Sri Lanka, Where Free Market Wouldn’t Sell Reform & Reconciliation

KUSAL PERERA-on 05/04/2016

Featured image courtesy Asianews

The case for serious reform necessary to return to a decent, civilised life for all in Sri Lanka has not been seriously argued in political forums all these years. There is a total disconnect between the economics of life and politics in this unrestricted open market economy. Discussing reform and reconciliation thus leaves out market economics. In a globally enforced free market, no reforms for greater citizen participation in the decision making process can be accommodated as the “neo liberal” economic model demands less and less governance in socio-economic life. This was logic President J R Jayawardene well understood, as demonstrated when in 1978 he turned the decades-old closed economy of Sri Lanka into a neo-liberal free market economy.

In 1978 when all State restrictions imposed by elected governments were done away with, allowing the market to function on the dictates of investors on consumption, President Jayawardene brought in a totally new Constitution to take care of the free market. With Executive Presidency installed and electoral reforms that completely alienated the elected member from the “citizen” voter, MPs were free from social pressure. The rationale was clear. He was taking care of a market that had to be free from government policy in regulating and supervising the economy. As George Monbiot writes in The Guardian of 15 April, 2016 “As the domain of the state is reduced, our ability to change the course of our lives through voting also contracts. Instead, neoliberal theory asserts, people can exercise choice through spending.”

Jayawardene’s republican Constitution in 1978 and the electoral reforms that followed introduced the Proportional Representation (PR) system. It thus became necessary for voters to first vote with the political party before selecting a candidate. Citizens were turned into struggling and competing “consumers” more interested in the choice they had on shop shelves than in the candidate lists in elections.

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