The Cosmetics Of Constitutional Reform

By Surendra Ajit Rupasinghe –April 7, 2016

Surendra Ajit Rupasinghe

The Political Economy of the Lankan State and the Limits of Democratic Constitutional Reform 

The constitutional reform process has been placed on top of the national agenda, with much fanfare. This is even as the country is rapidly sinking into an inexorable debt-ridden financial crisis and broad sections that had voted for the Sirisena-Ranil dispensation are questioning the honesty, ability and credibility of the new ‘National-Unity government’. So, what is the urgency for constitutional reform? In my analysis, the current constitutional reform process reflects a desperate measure to further prop up the prevailing centralized, hegemonic-supremacist, unitary Capitalist State. This is in spite of the myriad reforms already, and would be, undertaken, including constitutional, legal, political, electoral and administrative reforms. In fact, these reforms would be designed to further centralize and monopolize State power. For example, the so-called Right to Information Act (RTI) has been designed to constitutionally suppress vital information regarding the economy, foreign relations and trade agreements. So, just shut up and fall in line on CEPA/ETCA! Information pertaining to the defence of the State (From whom?), territorial integrity and national security is also banned. Just think how broad and vague these categories are?

None of these duplicitous reforms shall in any fundamental way, affect the basic character of the Lankan State and Social Formation, which remains founded upon a pathetically dependent semi-feudal/ neo-colonial political economy and social order. This kind of political economy is greased and oiled by financial racketeers, who rake in enormous profits through State patronage, legitimacy and authority. Whoever rules, whoever the personality may be, whatever the regime may be, they must rule over a crony-mafia Capitalist State and Economy which is fatally dependent on circuits of international finance capital for its very survival, for raking in lucrative profits and fat commissions. That is why I say that the Mahinda Rajapaksa Regime was no aberration nor mutation, but a logical evolution and concentration of the Lankan State and the political economy upon which it is erected. It has become a State dominated by a corrupt mafia with finance capitalist tentacles carrying the blood lines of imperialism through the state, the bureaucracy and the economy. Although this type of State suits the needs of the neo-liberal agenda of the imperialist powers, it needs some serious and urgent patching up. Caught up in this swirl of volatile and intensifying contradictions and beset by violent fault-lines, the State needs to be overhauled. This is so that we can move away from the kind of personalized, autocratic class dictatorship of the Rajapaksa triumvirate and dynasty into an internationally acceptable standard ( that is to the US, India and the UN). This reform overhaul is required in order to clean and polish the machinery of the State, both its ideological and repressive apparatuses, and fine-tune the rules of the game, so there would be some degree of predictable stability for the State, the System and the survival of its pathetic and parasitic ruling class. Constitutional reform, elections, referendums are all but means to divide, delude, corral and somehow get the masses to give their spirited mandate for this same ruling class to continue in power, taking their due turn, as the sworn guardians of the defunct, neo-colonial State and Political-Economic Order.

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