Constituent Assembly and the class divide
It is very hard to fathom the ambivalent feelings of the country's traditional power elite towards the JVP. All that can be said is that they seem intimidated by the JVPs brash young talent. Milinda Moragoda is intimidated by Wimal Weerawansa, and Ravi Karunanayake must surely feel intimidated by Sunil Handunhetti, but that's only incidental. The system meanwhile has at least for the moment been thoroughly outplayed by a party which has been identified as being anti-systemic and even anarchic for much of its existence.

The JVP's revolution maybe more subtle than the Bandaranaike revolution of 1956. But it may eventfully turn out to be even more important. For the first time there is a major player in the country's politics that is not from the traditional power centers from which leaders used to be discovered.

The JVP fully embodies a class reaction and perhaps even a caste reaction to the years of what's perceived as continued neglect and oppression by a ruling class. This aspect of the JVP's emergence is acknowledged by very few people in polite society for several reasons. One among them is that this power elite feels threatened, and still does not know what exactly to make out of the consummate political performance of the JVP. No longer can they throw the anarchist card or the insurgent card at them.

They cannot even throw the accusation of political naiveté or inexperience at the JVP, because the JVP has manipulated the system - - particularly the electoral system -- much better than the hard-boiled and fiercely baptized troops of the SLFP for instance. The way the JVP nominated just the correct number of candidates for the available slots on a district ticket, assured that the JVPs preference votes were not split and vetrens of the caliber of Anura Bandarnaike found to their surprise that they had been outsmarted by the tyros on the JVP ticket.

People have talked a lot already about the polarization that the election has brought about in terms of ethnicity and race, and have cited the emergence of the JHU etc., as evidence. But this election has also brought about a greater polarization in terms of class, which of course is not manifest on the surface because the political correctness has kept the issue submerged.

But, there is a great class chasm whose contours are beginning to show clearly to those who want to look beyond the sugary words that are being exchanged on the surface. The Colombo-centric upper and upper middle class ruling elite is shocked and feels that the Barbarians have been unwittingly led right through their gates.

The rural poor, the peasantry and the working classes feel on the other hand that redemption is near. Though we have been told many times that this was the same idea they entertained in 1956, the feeling always endured that 1956 was only a momentary release of pent-up social tensions. S. W. R. D Bandaranaike the upper crust patron of the 1956 movement was himself a man that the underprivileged could not fully identify with for obvious reasons. He was treated with respect for his radical experiments in social reform, but for the downtrodden he was never one of theirs.

This time, there is a feeling among the socially marginalized that the JVPs assured ascendancy to power is not the noisy release of a social safety valve. One reason is that there is uniformity in the JVP cadre - - its rank and file is made up of a 100 per cent proletarian stock and therefore there is no intermingling of classes that blurs the sense of class revolt.

The large mass feels that their silent revolution is less likely to be betrayed because there are no pukka sahibs among the card-carrying leadership of the JVP; no returnees from the London school of Economics or no Trotskyite lawyers whose criminal practice is busier than their politics.

But now into this new melting pot of class transformation, has been cast a whole set of intangibles and a whole array of hopes mixed with substantial doubts. It is still not certain whether the JVP, though definitely an entity on its own, can survive this convenient marriage with the SLFP, a party which ushered in 1956 a false dawn for the masses. Like it or not, the JVP will have to suffer its identification with unpopular moves such as the Constituent Assembly, which from its timing seems a flagrant attempt to perpetuate the family dynasty of the Bandarnaikes by keeping Chandrika Kumaratunge in power. Why has the JVP also not been able to keep its earlier promises of getting rid of a Chief Justice who they saw as being responsible for considerable malfeasance?

The JVP's strategy in all of this and its future dealings within the UPFA, seems to be to maintain a government within a government. But also it's being felt that the JVP could ride the indignity of being tied to the fortunes of a bourgeois party, as long as it can support causes that have at least a fair degree of populist appeal.

The Presidency is one such cause. Those who are now against the abolition of the Executive Presidency via a Constituent Assembly on the grounds that is a partisan move (which of course it is) seem to be unable to hide their own partisan attitudes on the matter. There are a great deal of banshee sounds being made about the illegality of the Constituent Assembly but suspiciously there is no call for the UNP to corporate on the matter by extending its support for dismantling the JR constitution. If UNP support is forthcoming, there will be 2/3rds in parliament, and the question of the Constituent Assembly will not arise.

But, the legal opinion on the matter is also coloured by the need of the campaigners to kow-tow to the UNP. There is a measure of unfairness in removing the Presidency of course, inasmuch as Kumaratunge used the Presidency to subdue the opposition, which should give the current UNP, theoretically a go at doing the same thing.

But to advocate the politics of reciprocal sadism is the politics of unashamed cynicism. JR Jayewardene and Premadasa had their own chance of making use of the obscene powers of the Presidency, and now from the opposite pole Chandrika Kumaratunge has had her own chance abundantly.

It is therefore the UNP's task to bring about the consensus that is necessary for getting rid of an electoral system that causes instability of government. It is also their task to get rid of an Executive Presidency whose enormity of powers makes governing an embarrassment. Having had to face an election due to a Presidential decree and having had their six-year term severely truncated as a result, the UNP should know best about the deleterious aspects of governance under the Jayewardene constitution.

But all that's heard is a barrage of legal opinions against the Constituent Assembly, which even if all of it is correct, is not the issue because the priority is to persuade the UNP to offer the necessary consensus for a 2/3rds.

The other argument that the ethnic issue is the primary consideration is hollow because what parts of the constitution can be changed first can be changed, so that the other aspects that need a consensus with the actors such as the LTTE for instance, could wait. Who says that incremental constitutional engineering is bad -- and that the whole system has to be overhauled in one ungainly heave? There is also another argument that the minorities want the Executive Presidency to continue.

But even parties such as the ACTC have acknowledged that the Presidency is no longer considered tremendously advantageous to the Tamil minority. In other words the Presidency is not a minority issue - - it is an issue that impinges on good governance and has a bearing on utterly crucial issues for the entire polity, such as continuity, stability and the separation of powers. These are all good governance issues to use the preferred jargon of the liberal intellectual lobby, and therefore it is strange if not suspicious that these folks do not encourage the UNP to forge consensus, change the constitution and bring about such good governance.

Unless of course they want the UNP to enjoy the handicap of an absurdly muscular Presidency, which will come in handy to throttle opponents at a later date, definitely an easier option for the UNP than defeating Chandrika Kumaratunge on the issue at a later election. (The writer is an Attorney at Law.)

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