" 18A certainly does not install a dictatorship, but it could lead to one. We must acknowledge that President Rajapaksa’s style of governance is not dictatorial, but consensual, for which he seems to have a special aptitude."
by Izeth Hussain
(September 17, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The fault is in ourselv0es, not in our Constitution, that we are slaves. After this oblique reference to a famous statement in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar I will refer to a hardly known statement in his play Richard 111. A character observes that he and others have no option but to obey the Queen because they are her abjects. The word "abject" used as a noun meaning a person of the meanest condition is according to my dictionary Biblical and archaic, and therefore not in use now. It should be seen as standing in contrast to "subject" which has dual meanings: we are subjects of the state whose dictates we have in general to obey, but we are also subjects in the sense that we are persons, autonomous individuals, who can assert our will even against the state. The second option is precluded to the abject who by his position as an abject can only obey.
The above paragraph, which to some readers may seem to amount to not much more than an irritating bit of cultural showmanship, is strictly relevant to the situation, the horrible situation, which we are facing today. The Government has proceeded with the 18th Amendment to the Constitution despite all the vociferous and widespread protests from the civil society, reflecting deep fears that sooner or later 18A will lead to a dictatorship with all its attendant horrors. Politicians who were for long opposed to the Presidential system, both from within the Government coalition partners and from the Opposition, abandoned all pretense to principle and ganged up with the Government. Only the DNU and the TNA stood up in Parliament against 18A, while the UNP disgraced itself by absconding. How have these horrors become possible in a set-up that is still – in my view – a democracy? One reason is that our politicians for the most part are what they always were, or as they have been for several decades: creatures motivated by interests without ideals worth speaking about. As for the people, it has been shown that the constituents of the civil society have become subjects. But – and herein is the problem – the people as a whole are abjects.
I must go into a few historical details to show clearly what I have in mind. When Indira Gandhi imposed her Emergency in 1976 destroying democracy in the process the Indian people defied her and chose to go to jail by the scores of thousands. That was probably the most important reason why she chose to hold elections two years later, instead of going on enjoying power after the manner of most leaders who have destroyed democracy. She lost power at those elections, and democracy was restored. I hold that the underlying reason for that happy outcome was that the Indian people were subjects, not abjects, partly perhaps for the reason that they had inherited from their mass Independence struggle attitudes favorable to posing a challenge to State power when it seemed necessary for the commonweal. In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, when JRJ and his merry men gang-raped democracy there was only Sarath Muttetuwagama to speak up for the people in Parliament, and in the civil society there were only S. Nadesan and a few others who were prepared to risk challenging the State. Otherwise the people behaved like doormats, abjects not subjects, and the result was that it took the greater part of seventeen years to restore democracy. But we have two new elements in the situation, unlike during those terrible seventeen years. We have a democracy, flawed may be, but still a functioning democracy. The other is that we now have a reasonably vibrant civil society.
The situation in which we Sri Lankans find ourselves today is of course not unique. Shakespeare’s Richard, overweeningly ambitious, utterly brutal, devoid of a moral sense, murdered his way to the throne to which he had no legitimate claim, after which the people as a whole, including the nobility, became abjects, not subjects. The condition of being abjects is brought out very powerfully in the play. That situation was identical with that of many third world countries where dictators seized power, destroyed democracy, and reduced the people to abjects. In Shakespeare’s play a nobleman with a more legitimate claim to the throne defeated Richard in war, killed him, and restored normalcy, which Shakespeare saw as part of the process by which England rose to greatness. (On that process, I must refer the interested reader to Tony Tanner’s brilliant introduction to Shakespeare’s History Plays in the Millennium edition). In Sri Lanka of course we still have a functioning democracy, and despite 18A the Government enjoys very substantial popular support. Our problem is to try to ensure that 18A does not lead ineluctably to a dictatorship. We cannot rely on the politicians because they are motivated far more by interests than by any ideals worth speaking about, and it has been shown that a reasonably vibrant civil society does not suffice for the purpose either. The missing factor really is the subject. We must see to it that our abjects are transformed into subjects, and become capable of acting as the Indians did when they opposed Indira’s dictatorial Emergency.
How do we set about doing this? The best tactic would be to focus the people’s mind on one point: democracy would best serve their interests, while a veering into dictatorship will almost certainly lead to disaster. We don’t need erudite Constitutional and other arguments for this purpose because the iteration and reiteration of well-established facts will suffice. One fact is that since the ‘seventies the world has been turning in a big way to democracy, for which there can be only one reason: it best serves the people’s interests. The other fact is that since the Second World War the record of dictatorship has been one of almost unremitting failure. I will suggest explanations for the few exceptions.
But before dealing with those facts I must set out very briefly what the people’s interests in the contemporary world are. The scientific and industrial revolutions of the West have made possible the eradication of mass poverty on a global scale, and material well-being for the human average at a level unimaginable in earlier centuries. It led in the last century to the revolution of rising expectations for which the great catalyst seems to be education, more particularly at secondary and tertiary levels. But apart from material well-being people have intangible needs that are of vital importance. Perhaps the most important is the need for security, which has to be met through the rule of law and the observance of human rights. We can add liberty, equality, fraternity, and so on.
The first of the two facts that I mentioned above, the turning to democracy in a big way, began in the ‘seventies when the Southern European countries, namely Spain, Portugal, and Greece, turned to democracy. The first two had steadfast dictatorships over many decades, and both were Roman Catholic, and that was followed by Latin American countries, also Roman Catholic, turning to democracy. The notion that modern representative democracy was integrally tied up with Protestantism, and that it was somehow incompatible with Roman Catholicism, was shown up as nonsensical. That democracy had a profound human appeal transcending religious and cultural distinctions was shown when the Soviet Union broke up and its constituent parts took to democracy, which has held sway to this day except in the former Islamic Republics. It is noteworthy – noteworthy I mean for suggesting the profound appeal of democracy – that two countries that did spectacularly well in economic development under dictatorships, namely South Korea and Taiwan, also turned to democracy. We must take note of the fact also that some countries have become pluralist, clearly portending an eventual democratic outcome. The only cultural bloc still showing an allergy to democracy consists of the Arab countries, for which there have to be very special reasons. I hold, on very solid grounds, that the properly Islamic form of government in the contemporary world has to be democratic.
I will now make a few observations on the second fact mentioned above: since the Second World War the record of dictatorship has been one of almost unremitting failure. The most spectacular failure of course took place after 1989 when the one-party dictatorships of the Soviet Union and East Europe imploded. In Latin America the US continued its neo-colonialist strategy of keeping in power corrupt and brutal dictators, with the result that there was not even one impressive success story in that vast area. In the Arab world the only success story was that of the only democracy there, Lebanon. In Black Africa the CIA brought off a whole series of military coups in 1965, aborting possible development along democratic lines. The record of black African dictatorship has been for the most part grim and terrible. In Pakistan the US imposed a military dictatorship in 1958, destroying the democracy that had been flourishing there. Now Pakistan compares very unfavorably with democratic India and Sri Lanka, and democracy is becoming entrenched in Bangladesh and Nepal because of the failures of dictatorial governments.
The South East Asian and East Asian record is a very mixed one. No one in his right mind will hold that Burmese dictatorship is worthy of emulation. In 1972 the US raped Philippine democracy and imposed Marcos as dictator, after which that country quickly became the worst performer in ASEAN. Indonesian dictatorship has left a sorry record of corruption and brutality, and understandably that country has turned to democracy. Thailand is relatively a success story because its governments have alternated between dictatorship and democracy, after the manner of Turkey where democracy is now becoming entrenched. Malaysia and Singapore have been spectacularly successful, and neither can be justly regarded as dictatorships. South Korea and Taiwan certainly had dictatorships, but they were spectacularly successful before turning to democracy. The very impressive performances of Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan could have two common factors behind them. All three have societies culturally shaped by the Confucian ethical system which does seem to be exceptionally conducive to economic performance. And all three have faced dire threats to their very survival – Singapore because it has no natural resources at all- which meant that they either had to succeed or disappear, an illustration of the challenge and response theory.
The historical record since the Second World War therefore shows very clearly that dictatorships have only very rarely succeeded in meeting the legitimate aspirations of the people, which is why there has been so massive a turning to democracy. If we cannot profit from those facts, we should be able to do so from our own experience of dictatorship. In 1977 all that the new Government had to do to solve the ethnic problem was to hold the promised All Party Conference and take certain devolutionary and other measures. Instead JRJ, drunk on the kasippu of illicit power, resorted to State terrorism from 1977 to 1983. Tamil representatives were driven out of Parliament, and there was no way by which the Tamil moderates could advance legitimate Tamil interests through democratic action. The result was the LTTE rebellion which was finally defeated at a cost of around a 1000,000 deaths. On the economic front JRJ understood very clearly that for economic growth we had to turn to the market, but he did not understand that the free market economy created both wealth and poverty. The result was the JVP rebellion. At the time he relinquished dictatorial power in 1988 we had two rebellions going on at the same time, the IPKF troops were here, and the Government had lost control over a third of the national territory and almost half the coast line. The bungling of our foreign relations was so horrendous that JRJ had finally to declare that he had to succumb to India because Sri Lanka was abandoned by the rest of the world. Anyone who today wants Sri Lanka to go down the dictatorial path has to be regarded as certifiably, and dangerously, mad.
18A certainly does not install a dictatorship, but it could lead to one. We must acknowledge that President Rajapaksa’s style of governance is not dictatorial, but consensual, for which he seems to have a special aptitude. It is not clear why he has wanted so great an accretion of power as becomes possible through 18A, and why there has been so much haste about it. Is a modified version of 13A in the offing? In any case, the inescapable point is that we will be stuck with a Constitution with in-built dictatorial features in it, which could lead us to dictatorial disaster once again. The best safeguard against that is the people, provided that people who are abjects can become subjects, a process in which alertness about the dangers inherent in 18A can serve as a catalyst. I will conclude by pointing out that one of the dangers inherent in dictatorship is that it is more likely to lead to divisions than to unity, as has already been shown so clearly in the case of Sri Lanka. A point to be borne in mind is that in the era of globalization deep divisions can be very dangerous for small vulnerable countries such as Sri Lanka. I began with a quotation from Shakespeare and shall end with another, this time from King John, "This England never did, nor never shall, / Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror," The next line, which is hardly ever quoted, goes "But when it first did help to wound itself".
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