The curse of ‘party politics’

By Panduka Karunanayake

Sri Lanka’s political landscape has been torn asunder by ‘party politics’. This is, of course, not a recent phenomenon, but it has taken a turn for the worse amidst the current economic crisis.Today, the Parliament’s response to the current economic catastrophe has become a farce of splits and shifts of party affiliations and allegiances. A political response to the economic crisis is the last thing on the Parliament’s ‘real agenda’. Even the appointment of the new Central Bank Governor Dr Nandalal Weerasinghe was achieved through people’s agitations! ‘Party politics’ has not only failed to help find a solution to the economic problem – it has even got in the way, as evident from a recent ultimatum isued by Dr Weerasinghe.

We got our current system from the British colonial masters. Western civilisation approached knowledge in a reductionist rather than a holistic way: by dividing knowledge into fragments or subjects and focusing on one subject at a time. This gives the advantage of sharp focus and in-depth study. But the West has also devised methods to bring the separate subjects together when it wishes to make important decisions – for example, ‘think tanks’, ‘multi-disciplinary’ university centres, etc.Ancient teachers approached problem-solving through methods like the case study (Chinese and Hebrew philosophers) and the Socratic method (Athenian philosophers), but Romans invented the confrontational or adversarial method; the learners divided themselves into two groups: such as the prosecution and defence in courts of law, and government and opposition in parliaments. Each group was thereby free to focus on one aspect in depth. We learn the basic rules of this game in school debating teams.

In modern politics and with the birth of the Parliament, this was further developed into the political party system, where the politicians divided themselves into parties representing different political principles (e. g., conservatism, social welfare). And this is the system that we inherited from the British.But before Independence (from 1931 to 1948), the State Council system was somewhat healthy. The elected members of the State Council (who were elected mainly along lines of socio-cultural identities) were allocated to a number of executive committees specialising in different subjects (such as agriculture, education, healthcare, etc.). It was these executive committees that studied problems and devised solutions, which were then considered by the State Council, amended as required, and adopted as statutes. They made some amazing, far-reaching policies in fields such as education, healthcare and nutrition, the benefits of which we more-or-less still enjoy. All that happened before Independence.

There was no government and opposition then, and each elected member was seriously and deeply involved with one subject (as a member of an executive committee) and also able to contribute to the statutes of any subject (as a member of the State Council). Policies were therefore created along the lines of principles and ground realities, rather than on the lines of socio-cultural identities – even though the members were elected along such identities – because the executive committees were ‘multi-identity’ in nature.In 1948, the party system was introduced so that each party could identify itself with one political principle. Some of the early Ceylonese political parties may have been based on political principles, such as the conservative policies of the UNP or the Marxist policies of the LSSP. But this quickly changed after the watershed year 1956, which made a mockery of the party system. It converted democracy into majoritarianism, and politics into ‘identity politics’. The struggle to gain power was operationalised through the party, which now had identities rather than principles. They may have publicly proclaimed policies (e.g., ‘Bandaranaike prathipaththi’), but these were only glorified socio-cultural identities. Gradually, opportunistic, unprincipled, identity-based politics became institutionalised.

In our country today, political principles are probably only known to political scientists in universities and think tanks. In the parties, these are replaced by allegiances drawn along socio-cultural identities, such as ethnicity, religion, socio-economic class, urban-rural divide and so on. And once a politician has been in the business long enough to have reaped the considerable financial benefits emanating therefrom, he or she soon loses one’s original socio-cultural identity too and becomes a bird of one feather with the rest. For them, selecting a different political party thereafter is as easy as choosing a different dish from a restaurant menu.Today, the Parliament has been reduced to a battleground of political parties whose main business is counting heads rather than standing up for principles. Any ‘principles’ are simply statements of the superiority of one’s socio-cultural identity laced with rationalisations, whether mythical or sophisticated.

The whole voting public is also divided along the same lines, and civil political activity is essentially an exercise of gathering and demonstrating crowds that have gravitated towards alluring leaders with appealing identities, who dish out better freebies than their competitors. What a tragedy! Politics has been shoved out, and ‘party politics’ has pushed itself in. Solving the country’s problems has been replaced by party-oneupmanship. No wonder that one of the major features of the GotaGoHome ‘aragalaya’ is the rejection of political parties (‘nirpaakshika aragalaya’). The youth must have got sick of what we are doing in the name of politics. They are yearning back to a time when politicians were studying and solving people’s problems rather than counting heads and grabbing onto power. They are seeking a future that extends beyond the now-proverbial ‘five years’ that a political party gets to stay in power.We have lost politics in the midst of ‘party politics’, and the country has lost its political principles. A fundamental feature of principled politics is that a politician can be of use to society even without power – because of the principles he or she espouses and articulates. Today, that would be thought of as an absurd idea, not only by the power-seeking politicians but even by the voters!If politicians cannot come together to save our country from our current economic predicament – and instead become a hindrance to solving it – then they never can and they never will. They would have lost their usefulness to the nation.