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Need for substantive democratic reform

(Continued from March 8)

by Darini Rajasingham - Senanayake

After the initial de-politicization that the peace process necessitated, it would be necessary to move on and deal seriously with political economic issues by linking civil and political issues of demilitarisation and de-escalation with social justice issues or economic and social rights. Post/conflict reconstruction must have a holistic approach and move beyond a formalist legal approach to devolution and power sharing among the armed actors and the State, and address issues such as poverty, inequality and their relationship to macro-policies of economic adjustment and conflict. Otherwise, the risk is that a peace agreement might once again become a blue print for more war, or be merely a trade off between armed groups, and politicians who peddle ethnic conflict or ethnic peace to shore up their vote banks. Rather, the need is for substantive democratic reform and transformation of political culture and economic ideology and institutions (including the State's coercive apparatus) that have generated and fuelled multiple conflicts and much of the violence over twenty years.

The dominance of the World Bank in the post-conflict reconstruction industry and the manner in which a range of structural adjustment projects (including the recently stymied labour bill) are being pushed through Parliament as the peace process takes centre stage in national politics may suggest otherwise.

Structural adjustments usually mean that things must get worse before they get better - if ever. Things getting worse usually mean another cycle of conflict that is very hard to stop once started as Darby has noted.

The timing of these interventions in the long-term may lead to increased levels of unemployment, spiralling cost of essential services and living and the unravelling of the peace process by spoilers who exploit popular disaffection. Argentina where riots and social unrest have occurred in the wake of massive neo-liberal reform sounds a warning to us all.

My purpose here is not to decry all reform. Certainly reform in the energy, education, public and social sectors and administrative and governance structures is necessary. The point however is that the neoliberal agenda may not be the most appropriate type of reform.

What seems to be forgotten in the post/conflict and developmental emphasis on "good governance" (based on the model and language of corporate governance despite Arthur Anderson Enron and the expanding of corporate scandals) is that institutions are embedded in social, cultural and political process.

The formalist focus institutions and constitutions often reduce democracy to actually existing free market democracy and may result in a new cycle of war as peace spoilers use the grievance of spiralling costs of living and real and perceived increases in economic inequalities to upset the peace.

Finally, the question remains: will humanitarian and post/conflict aid effectively subsidize SAPs and country's adjustment to Global Capital (ism)? As the various MPs tour Switzerland, Canada etc for constitutional models they may as well read Stiglitz and visit Third World Latin American countries in conflict and post/conflict situations that have a far closer profile and learn from economic debate and debacles in that region not to mention Africa. What informed critical debate in those countries may suggest is that After almost two decades of armed violence in Sri Lanka building a sustainable peace would entail political and economic reform aimed at achieving substantive rather than ritual or procedural democracy and the need for re-distributive justice. By substantive democracy is meant here, economic and social as well as civil and political aspects of democratic practice.

A striking example of the failure to connect the issues of social justice with political reform is evident in how the property rights of displaced people are being addressed as if the pattern of violence and displacement in the agrarian peasant communities had no relationship to prior competition over land between peasants of the various ethnic communities, and issues of land settlement and redistribution. Redistribution has been a fundamental aspect of peace processes in Guatemala and El Salvador and other parts of the world. In Zimbabwe the failure to address the issue of land in the first instance arguable has fuelled the recent land disputes from which Mugabe has made political capital.

The post/conflict settlement in Sri Lanka if it is to be sustainable in short must take into account issues of poverty and property rather than seeking to extend the interests of international cooperations. In short, the peace process will have to balance the right of return of the (individual) property of the displaced with the new (collective) allotment of territory that the war has affected and notions of individual rights with notions of collective or social property.

Finally it seems apropos to quote, Amatya Sen, another Nobel Prize winning economist's response to a question by a Pakistani journalist at the Lahore based 'Dawn':

Journalist: "Conditions imposed by international financial institutions sometimes prevent recipient countries, even democracies, from acting in the interests of their own people. How can this problem be solved?" Sen: "I think that is a correct diagnosis, though things used to be even worse than they are today. In the past, conditions imposed by the IMF and the World Bank proved quite counterproductive instead of serving the interests of the poor. They often saw expenditure on such things as education and nutritional supplementation through cheapening of food as bureaucratic, governmental expenditure that hinders a country's efforts towards economic development.

This is, of course, a mistake. But the understanding has improved in the case of the Bank under the leadership of James Wolfensohn. However, some of the Bank's practices may not be entirely in accordance with his guidelines and of course, there is need for the IMF to seize these issues morefully".

Sen sounds optimistic that the Bank can learn from the past. We will have to wait and see and monitor what's being said on the peace process in the streets of Colombo and in the post/conflict zones of the North-East. Already there are signs that some people are becoming nostalgic for the war economy, when the cost of living was less burdensome than it was today as the neoliberal peace looms on the horizon.

In the meantime, it may be relevant to do a conflict analysis of the post/conflict reconstruction package by analyzing links between the macro-policies of "development" including SAPs and cycles of violence.

Sri Lanka simply cannot afford another cycle of conflict between its diverse ethnic and religious communities that co-existed in relative peace for centuries before the world development industry led by the Bretton Woods institutions and the international military industrial complex came along.

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