Crowning consensual thinking

There is widespread relief that Local Government polls legislation has been amended to bring in reforms which are considered to be in the national interest. For example, the Ward system of local representation would be back with some prominence and we would be seeing a corresponding decrease of the preferential voting arrangement at Local Government elections, which proved highly controversial and emerged as a prime cause of polls-related violence over the years.

It is most unfortunate that short-term political gain figured prominently some decades back when what were seen as electoral reforms, encompassing the preferential voting system, were introduced to this country, ignoring in the process, the larger national interest. While the interests of smaller parties need to be taken into account in what is considered electoral reform, the national interest has to be always focused on when such 'reform' moves are initiated.

In other words, changes that have a wide-ranging impact cannot be hurried through, in public affairs. They must be given adequate thought and wide-ranging consultations ushered, so that future drawbacks would be avoided.

Hopefully, the hybrid system of elections which is being introduced will see an end to the issues which have been bedeviling us in these contexts. For instance, there could be less electoral in-fighting, bloodshed and irregularities, which were difficult to contain under the outgoing system.

To be sure, there could be a scaling down of intra-party rivalries under the reintroduced Ward system of Local Government elections, but polls-linked violence has always been with us and there is no guarantee we would be seeing a complete end to it, unless and until the law is stringently enforced and society humanized to an exemplary degree.

Be that as it may, there is no getting away from the need to introduce into our body politic consensual and collective deliberations on issues that impact the national interest. We need to have in place national policies on issues that matter to the country very crucially and consensual discussions are the path to this. Of course, Parliament is one such body where a degree of collective and consensual thinking is possible, but we earnestly wish that consensual deliberations and thinking become a national habit to a greater degree, than occur very occasionally, in an intermittent and fragmented fashion, as is mostly the case now.

Interestingly, we had a consensus among major political parties on the amendments to the Local Government election law some time back, but it took some time for this consensual decision to translate itself into the relevant legislation which was on Wednesday passed by Parliament. Ideally, delays of this kind should not occur.

All in all, careful thinking and deliberations should precede the passing of laws that have a wide-ranging impact. Besides, such thinking and 'discourse' should be highly consensual. Ideally, we need to have national consultations on questions that impinge on the national interest closely. This is vitally important in the case of laws and policies that touch on the common interest.

Such collective and consensual thinking is an essential condition for the framing of national policies and laws that seek to further the common interest. This could prove relatively long-drawn but it is advisable to adopt this approach in policy formulation, rather than go about such business in a fragmented, ad-hoc fashion, which could end in one-sided, incomplete policy prescriptions that are unmindful of national needs.

The Lankan polity, we believe, should revisit the debate on the need for national policies on crucial issues that would not be subjected to ephemeral, unplanned change. Ideally, enduring policies need to be in place on issues that are nationally important, such as, education, health, public administration and power and energy. Such subject areas should not be blighted by ad-hocism in policy-planning and thinking.