LOOKING 75 BACK ON YEARS

Turkish Television has for some reason taken over the last year or so to calling me up to comment on various issues. This is in marked contrast to the media outlets that invited my views frequently in the preceding period. That neglect was perfectly understandable, for now I am not only not in the centre of things – which I was for a few years a decade and a half ago – but also with no prospect of returning to such a position. Well over a year ago I explained why I thought withdrawal from any public role was the only sensible option, and then I got coronavirus which made this not only desirable but also necessary.

This does not however mean that I do not continue to observe what is going on, with an understanding that I have no doubt is far in advance of that of most people. Recently I saw one of the groupies of Yahapalanaya expressing astonishment that hardly any Members of Parliament voted on an important bill, which struck me as both charming and silly. Surely anyone who has understood the way politics has developed in the last 45 years must know that Parliamentarians have no role at all to play with regard to legislation. This position was underscored by an account of Parliament by the silliest person to occupy the once august position of Secretary General, who talked only about the role of the executive and public officials – not that of legislators.

This failure to think about root causes is what vitiates so much political analysis here, or rather I should say commentary, for analysts are few and far between. This distinguished Turkish Television which, having got my views on problems here over the last year or so, this time touted me as a former Vice-president of Liberal International. That made sense for they wanted me to comment on a report that a vast proportion of the wealth created in recent years had gone to 1% of the world population.

I was glad they called me, because I suspect no one else would have been able to comment on the tectonic shift that has taken place in political philosophy over the last half century. This change is especially relevant with regard to liberalism, for the philosophy that dominates thinking in areas that affect us is liberalism. For ages I argued that this is neo-liberalism, which is very different from the liberalism I knew and espoused. But I must admit that the liberal movement itself has been largely taken over by neo-liberals, and the ideas that dominated when Sri Lanka first joined Liberal International, the first Asian country to do so, have fast faded away.

The first meeting of Liberal International I attended was in Ottawa, in 1987, and I still remember the entertaining clarity of John Galbraith’s keynote address, when he said that Reaganomics claimed the rich were not working because they did not have enough money, and the poor were not working because they had too much.

This pithy analysis sprang from the increasing opposition to the essential liberal principle which had been laid down by John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice. He said then that what distinguished liberals was a commitment to social policies that enhanced the position of the worse-off in society. To illustrate this he used the metaphor of a cake, which was divided in various ways in the position from which analysis and action had to commence. The shares everyone had were unequal, which went against what were basic human notions of fair play.

But when as a remedy for this Socialists divided the cake up equally, there was no thought to ensuring that the cake grew in size as more demands were made on it, and so in time the share everyone had diminished in size. This was the stagnation apparent in state socialist countries, which prompted what we now think of as the Reaganthatcher revolution.

They worked on what he termed the Conservative philosophy, which advocated simply increasing the size of the cake, on the grounds that the more there was, the more everyone would have. But this did not always happen, and as the share of those who had more to start with increased in size, the worst off were squeezed, and sometimes lost out altogether. This has indeed now happened, which led to the report on which Turkish Television asked me to comment.

The Liberal idea was that increasing the size of the cake was essential, but the role of the state was to ensure the interests of those who were worst off, and increase this as possible. But soon enough this maximin principle was forgotten, and Liberal International began to be dominated by those who claimed there was no role for the state to play in economic activity. Wholesale privatization occurred, with no regard for the quality of the services provided nor ensuring that they would be accessible to all; taxes on the rich were reduced with no regard as to how public services would continue to be provided; and in many areas what were termed market forces were modified, not by providing subsidies to the worst off but by supporting the activities of the rich to acquire more interests and increase their own profits. That these would trickle down continued to be the dogma propagated by these new liberals along with their conservative masters, and it was not thought at all essential to make sure that there was such trickle down.

This I fear is what has hit this country in spades ever since the UNP landslide of 1977. There was much that was positive in what J R Jayewardene did, for the dogmas of state socialism had stultified economic activity. But in letting the robber barons in, as he proudly put it, he gave them carte blanche so that corruption increased by leaps and bounds, with rent seeking on the part of big business as well as big and small politicians. And meanwhile he continued to maintain state monopolies in the one area where liberalization was essential, to take advantage of the openings his economic liberalization produced. Education and Higher Education continued to be run by government alone, and in swabhasha, with determined opposition to the reintroduction of the English medium.

The history of this country since then has been of efforts to remedy the situation, which have been stymied, usually by regime changes. The most impressive changes were attempted by President Premadasa, who had already under J R, embarked on a massive programme of poverty alleviation, and he developed this further through Janasaviya which was not just handouts but rather a programme to enhance economic independence in the worst off. But his assassination led to first a totally incompetent and insensitive UNP successor, and then a new President whose goodwill was accompanied by neither conceptual clarity nor hard work. Janasaviya turned into Samurdhi which was handouts to enhance electoral prospects of the governing party, and concerted efforts at poverty alleviation were forgotten.

Efforts to change the education system to provide better skills for students were made by Arjuna Aluvihare and Tara de Mel, but the former was summarily dismissed after Premadasa was killed, and the latter got rid of by two governments resentful of her relationship with Chandrika. Little survived of their ideas except in areas where I continued to work, the reintroduction of the English medium and the broad basing of opportunities in English and the provision of thinking skills at tertiary level.

Interestingly I was able to do this in an area I had not had much to do with earlier, namely vocational training, but just last month I was horrified to hear that that, too was being abandoned. I had asked the immensely able Dr. Narme Wickremesinghe to head the Healthcare Skills Council I had set up, to develop systematic vocational training in a vital sector, and he had continued at the helm after I was sacked. And though he resigned after a few years, his successor also seemed very able, and I was delighted a few months back to find that the sector had been scoped out admirably.

But then Narme told me that he had discovered that they had dropped the compulsory English component of all NVQ courses. How this could have happened I still cannot understand, for, one reason for working on this hastily was the opportunities it would provide for lucrative foreign employment. But this would not of course be available without a command of English, and without it we would have to continue to play second fiddle, at much lower wages, to migrant labour from countries such as the Philippines.

It beggars belief that the TVEC could have let this happen, not least because Ministers continue to bleat about how many new jobs they hope to find abroad for our youngsters. But meanwhile the government monopoly of systems, if no longer of training, harms all efforts to provide better opportunities for our youngsters. Still dominated by those who, having not been given English competency because of a deficient state system, resent providing it to new generations, the training hierarchy have systematically destroyed all I achieved, with solid support from the professionals in the Skills Councils, to improve matters.

In other areas too we continue to blunder, taking two steps back whenever there has been a modicum of forward movement. We continue to battle in words about devolution, in a context in which everyone understands that administrative decisions must be made in closer proximity to the people than a highly centralized system of government allows. But instead of looking at this in terms of people friendly outcomes, we first set up provincial councils, that are in practical terms as distant from the worst off in the country as central government is; we set up an electoral system that removes responsibility for discrete population units; we set up local councils and then divorce them from administrative units at the same level; to make coordination at these smaller levels more difficult, we set up separate catchment areas for essential services such as education and the police.

Yahapalanaya pledged to increase the role of the administrative division, but that pledge was ignored. A recent delimitation commission recommended uniformity of administrative units, but that report was rejected wholesale by a parliament that had no interest in its contents. We continue to argue about whether and when elections should be held, but there is no concerted effort to streamline these, to cut out unnecessary and expensive layers of politicians, and promote systems that ensure responsibility to the people.

After the problems the country faced last year, it did not need rocket science to understand the two imperatives, the reduction of expenditure and the increase of revenue. To get more loans was not the solution, but by sleight of hand the country was led to believe that there was a pot of gold round the corner in the form of an IMF loan, a loan for which we are still waiting. Meanwhile there have been no new ideas about reducing expenditure. The old neoliberal panacea of selling off state enterprises is touted, but this is not to be confined to loss-making enterprises. Meanwhile there are no measures to reduce losses in those that are a massive charge on the people.

Revenue is to be raised by increasing taxes, which would be acceptable if only there was evidence that these taxes would be used to increase productivity, not to bloat politicians. But unfortunately, in a context in which government depends on precisely the most bloated of politicians, we cannot expect any measures that will help the country.

Doubtless this anniversary of our independence will be celebrated with much fanfare, and much expenditure. The message will be clear, as was the case with the restored Bourbons, that they had learnt nothing, and forgotten nothing: learnt nothing to benefit the country, forgotten nothing about benefiting themselves.

Prof. Rajiva Wijesinghe, Emeritus Professor of Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka, is a Sri Lankan writer in English, distinguished for his political analysis as well as creative and critical work, a former Secretary-general of the Sri Lankan Government Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process and the former Secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights. He belongs to the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka and has served as its President and leader, and also as a Vicepresident of Liberal International.