, as well as the victorious popular forces, will inevitably take action motivated by a great anger towards the President.

The only way to avoid such an eventuality will be for the President to permit a free and fair election and to give up power without allowing room for a conflict if her forces are defeated. If that happens the conflict that will arise between the two parties will bring the entire political system to a disgraceful position.

The writer is the Editor of Ravaya

The most dangerous place on earth

By Dayan Jayatilleka

During the Clinton presidency, a group of 15 Senators and 46 members of the House of Representative, drawn from both the Democratic and Republican parties, called Kashmir "most dangerous nuclear flash-point in the world today". They said that "the US should help break the stalemate over Kashmir to reduce the risk of nuclear war in the Asian sub-continent." The group included the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 

One is tempted to dismiss this as yet, another instance of Western double standards and hypocrisy. After all, the world has been living under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust for over half a century, with the two superpowers facing off. China has also been a nuclear power for decades, and worse still, Zionist Israel has a small nuclear arsenal as did so repulsive a place as apartheid South Africa. 

So what's all the fuss? Why pick on us? Is it because we are Asian, poor, over-populated and/or brown skinned? Why just ban the Brown Bomb? Well, it maybe some or all of the above, but whatever the psychological motivations, no objective assessment can get past the point made at the time by the American legislators. I would say that they understate the case. Not only is the South Asian region the most dangerous nuclear flash-point in the contemporary world, I would argue that it is the most unstable nuclear theatre ever (i.e., since the 1940s). 

The Cold War nuclear confrontation was between two stable superpowers, however radical the differences in their internal socio-political, economic and ideological arrangements. They embodied two opposing systems, but they were stable and secure, not given to volatility, with back-channels for communication and fail-sales against volatility. 

The two superpowers shared a great degree of ralionality (as the testimonies issuing from the Cuban Missile Crisis reveal), perhaps also because deep down their philosophical paradigms and world-outlooks had common roots. Judeo-Christianity, Ancient Greece and Rome, the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution - all these were common sign-posts and constituted a shared, if bloodily debated, intellectual lineage and heritage i.e., that of Western civilisation and Modernity. The Cold War was waged between the two quarrelsome, wayward offspring of the Age of Reason, each seeing the other as Cain and itself as Abel. Furthermore, a stand-off evolved on the basis of Mutually Assured Destruction, which was recognised and acknowledged as such, and imparted great stability to the equation.

Finally, the two superpowers had no ancient history as rivals, there was no civilizational burden of having been occupiers, and occupied; no millennia-old scores to settle. This is largely because they never shared the same land-mass, still less the same borders. This is why they had never fought a land war. (Woodrow Wilson did field an expeditionary force in Archangelsk in the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution as part of the counter revolutionary intervention by 18 western armies, but the Americans didn't see any action).

In the case of Israel and South Africa, they monopolised the nuclear devices in their regions, planned to use these only when they felt their very survival was threatened. In any case, they were too locked in strategically and ideologically with the US to go ahead unilaterally with the use of such devices. 

Repulsive as those states were/are, from a cold analytical point of view, such a situation is far less prone to a conflict escalating into a nuclear exchange than is the case of a confrontation between two nuclear protagonists who do not have the stability, the common ties, mutual links and evolved procedures of the US-USSR relationship, whatever its fundamental contradictions and tensions.

The ball game is significantly different in the case of India and Pakistan. The two states were born in the violent cataclysm of Partition in 1947 and have fought several wars since. Their antagonism has an atavistic dimension due to its historical and civilizational roots. Thus the relations between the two are far more 'envenomed' than that of the two superpowers ever was, and today's US-Russia or US-PRC relations are. 

Today Pakistan is not only volatile, it could prove fairly fragile, its contours not firm and fixed. Out in the border areas, the chickens have come home to roost from Pakistan's days as a US proxy in the New Cold War, in which the ISI (the Intelligence Services) were the patrons of various militant Islamic Afghan organizations. Indeed the fiercely fundamentalist and totalitarian Taleban, host to Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaeda, was a creation of the ISI. Various ethnic groups around in the Provinces (such as the MQM), some plentifully armed with Afghan war surplus weapons and fattened on drug smuggling revenue. Under the pressures of the on-going war in Afghanistan, could Pakistan become South Asia's Yugoslavia and crack-up along ethno-national/ethno-religious/ethno-regional lines? 

Meanwhile, though India's democracy is deeply entrenched and institutional boundaries secure, the BJP does not fully share the common political heritage and therefore does not subscribe to the value-consensus that was subscribed to by all Indian governing parties/coalitions since 1947. How will the hardline Hindus react to the rise in Islamic fundamentalism, perhaps even within India itself, as the Afghan War radicalizes Islamic communities worldwide? 

These are the factors that lend the Indo-Pak equation a particular instability and its dynamics, an unprecedented volatility - given the permeability of borders and most importantly, of social formations, in relation to the on-going Afghan war. Pakistan and India have unverified numbers of nuclear weapons, plus delivery capability. All of which is why this region qualifies as the most dangerous area in the world. 

Meanwhile, we Sri Lankans live in the little shack at the foot of the sub-continental volcano. But that's something our political, intellectual and policy elites haven't noticed.