UPFA rule and the development challenge

Although it has drawn very little comment over the years, coalition governance has become an almost unshakeable fact in the political life of countries in our part of the world.

In the case of Sri Lanka, coalition governance has been enduring in a major way since 1994 and even in neighbouring India, 'the world's largest democracy', coalition governance has been more or less the norm over the past two decades.

If Sri Lanka's experience is anything to go by, coalition governance is not intrinsically bad. Whereas, the conventional perception of coalition rule is that it is essentially unstable, political stability has been by and large the norm in Sri Lanka, although we had a short-lived, two-year UNP-led government beginning December 2001. But in the case of the latter too, it was a coalition administration.

While there could be a tendency to conclude that the day of the 'Grand Old Parties' of the region is over, the situation in contemporary Sri Lanka is of some complexity and is not amenable to any simplistic analyses. In the local case, it is the SLFP that has been predominating in the centrist coalitions which have been pivotal in governance since 1994 and considering its numerical strength in Parliament, the SLFP could by no means be considered a spent force. On the contrary, it has proved a dynamic nucleus of these coalitions and currently boasts of 118 seats in Parliament.

Moreover, the SLFP's partners under the current UPFA umbrella have thus far found co-existence with the SLFP to be trouble-free and satisfactory.

The key to the continuation of the coalition administration could very well be the Social-Democratic vision of the SLFP and its pragmatic policy positions on the majority of issues confronting the country. In fact, it is Social Democracy which is likely to emerge as the best policy framework for the world in terms of governance, out of the economic turmoil which is currently gripping the West.

Even during the headiest days of economic globalization, say around ten years ago, the SLFP considered it fit to stick to the centrist vision formulated and practised by the founding fathers of the SLFP.

The best interests of the mass of the people could not be abandoned, come what may, and this has essentially been the standpoint of the SLFP over the years.

Expressed in the simplest terms, on the question of economic policy, the SLFP has stood by the position that it should traverse a middle path between free business enterprise and tight state control of the economy. Those sectors of the economy which impinge on the people's lives should remain within the purview of the state and these have been guiding considerations of the SLFP. Thus, education, health and agriculture, for instance, remain, largely, state administered subjects.

Global economic history seems to be substantiating these policy standpoints of the SLFP. Gone are the days when economic liberalization was seen as the key to prosperity. On the contrary, today it is the consensual view that neo-liberal economic policies have failed, in that the gap between the wealthy and the poor worldwide has only widened. Thus, has the Social Democratic middle path in economic policy been vindicated by the increasing pauperization of the less well off all over the world.

Besides this policy plank on matters economic, what has enabled the SLFP-led UPFA governing coalition to click over the years is the vision of President Mahinda Rajapaksa to unite Sri Lanka's communities on the basis of equity and fair play, coupled with a concerted attempt on the part of the SLFP to eschew ethnic chauvinism. Thus, it should be no cause for wonder that the SLFP's coalition partners are finding co-existence with it generally trouble-free.

As the current UPFA government completes its second year in office, these considerations should be given close thought. Whether one likes it or not, ethnicity or identity-based politics have exploded to the surface in our part of the world.

Governing the plural societies of South Asia would not prove easy, unless and until the legitimate interests of all our communities are represented and met to the extent possible. Thus, a clear case could be made for coalition rule.