An Ideal for all seasons

LECTURE: January 19 sees the first Chanaka Amaratunga Memorial Lecture, delivered by his old friend Warwick Lightfoot, who succeeded Chanaka as Secretary of the Oxford Union. Warwick went on to become President, and was recently Mayor of Kensington and Chelsea.

The Lecture will also see the launch of a new edition of the seminal work Ideas for Constitutional Reform which Chanaka produced nearly twenty years ago.

That was based on a series of seminars on the subject conducted by the Council for Liberal Democracy, a body he had established in the early eighties, to bring together all those of liberal ideas, whatever their specific political allegiances.

The book proved immensely popular, and was soon even a prescribed text.

It is mainly because the volume is now out of print that a new edition is being published. However, the original volume, which ran into 650 pages, was not readily accessible to many of those interested in this subject.

Though individual articles were studied for particular purposes, the concept as a whole was not easy to digest.

It was decided therefore that, a decade after Chanaka's sad death, an abridged edition should be brought out, that highlighted the main themes.

Reproduced here is the presentation with which Chanaka opened the seminar, making clear with his usual clarity why a liberal approach was so necessary at that time when extremists on either side, all of them authoritarian, dominated both political thinking and political practice.

Though things have changed for the better, the failure to understand the need for adherence to principle along with acceptance of other ideas has contributed to the continuation of the crisis in our country.

Hence the need to listen again to a voice which was the origin of so many concepts - a mixed electoral system, a bicameral parliament, a federal system to promote unity - that are now advanced, unfortunately by many who still do not understand the principles behind such concepts.

The liberal vision

- Dr. Chanaka Amaratunga

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the Liberal Party, and to express our gratitude for your presence here, at the inauguration of a series of seminars devoted to a detailed and open examination of the essential features of our Constitution.

We will look carefully first at what long was, though not now, the center-piece of our constitution, Parliament; then at the case for a second chamber for the Sri Lankan Parliament; and also at the intricacies of electoral systems.

Later we will examine the Presidency and consider alternative institutional forms of the Sri Lankan State, then the now vitally important and bitterly controversial issue of Federalism, devolution and the unitary State, and finally the role of two institutions which, though not peopled by politicians, nevertheless play a vital role in the politics of our country, the judiciary and the media.

The culmination of this will be detailed examination of the need for a bill of rights and the production of a blueprint for a new Constitution for Sri Lanka.

Our task is tremendous, and we know we cannot undertake it alone. The production of a new draft constitution should anyway be free from the narrow partisanship, which characterised the framing of both Sri Lanka's indigenous constitutions.

We therefore invite the contributions of any persons of all those here and outside who care about the way in which they are governed, and in particular those who are conscious of their rights as individual human beings.

While I emphasise that we approach this task without narrow self-interest, intellectual blinkers and intolerance, the Council for Liberal Democracy does not either claim a position of neutrality. Neutrality and spurious objectivity has never been part of our purpose.

While in our work we provide for the widest possible expression of views opposed to our own, we have made clear our commitment to our own moral and ideological position. Our main purpose is to defend and promote the ideal of Liberalism.

This declaration of commitment to Liberalism brings me to something which may confuse some of you. If the Council for Liberal Democracy exists to promote Liberalism, how is it different from the Liberal Party? To many this may seem a distinction without a difference.

In that both the Liberal Party and the CLD subscribe to the same analysis of our political situation today, they are right.

But there is a difference between the two. And in developing Sri Lankan Liberalism over the past six years, we have understood that the core values of Liberalism must be promoted amongst all parties and among those of no party, that the great issues of the day must be examined from many points of views, but always with a determination to promote individual and political freedom, representative democracy, tolerance, and those economic arrangements which are most conducive to a free society.

This is the task of the Council for Liberal Democracy and it has tried to perform to that task, by involving in its work members of different political parties whose ideology is not totally distinct from those of full-fledged Liberals, all united in a commitment to individual freedom and to a tolerant and free society.

But an equally important part of our understanding was that there was need of an organised and committed attempt to introduce a new politics to our people, a politics of Liberal principle.

Therefore, it was desirable to provide, albeit in a modest form, a party explicitly committed to Liberal values, a party that would explicitly oppose the excesses of authoritarianism and nationalism and socialism in defence of liberal democracy and individual freedom.

The Liberal Party was formed in January 1987 at a time when no party, let alone major party, explicitly affirmed the values we believe are vital.

We believe we have already had some impact in bringing some of these issues into political debate, at a time when democracy was equated with socialism and majoritarianism.

We have seen this lead to intolerance, to racism and sectarianism, and to erosion of the very basis of democracy, the right to free and fair and regular elections.

Now however, it is universally agreed that this has led to unmitigated disaster, and that a return to principles is desirable if we are not to decline further.

For this purpose let us declare again what no other political party understands, that a country will move forward fastest when the power of politicians, all politicians, over people is reduced.

In addressing you today I would like to present the point of view of Sri Lankan Liberalism on the Sri Lankan condition today, for a constitution is not just a particular document, it is a way of governance of an entire people.

It is all too fashionable in this country for many to adopt a cynical approach and scoff at ideals, and at coherent political philosophies based on such. The detailed and sophisticated analyses of society which persons of ideas have developed are regarded as useless eccentricities.

The short term approaches of self interest or gross materialism are regarded as the only rational bases for action. But to us it is clear that the immense crisis we face now is the result of the bankruptcy of vision, the moral emptiness and the simplistic shallowness of this cynical so-alled realist approach.

Throughout the world and over the centuries liberals have never abandoned political attitudes of idealism and conviction, of commitment and faith.

But we have not suffered either from the crude egotism that does not recognise the worth of the ideas of other persons and of other peoples. Individualism, tolerance, generosity and independent spirit, are fundamental to Liberalism.

Over two thousand years before the best statement of Liberalism, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, the Buddha expressed the spirit of free inquiry, tolerance and individualism with similar force in His Discourse to the Kalamas.

As Liberals we warmly welcome the insights of others. Universalism has therefore been one of the fundamental attitudes of our Liberalism. We have no doubt that the most constructive unity is the unity of shared conviction, not that of blind loyalty.

This fundamental attitude of Liberalism is of vital significance in our present context. For the past four years this country has endured a violent and bitter struggle.

Racial mistrust, racial hatred, and a vision of the future based on racial lines has been evoked among Sinhalese and Tamils, and now even Muslims.

What is happening to our people that they should be so mean-minded? Where amidst this hypocrisy, this bigoted approach to universal suffering and death, is there the humanity we should share?

Some will speak of existing realities. They will say that racial feeling is a reality that we must live with. Others will claim that constitutional manipulation, the restriction of freedom, the abuse of emergency powers, the abandonment of concern for the persecuted are the realities of life.

They will scorn the liberal concern for freedom for humanity, and justice, as irrelevant dreams. They will dismiss our love of diversity and constitutional freedoms, our coherent view of the individual and society as the self-indulgent love of the abstract. They will condemn our commitment to human rights as impractical.

When opponents of Liberalism claim popular support for their criticisms, they are to a degree accurate. We are not numerous here nor elsewhere. There would not be such suffering in the world if we were. But we are not daunted. Throughout history Liberals have demonstrated courage and determination in the face of persecution and calumny.

For we cannot be faint hearted, or compromise on our respect for the freedom of the individual, for representative democracy, for an open society, for the market economy and for the welfare state.

I must emphasise too that Sri Lankan Liberals are determined radicals. Ours is perhaps the most determined radicalism - if radicalism is understood in its true sense, as a determined commitment to change.

We are determined to advocate a new political culture in place of one dominated by the twin sectarianisms of nationalism and collectivism.

We fundamentally agree with Michael Howard, former Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, when he said:

By Liberals I mean in general all those thinkers who believe the world to be profoundly other than it should be, and who have faith in the power of human reason and human action so to change it that the inner potential of human beings can be morefully realised.

This excludes on the one hand those conservatives who accept the world as it unalterably is and adjust to it with more or less of a good grace: and on the other those disciples of Karl Marx and other determinists who see men trapped in predicaments from which they can be rescued only by historical processes which they may understand but which they are powerless to control.

He might have added that it excluded also the cynics and the opportunists of this world and the selfish and simplistic lovers of perpetual power.

Through the shortsightedness and selfishness of those in office today, terrible forces of darkness have been unleashed. Time and again in history, authoritarianism has been the harbinger of totalitarianism.

But let us remember that the worse and most effective enemy of totalitarianism is true freedom. The best hope for this country is the forces of the democratic center, the forces of social democracy and liberalism.

We recognise as liberals that our numbers and resources give us only a limited role. But in introducing new concepts into political debate, we hope that we will contribute to this country in the manner in which liberals have done so much elsewhere throughout history.