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’.