Liberal Initiatives in Sri Lanka

This article, written in 2000, outlines the history of Liberalism in Sri Lanka, and in particular the contribution of the Liberal Party. It began as a think-tank called the ‘Council for Liberal Democracy’, the first institution to criticize the all embracing statism of the colonial and immediate post-colonial periods. In espousing free economic policies together with wide-ranging political freedoms, the Council, and then the Party, opposed both the authoritarian crony capitalism of the United National Party and the socialism of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. Both major parties are now in theory in favour of wide freedoms, but to ensure that these are understood and entrenched there is still need of coherent Liberal activism.

Emergence of Liberalism

Shortly after the Liberal Party was founded in Sri Lanka, in 1987, a prominent politician remarked that it was an anachronism, because Liberalism had died in Sri Lanka with Sir James Pieris. The gibe was understandable. Sir James Pieris had been a prominent politician at the turn of the century and, though he survived into the twenties, Liberalism as an ideology had no status whatsoever in the programme of the Ceylon National Congress that dominated politics in the period before independence in 1948. As happened to many other colonies which grew to political maturity in the period around the Second World War, Ceylon was dominated by the twin pillars of Nationalism and Socialism. Those were days in which independence movements drew inspiration from Laski’s London School of Economics. Socialism along with Nationalism seemed then the only recourse of the underdog, and thus provided a potent and ultimately disastrous mix for so many former colonies.

The death knell of Liberalism in colonial Sri Lanka was sounded by the defeat of the statesman E W Perera in the Kelaniya bye-election of 1942. Perera was an old Congressman, who had done yeoman service in getting a fair deal for the more aggressive of his countrymen arrested under Martial Law in 1915. However, his sturdy individuality did not go down well with the new potentates. They permitted another much younger Congressman called J R Jayewardene to contest him, and allowed what was termed a free vote. Jayewardene and his supporters made much of the fact that Perera was a Christian, which proved enough to defeat him. Jayewardene thus entered the State Council, where he was immediately marked for high office. Though there was already a Board of Ministers under the then prevailing Donoughmore Constitution, three portfolios were reserved for colonial officers. When these were got rid of under the Soulbury Constitution that brought Ceylon independence, Jayewardene was made Finance Minister in the new United National Party government.

Thirty years later he finally achieved his ambition of becoming Prime Minister, and promptly introduced a new Constitution that turned him into an Executive President with sweeping powers. A few years later he masterminded a Referendum that, attended as it was by outrageous electoral malpractices, extended for a second period of 6 years the term of the Parliament elected in 1977. Though he presided over what was ostensibly the more right wing of Sri Lankan political parties, the United National Party, he thus showed himself very much a child of his times in assuming that centralized authoritarianism was necessary for social development. It was no accident that it was he who introduced the term ‘Socialist’ into the official title of the Sri Lankan state.

Ironically, but perhaps justly, it was in opposition to the 1982 referendum that Liberalism once again asserted itself in Sri Lanka. Though many members of the UNP deplored the undemocratic tactics of its leader, only one person who sat on any of its committees was prepared to speak out openly against the move. This was the young intellectual Chanaka Amaratunga, who tried very hard to persuade sympathetic senior members such as the party chairman A C Gooneratne and former MP Rukman Senanayake to take a public stand. They were both however too nervous, aware as they were of Jayewardene’s ruthlessness if he were crossed. Amaratunga therefore used the Council for Liberal Democracy that he had established earlier to run a campaign against the referendum, that used as its slogan the assertion of the previous UNP leader Dudley Senanayake that there were some rights that could not be taken away by any majority however massive. Since Jayewardene had jailed the most effective campaigner in the opposition at the time, the charismatic Vijaya Kumaratunga, on the argument that Marxist murderers would take over if he lost the referendum, it was important that the CLD stressed the Liberal Democratic reasons for opposing the extension of the life of parliament.

Acceptance of Liberal Theories

The failure of Statism

Jayewardene won his referendum, but it was shortly after that that his government in effect lost control of the country. The anti-Tamil pogrom that forces close to him unleashed in 1983 led to disaster: having pushed the democratic Tamil forces out of parliament, he found himself no match for terrorists, supported as they were on high moral ground by India. In 1987 accordingly, unwilling to reach accommodation with Sri Lankan Sinhala or Tamil opposition forces, he accepted the Indo-Lankan Accord that was in effect dictated by India.

It was shortly before that that the Liberal Party had been established. Though some of Amaratunga’s associates suggested that the CLD should continue as a think tank, which was what they felt best equipped for, he argued that, even to be effective as a think tank, it was desirable to establish a party. He proved to be correct. When Provincial Councils were set up under the Accord, the Liberal Party, which had been officially recognized in February 1988, was in a position to contest. This was important because the other parties that contested the Councils accepted them under the Accord as the means of solving the ethnic problem, while parties such as the main opposition Sri Lanka Freedom Party rejected the Accord and therefore boycotted the election. The Liberal Party however, which had argued in favour of devolution on first principles, felt that while certain aspects of the Accord were undesirable, it was essential to grasp the opportunity to reduce the centralized controls that had damaged the country so much since independence.

Though the Party only won two seats in the Western Provincial Council, that period marked its emergence as an influential think tank. Through the Council the Party was able to bring together a number of intellectuals from all parties, who engaged in open discussion on the changes that were necessary. It was in those days that the term Liberal began once more to be respected, so that various other politicians began to talk in terms of restoring the Liberal Democracy that Jayewardene’s centralized, in effect guided, democracy had destroyed. One immediate consequence for instance was the acceptance by the government of international monitoring of elections, which Jayewardene had previously argued was an assault on national sovereignty. Fortunately more enlightened forces in his government had begun to realize that certain norms had to be observed if the country were not to be isolated.

The proceedings of the various workshops the Council conducted provided a framework for moving away from the statist socialism that no one else had questioned from a theoretical standpoint in the forty years since independence. Liberal ideas were in the forefront of the recognition that emerged of the need for pluralism, as opposed to the mMajoritarianism that had hitherto been deemed the only ‘democratic’ option. Along with this went acceptance of extending the scope of justiciable fundamental rights, of the importance of a free media over which government exercised no authority, of strengthening Civil Society. Liberal publications also promoted privatization while arguing against the monopolies that had characterized the crony capitalism of the Jayewardene years. The importance of choice as an essential element in a liberal democracy was, it should be remembered, an unusual concept for a society that had been dependent on paternalism for so long.

Other parties accept Liberal principles

The importance of Liberal ideas in the new politics that emerged may be deduced from the fact that Amaratunga was one of the chief architects of the manifesto of the Democratic People’s Alliance under which Mrs Bandaranaike, the leader of the SLFP, contested the Presidency in 1989. The proposals of that manifesto with regard to the ethnic question are now regarded as a useful model. Unfortunately when Mrs Bandaranaike lost, albeit very narrowly in a situation marred by violence, the Left Wing of her Party argued that it was because of Right Wing ideas that she had been defeated. Mrs Bandaranaike accepted their arguments, and did not appoint Amaratunga to parliament as agreed under the terms of the alliance. Instead she allowed her own right wing to be weakened, and permitted the party to be taken over by the supporters of her then very left wing daughter Chandrika, whose husband Vijaya Kumaratunga had been assassinated in 1988.

At this stage however, the newly elected UNP President, Ranasinghe Premadasa, proved much more willing to move towards liberal democracy than had been anticipated. His government was ruthless in suppressing the neo-Marxist Janata Vimukthi Peramuna insurgency that had been provoked by Jayewardene’s proscription of the JVP. However, after that was done he showed himself prepared to rebuild institutions that had been shattered over the previous two decades. Unlike Jayewardene, he was scrupulous about appointing judges in order of seniority. Radio and TV licenses were granted to independent companies, and a host of independent journals that were sharply critical of the government sprang up. Perhaps most important of all, from 1991 Sri Lankans were once again able to accept the results of elections, which from 1982 onward had been markedly suspect.

In such a situation the Liberal Party moved close to the UNP, though this was not without opposition from some of its senior members who resigned from the Party in 1993 when an alliance was agreed on. The assassination of Premadasa in May 1993 put paid however to the alliance, and his successor proved quite hopeless as to both policy and efficacy. He managed swiftly to alienate the minority parties which Premadasa had also cultivated. As a result, when the General Election was held in August 1994, the Liberal Party had an alliance with the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, which was in turn allied with the People’s Alliance.

This latter grouping consisted of the SLFP now in effect led by Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, and her former Marxist allies. Though their democratic credentials were not in doubt at this stage, their economic policies still seemed suspect. As it happened though, Mrs Kumaratunga had by this stage developed a more modern outlook, and after she became Prime Minister it was clear that there would be no return to the statist socialism of the past.

Her residual suspicion of the Liberal Party however, according to the Muslim Congress Leader, prevented him from fulfilling his promise to nominate Amaratunga to Parliament, and he instead got the consent of the Liberal Party to nominate another member who was related to Mrs Kumaratunga and had her confidence. The member promised to resign in time to make way for Amaratunga, but instead converted to Islam and rapidly convinced both the Congress and Mrs Kumaratunga that he was indispensable.

As it happened, the new leader of the UNP. Gamini Dissanayake, then invited Amaratunga to prepare the manifesto on which he contested Mrs Kumaratunga for the Presidency. He however was assassinated, and his successor repudiated the manifesto which was again visionary in its proposals for devolution as well as its other proposals for constitutional change. It was left to Mrs Kumaratunga to produce some impressive suggestions but, as might have been predicted, apart from herself and just a couple of her ministers, hardly anyone in her government was anxious or able to promote the proposed package. It took several years and another election for her government to try to get the package through parliament, but unfortunately by then developments in the ethnic conflict meant that that alone was unlikely to be sufficient to achieve anything.

It could be argued that the Liberal Party was extremely unfortunate to have been the victim of various betrayals, as explained above. In addition there were two extreme strokes of fate that removed two leaders who in their different ways were emerging as statesmen committed to pluralism. When Chanaka Amaratunga died then, in a motor car accident in 1996, he was a disappointed man. However the ideas he enunciated, with a rare personal determination, and the impact they had on so many others, will ensure his place in the higher levels of political history in Sri Lanka.

Recent Developments

Independent Liberal candidacies

Given the above factors, the Liberal Party decided a couple of years ago that it was best to stand for election on its own, and attempt to build up a party that could advance liberalism direct instead of being dependent on others. In accordance with this view it put forward lists in several Districts at the Provincial Council elections that took place in early 1999. Though it won no seats, it obtained a few votes in each electorate, and the Party Executive decided therefore to put forward a candidate of its own for the Presidential election that was held in December 1999, in the person of Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, President of the Party, who had become leader after Dr Amaratunga’s demise.

This proved in the end a very satisfactory decision in that it ensured that the Party once more became known as an active national party. Though the entire expenditure for the election was less than Rs 200,000 (US $ 3000), which was about the cost of the full page colour advertisements placed in profusion by the major party candidates, the Liberal Party came 6th out of 15 candidates, and did better than more established politicians. It came 3rd, after the two major parties, in some minority areas, and 4th in many others, behind the two major parties and the JVP. Though the gap between it and those 3 parties is very large, it has established itself as the only party to have done substantially better than expected, and this may contribute to its being seen as a reasonable prospect for the future.

In one sense the theoretical need for liberalism no longer needs to be argued, since both major parties accept that an open economy is a necessity, and that this must be must be accompanied by openness and competition. The maintenance of democratic norms and the need for devolution are also widely accepted. Strengthening of fundamantal rights and justiciability and the importance of independent institutions are also advocated more prominently than in the days when it was assumed that everything had to be subordinate to whatever political dispensation ruled.

At the same time the acceptance of such ideas by politicians who are still accustomed to the unbridled powers of the past is noticeably precarious. The reduction of the overweening powers of Jayewardene’s Executive Presidency is promised but postponed. Recently there was talk of another referendum to extend the life of parliament and, even though the President declared that she would not countenance this, there are those in her party, as well as renegades from the UNP, who see nothing wrong with such practices.

Similarly, neither major party seems to have understood the need to limit the role of the state in social, educational and cultural activity. What should be a safety net was turned in the socialist heyday into monopolistic control, and the opportunities for patronage this offers are too useful for politicians to abandon them. In this regard the liberal insistence on maximizing choice has to be stressed much more.

Current Liberal priorities

Meeting with Kim Dae Jung, President of South Korea

The Liberal Party accordingly recognizes the need for even more concerted activity than in the past to convey its message. Now that, following the Presidential election, it has got rid of its old image of being an elitist group that was incapable of contesting elections on its own, it can put forward ideas with much more confidence. In this regard it plans a series of weekly articles on constitutional reform, which it trusts will contribute to the discussion the government has reopened with regard to its own package of changes.

Areas it has concentrated in this respect include institutionalization of a separation of powers, with a clear-cut devolution of power on the basis of the principle of Subsidiarity. At the same time it proposes a strengthening of regional power at the centre through the creation of a second chamber elected on a provincial basis. Fixed terms for the executive and the legislature, and a constitutional limit to the number of cabinet members are also suggested.

The strengthening of Civil Society is also necessary. In this regard the Liberal Party has proposed a very thorough programme of media reform which will enshrine the principle that the state has no role to play in the control of public information, and should have only limited powers with regard to dissemination. The socialist assumption that information needs to be controlled is still strong in both major parties, especially when they hold the reins of power.

The independence of the judiciary and the acceptance of judicial review of legislation as a fundamental principle also need to be pursued. An independent public service has to be established, together with provision for special commissions such as the one against Corruption that was set up in Hong Kong. For all this it will be necessary to have an appointing agency that is based on a bipartisan approach. The acceptance of such principles again demands rejection of the centralizing tendency that was so marked in previous exercises in constitution making. Given that most politicians now active came to maturity when that tendency was unquestioned, and given that most young people grew up in a climate that encouraged nothing else, it is education at all levels that is perhaps the most important role of the Liberal Party now.

In this regard, the Party has begun to set up Provincial branches, and hopes to engage in a series of workshops designed to enlighten young people nationwide. In this respect it has gained useful experience in that it conducted workshops on Liberalism for the FNS in India, Pakistan and Nepal, and has assisted with the establishment of a Liberal Forum in Pakistan. The Party also produced a book entitled ‘Liberal Values for South Asia’, which is recognized, largely due to the seminal contributions of Chanaka Amaratunga, as an invaluable handbook for the region with regard to the enduring appeal of liberalism in the South Asian context. When the principles enunciated there gain wider provenance, it will be possible to hope for more coherent solutions to the various problems with which we are now beset.