Societies, Constitutions and Social Dynamics

The constitution needs to stipulate mechanisms to maintain territorial integrity of a country that would avoid division of the country by circumventing forced and autocratic centralisation of communities. Perhaps this could be achieved by making room available for various smaller communities to enjoy autonomous rule based on genuine egalitarianism. There needs to be guarantees, that under any circumstances, a person cannot be detained indefinitely without trial.

by Lionel Bopage

( March 3, 2016, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) A constitutionally based system of governance in a society is about the politics that prevail in that society. Politics is about the people who rule and the people who are being subject to that rule. Academically speaking, a bourgeois democratic society should subject everybody in that society to its supreme law, which is its constitution. Of course, a constitution is a piece of paper on which the socio-economic and political objectives of the ruling elites are written. 

However, under the authoritarian regimes such as the one Sri Lanka previously had, constitutions may not worth the piece of paper on which they are written. Recently, a question a former minister and Member of Parliament in Sri Lanka had raised during a parliamentary debate on the process of creating a constitution was subject to intensive discussions. The MP had asked “Is the Constitution for eating?” If MPs do not respect and recognise the Constitution of the land, one cannot complain about the lack of respect of the ordinary people for it.

Contribution the constitutions of 1972 and 1978 have made to the mayhem that prevailed in the country during the last few decades is verifiably evident. Lack of rule of law had been the hallmark of the previous regime, though the situation that prevailed cannot be totally and solely blamed only upon the previous regime. The successive governments we have had since 1948 increasingly disregarded the supreme law of the land. This was done through wanton disregard of the constitution, flouting it through other means available to the ruling elite of the day, or bringing in new legislation that would contradict basic tenants of social justice. Since the new regime came to power last year, the lack of respect and disregard for rule of law has slightly diminished, though on many occasions, politicians, bureaucrats and security forces can be still found flouting its tenets.

Rightly, the former regime’s Minister’s cynicism had been taken to task. These are the very people who supported and practised authoritarianism. As has been correctly pointed out legislative, executive and judicial branches of the system of governance and its people need to abide by the constitution. It is said that under bourgeois democracy, a constitution becomes a social contract between the rulers and the ruled. Yet, historically this equilibrium of a social contract has not remained an absolute, or held true for all time. When relations of production prevailing in a bourgeois democratic society hinder further development of its productive forces, its democratic form usually gets replaced with dictatorial or autocratic practices   

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