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Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Monday, May 7, 2018
Sri Lanka: Political Parties in Crisis or Transition?
The question of party discipline /indiscipline provides a window to an understanding of some of the changing dynamics of Sri Lanka’s political party system at present.
( May 6, 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) For
a student of political institutions in Sri Lanka, things happening
within political parties are great material for reflection and analysis.
It appears that our political parties today are not what used to be a
few decades ago. The presidential system, the system of proportional
representation, changes in value framework in society, shifting class
bases of political power, and persistence of coalition politics seem to
have contributed to what one may call reshaping of the nature, dynamics,
and cultures of political parties as institutions of democracy.
Party Indiscipline
The question of party discipline /indiscipline provides a window to an
understanding of some of the changing dynamics of Sri Lanka’s political
party system at present.
When we look at what we might call internal crises of both, the UNP and
SLFP during the past two-to-three years, it is difficult to resist the
conclusion that these two parties are no longer governed by the old
cultures of ‘inner party discipline’ and ‘party loyalty.’ Indiscipline
and weak loyalty with impunity seem to be a culture of party governance
tolerated with indifference within both the UNP and SLFP.
SLFP’s Record
Let us briefly look at what has been happening to the SLFP since
November 2014. The General Secretary of the party staged a dramatic
defection to the Opposition one night in November 2014 to become the
Opposition’s presidential candidate against his own party leader. His
party membership was suspended, but with little or no effect on his
position within the party. Two months later he became the party’s leader
by virtue of the fact that he was elected as the country’s President.
This is an extremely interesting instance of how a grave violation of
party indiscipline and disloyalty has been rewarded in thrilling form
under unusually unusual political circumstances!
Then, in January 2015, President Sirisena, as the SLFP’s new leader,
brought his party to be a co-partner of the coalition government with
the UNP, signing a formal agreement for a unity government. More than
half of the SLFP MPs in Parliament defied the party leader’s decision,
organized themselves informally into a ‘joint opposition’ in Parliament,
and began at act as the de facto parliamentary opposition to the
government headed by its own party leader. Former President Mahinda
Rajapaksa continues to give leadership to this joint opposition, with no
disciplinary consequences either for him or nearly 50 of his MPs. When
one looks at the whole issue from the conventional perspective of party
discipline, this is a situation that warrants to be called bizarre.
Then came the local government election held last February. Hundreds of
members of the SLFP contested under a new, rival party called Sri Lanka
Podujana Peramnuna (SLPP), and many of them even won. No one seems
interested in even finding out whether such open defiance of party
discipline should bring to these errant members any disciplinary
consequences. The topic of party discipline is totally absent in the
otherwise intense debates among different factions of the SLFP.
The current episode of 16 SLFP Ministers who are reported to be joining
the Joint Opposition in the coming few days is another addition to this
new trend in redefining party loyalty as a domain of extreme
uncertainty. It is not very clear which side of the aisle they actually
belonged to. They seem to find oscillation between the Government and
the Opposition an enjoyable game in a situation where the line of
demarcation between the Government and Opposition in Parliament is also
blurred.
UNP’s Record
The story of the break down of party discipline in the UNP is only
slightly better. None of its disgruntled MPs or leading members has so
far, since 2015, formed a rival party, or defected to the enemy camp.
Yet, several MPs and Ministers continue to show scant respect for the
party leader as well as the idea of party discipline with impunity.
There has been an open revolt against the party leader for months, with
several Ministers, Deputy/State Ministers and MPs openly criticising,
nay attacking, sometimes virulently, their party leader who is also
their Prime Minister. And some of them have even been rewarded at last
week’s reshuffle of the Ministerial portfolios, giving a lie to the old
practice of a reshuffle as a mechanism to punish those who violate party
discipline.
Meanwhile, one young MP the other day even posed an open challenge to
the party hierarchy suggesting that she and several junior MPs had
decided to boycott events attended by the leader as a mark of protest
against his refusal to initiate substantial leadership reforms.
Unusual Things
Thus, in both the UNP and the SLFP, two unusual things have been
happening. Party discipline has severely broken down, and the party
leaders are unable to maintain the traditional disciplinary norms of
party organisation. This stands in sharp contrast to the Sri Lankan
tradition of strict party discipline maintained even during the recent
past by leaders such as J. R. Jayewardene, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, R.
Premadasa and Mahinda Rajapaksa.
What is most interesting is that even a leader like Mahinda Rajapaksa
who controlled the SLFP under an iron fist could not prevent a
debilitating defection three years ago, suggesting a general trend
within both the SLFP and the UNP.
That trend is the simmering discontent at all levels of the party which
the party leadership cannot address or contain by conventional means of
securing loyalty to the party and the leader through internal party
mechanisms. The UNP leadership is now facing this particular problem.
Does it mean that modern day party members have acquired a certain
degree of autonomy from the party organization, even acquiring the
capacity to function free of a regime of strict party discipline? Yes,
that seems to be the case, particularly, with regard to those who have
access to elected office.
Recent Changes
This invites us to look somewhat academically, at the recent changes in
Sri Lanka’s political party system. The research conducted by Dr.
Pradeep Peiris of Colombo University, a few years ago as part of his
doctoral work, provides important clues to some significant shifts in
the nature and dynamics of Sri Lanka’s political parties. Among his
findings are the following:
(a) Major political parties in Sri Lanka no longer function on the
foundation of well-structured national organisational networks on the
ground that are controlled and managed by the party hierarchy, as it was
the case in the past.
(b) Party organisations built locally are the most important
organisational entities of the parties. This gives a greater leverage to
local level party organisers, who will eventually become Provincial
Councillors, MPs and Ministers, in party politics than in the previous
system where the national level structures had held sway.
(c) Thus, the rise of the local party networks, built on the
personality, resources and the ideological flexibility of the local
organisers, over national organisational structures is the most
significant new development in the organisational cultures of both, the
UNP and the SLFP. This may be observed in other parties too, to greater
or lesser degrees.
(d) What exists at the local level as ‘party organisations’ are
primarily informal and flexible networks of electoral support and
patronage. These are usually established by individual MPs and office
seekers through personal links with the electorate, on the basis of
family, caste, patronage and other ‘non-party’ as well as
‘non-political’ ties.
(e) The party affiliation thus provides only a tenuous basis for party
loyalty. Thus, extra-party loyalties built around individuals work side
by side with party and ideological loyalties, often threatening the
latter.
Crucial Shifts
These findings indicate that there have been crucial shifts in the
relationship between individual politicians – Provincial Councillors,
MPs, and Ministers – and their political parties: Parties have less
control over them now than in the past. If we study individual cases of
politicians whose record of party loyalty and discipline is marked by
abiding uncertainty, vacillation and even what may be called
‘unprincipled opportunism’, we can see how the new logic of party
indiscipline and disloyalty has been working as a distinct pattern in
party politics in most of our political parties, big or small. Party
loyalty then is a renewable virtue that is interspersed with ruptures,
betrayal, and renewal. This relative autonomy of party functionaries vis
a vis party bosses has also been made possible by two other structural
factors, (a) the prevailing electoral system of proportional
representation, and (b) the persistence of multi-party coalition
governments. These two factors have made loyalty to the party fragile
and party affiliation unstable, as repeatedly demonstrated during the
People’ Alliance government of 1994-2001, the UNP government of
2001-2003 and the two UPFA governments during 2004 and 2014.
The Supreme Court interpretation of the constitutional provisions
governing the consequences of crossovers under the PR system during the
PA government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga inaugurated a new
pattern of party disloyalty with no consequences. It actually allowed
penalty-free cross overs from the opposition to the ruling party and
back. A few beneficiaries of that Supreme Court ruling are holding top
positions in the current coalition government.
Today, party bosses are reluctant to take disciplinary action against
errant MPs and Ministers thanks to that particular binding
interpretation of the PR law. It has in fact pushed the practice of
disciplinary action in political parties into a zone of uncertainty,
making institutional cohesion of Sri Lanka’s political parties uncertain
and fragile.
Coalition Impact
Meanwhile, the recurrence of coalition governments under the
Presidential system has added another fascinating element to the
fragility of political institutions. Its most visible expression is the
erosion of the theory and practice of collective responsibility of the
Cabinet.
This is a process that began during the mid-1990s when a fragile
coalition of several parties, — the People’s Alliance – survived as a
government with a very slim parliamentary majority. That is also the
period in which the breakdown of party discipline and the disregard for
the principle of collective responsibility of the Cabinet worked
together to germinate some significant new trends in Sri Lanka’s
political institutions. What we observe at present is the fruition and
maturity of those trends.
New Creatures
So, the point that interests students of political institutions is that
Sri Lanka’s political parties have become new creatures with some
unusually new characteristics. Monitoring these new changes requires not
only scholarly vigilance, but also detachment from our old images of
what democratic political institutions are.