Defending democracy
During election
time there are so many groups who take an unusual interest in
saving democracy. There are 22 candidates in the fray aspiring
for the highest office in the land. Each and every one of them
claims to save democracy or enhance it.
There is, however, a moot point. Which democracy do they want
to save or enhance? It is clear that all of them may be not
seeing democracy in the same light. This means that democracy
that any one of them wants to save or enhance may not be the
same as the democracy professed by any other candidate.
The voter would be perplexed. So the voters have only one way
to check the bona fides of the candidates. That is to look at
their democratic history and to analyse on which side of
democracy they have been in the past.
Let us take a few examples. The United National Party and the
JVP, two principal parties that were at loggerheads throughout
history has come together in support of an outsider- the New
Democratic Front candidate Sarath Fonseka. Their unity, they
say, is ostensibly to strengthen democracy.
The United National Party has been and remains the party of
the most conservative bourgeoisie linked to international
monopoly capital. Throughout UNP regimes democratic rights of
the people have been curtailed beginning from the first UNP
Government in 1948 which disfranchised a large population of
upcountry Tamils.
It has always distributed national wealth in favour of the
rich and masses have been pauperized. The steep increase in rice
and flour prices in 1953 even led to a hartal. During the regime
of J R Jayewardene’s Government massive attack was made on the
people’s living standards and working people who demanded higher
salaries were dismissed en masse.
The UNP by introducing the Constitution of 1978 removed the
right to life, thus preparing the ground for mass scale killings
of opponents during the reign of terror in the 1980’s.
The JVP, on the other, was formed to represent the lower
strata of the population. It had a definite anti-capitalist
orientation. In fact, it is a result of the ‘sell-out’ by the
traditional Left and their class collaborationist policies that
gave rise to the New Left represented by the JVP and several
other groups.
Theoretically analyzing their origins and the popular basis
of their support it is inconceivable to think of a JVP-UNP
alliance. However, such an alliance has materialized. It could
be explained only on the basis of opportunism. There is no
doubt, their coming together the worst opportunism in the
history of the JVP.
What do these two parties have in common? The only common
feature both have displayed in history is their disregard for
democracy and law and order as witnessed during the periods of
terror when vigilante groups of the UNP Government and the rebel
squads of the JVP and its Deshapremi Jatika Vyaparaya competed
in an orgy of Kangaroo courts and extra-judicial killings.
The declared intention of this coming together is the
abolition of the Executive Presidency. The New Democratic Front
candidate, on whom both these groups had pinned their faith,
however, has not shown any keenness to do away with the
Executive Presidential system.
In fact, he has been on record as saying that he would not be
content with becoming a ceremonial President, a mere figure-head
without power. As is known the urge for power has been his
ambition as witnessed by his own statements at the initial
stages of the campaign which explained why he resigned from
military service.
The JVP, which had supported several candidates on the same
basis at earlier elections, was repeatedly taken for a ride.
What made them discard the lessons of history and their own past
experience to back an entirely unknown character on the same
unfulfilled promise? Once again there is only one answer,
opportunism.
What the JVP should remember is that there is democracy. The
UNP democracy cannot be the same as JVP democracy. In equating
the two the JVP has been trapped by Fonseka into following
democracy UNP style.
This is particularly true since the economic policies to be
followed by him, according to his own admission, will be the
neo-liberal policies followed by the UNP with disastrous
consequences. It includes privatization of State assets,
devaluation of the currency, guarantee of super profits for
local and foreign capital and repression of the working masses.
Political democracy rests on its economic foundation and as
such the JVP seems to have sung the requiem for its
‘revolutionary ideology’. |