Towards a Programmatic Politics

I write this two days before Sri Lanka elects its 9th executive president.

Whether it will be NPP, SJB or Ranil Wickremesinghe who comes into power is to be played out in what all expects to be a close call. The citizens will be forced to pick a symbolical figurehead from the long litany of candidates.

Since the popular call, at least for the last couple of years, has been one for a system change, although it may be too late for this particular election, I thought of drafting this essay in aid of something that is much more longer term, yet effectively essential, should we wish to emerge out of the current state of faith based politics and actually engender a system change.

Nature of Sri Lankan politics

Sri Lankan politics is a clientelism – it’s transactional. It is a patronage based exchange relationship whereby I the politician, the patron, bestow a certain set of benefits that aim to resonate with you the client and your specific needs and grievances in order to secure myself position in office and thereby power. It naturally frames the role of the politician in the realm of some god like being in whom possesses special powers to grant certain wishes to the general public. This feeds the realm of one upmanship, measuring contests of deluded promises that are not only overtly unfeasible but are also simply empty pipe dreams that have played out in all post-colonial elections in Sri Lanka. This pattern of patronage based relationship is also the very disarming of the role of the state. If individual politicians are these saviour roles, who by virtue of their placement in high office are the sole mechanism by which citizens of this country enjoy their basic provisions and rights, then that has relegated the role of the state apparatus as the homing ground for these individuals who on their own whim may or may not exercise the promises pledged. At worst, if it befits them, they may inflict physical, societal and cultural penalties on their adversaries with impunity. It is a cartel like way of running things but all too familiar to citizens of Sri Lanka. This is the context we find ourselves in.

This pattern of clientelism is not an anomaly or solely a mistake of our own making. It is a post-colonial condition. Not a single post-colonial society in the world, and I include India in this, has yet pulled themselves out of this clientelism centred condition of politics. Clientelism promotes a state-society relationship that is nothing but a power enterprise. It is also a self-perpetuating pattern. Clientelism breeds and lives off the persistence of insecurity and uncertainties of people’s everyday lives. Its currency is the power disparity between politician and voter.

Societies are all varied and heterogeneous. Post-colonial societies, even so. They are invariably entrenched in unreconcilable divisions based on ethno-religious and cultural differences therefore their divisions and factions have become the defining characteristic of the post-colonial nation state. Such conditions are fertile breeding ground for party politics that capitalise on societal cleavages as opposed to political ideology. As such, here we are in Sri Lanka where all parties are just catch-all parties with no material political ideological drivers that distinguishes one from the other. Even parties such as the NPP, formerly the JVP, are catch-all parties and bear no consistent or cohesive ideological vision; do not be mistaken by affectations of speech and tone. History of political behaviours and habits of coalitions, matters supported and opposed, should be the telling of party ideology, not the charismatic rhetoric of star politicians nor the flowery words of exhaustively long but self- contradictory manifestos.

These political parties are catch-all parties not by coincidence but by design and its efficacy of successfully navigating the patronage based political relationship between politician and voter. So the promises made to one group of people and the promises made to an opposing group of people by the same parties are often contradictory. Often as these are nothing but empty promises that never stood a real chance of implementation, the awkwardness of self-conflicting promises are saved from being played out. Above all, these promises are indiscriminate and do not amount to achieving any long term goals or change. They are all disjointed and random set of independent and isolated pledges. This system can never coordinate a system change because its political currency is a set of siloed, pipe dreams that stroke the collective fantasy of disjoined societal groups.

Two Questions

Sri Lankan politics still invariably plays out along two common main axes. One is the economic question. Second is the question of safety. These two issues are central regardless of religion, race and caste.

The question of safety envelops both domestic ethno-religious questions as well as questions of foreign policy. It often plays out in reality like this. At every level of social life where power disparity is a lived reality (in education, jobs, food, reservations and liberty to practice religion) the key variables are relational and distributional. Who is above me and can they hurt me? Who is below me and can they challenge me? Who is with me (in my religion, culture) and can they assure me access to safety, status and perhaps mobility? These are the decisive drivers of electoral allegiances and favouritism. This fuels the ethno-religious identity politics as well. At a more local scale it also deals with the issues of personal safety, visible delivery of justice should I be wronged and state inflicted public violence in the form of Easter Sunday violence, violence towards journalists, the mysterious disappearances of young people and the routinely manufactured ethno-religiously coated violence against Muslim and Tamil people.

On the one hand the SJB and UNP as the representation of the ruling establishments of the past with the regurgitation of the same suits and sarongs pose no real promise that citizens of this country will not be subjected to the same physical injustices. They are the reflection of the mechanisation that fostered and perpetuated state inflicted violence aligned on personal or collective vendettas of politicians. The cartel like nature of politics will continue should they come into power. On the other hand, NPP is an untested power yet with an unmistakable history and its own innate disposition towards violence. Cutting through the very frustrating obfuscations NPP, its supporters and followers parrot to detach themselves of their own history of violence, it is clear that the main options as far as this critical question of personal safety is concerned are possibly lose-lose options.

The first question of economy also plays out in a similar manner. Corruption, misappropriation of funds, political monopolies, politicians’ personal growth, pet projects such as Mihin Lanka and bond scams can all be addressed along this axis. Fundamentally, the individual choices on the economic question aggregate into large collective patterns also by following the earlier logic of who guarantees me financial stability? Who will hold power over my job security and job prospects? Who has power over my livelihood and can they threaten my ability to put food on my table and a roof over my head? Who is with me (who believes in my ideas of how to achieve financial stability) and can they assure me financial mobility? These are the decisive drivers of voting alliances.

These are both logical and reasonable within a patronage based system of politics. They are also rooted in individualism and relativism that prevent one from questioning the wider impacts on society. Therefore, these questions perfectly feed into clientelism and the patron-client relationship.

What is the system change?

So when we come to considering this question of system change, it is imperative to have a good grasp of the system as is. The above is the current system as I read it. First, it’s important to identify the dynamics of this. It is evident that the voters are tired of the empty promises of grants, sahanadhara and the cry is for a system change, cultural shift in politics and policy and ideology based politics. However, what is not clear to most is an articulate idea of the change that is required, let alone modes ofimplementing it. This is unsurprising as unpacking tightly entrenched power systems that are complex, profoundly self-defensive and inscrutable requires deep, critical thinking as well as overcoming individual and relational way of thinking aggregating into collective action.

At the face of such complexity, it is all too easy for any attempts of diagnoses by political pundits, prognosticators and politicians to keep returning to diagnosing the citizen. The public, the voter, the citizen must be reformed first – they must clean up their own act first then the politicians and the politics will fix itself is a common and easy remark. Keeping the focus on the lowest denominator in this power structure, the individual citizen, to me is just a prevarication. The civil servant is the first to be thrown under the bus. How many times does one need to hear that the civil servant must not steal paper from work and so on? These are all benign sentiments that miss the point. Taking stock of one’s self and reforming one’s self certainly cannot hurt. But such individual actions are often consequences of sheer necessity. Such actions as the culprit of the political destitution this country finds itself in is hardly compelling or convincing to anybody of sound mind.

I hope what I have written of clientelism that governs the present state of politics is recognised as the very system that prevents a different type of politics to exist. It is a strict regime that prevents a system or a strategy of any long term merit from being implemented and centralises power, giving rise to political monopolies, dynastic fantasies and nepotistic, cartel like habits in political parties. It obstructs any channels of accountability. It strictly only fosters policies as a direct mode of securing votes rather than serving any particular interest. Its currency is fragmented, catch-all promises. Such a currency does not lend itself to establishing any long term goals or furthering any communal interests.

What needs to happen is a fantastic shift from clientelism to a programmatic and accountable politic. Firstly, it will require stronger party organisation. At ground level this is something that us as the population must strive for and work towards. As citizens we must not be dazzled by fantastic grants and benefits but demand of our politicians a cohesive and lucid political vision aligned to a definable ideology and strongly organised parties that will work towards delivering it. The accompanying policies must be comprehensive. If there are extraneous pledges in them that seem out of place we must question them and understand why they are being proposed.

Inevitably, this shift to programmatic politics will require new strong institutions and a clear and salubrious set of new interests, both economic, societal and technological. These will need rigorous mediation by the general public. Public sphere needs to be the arena within which the general public debate and coalesce around specific interests. In order to get to that position we need to first reject political parties merely reorganising themselves under different guises, names, colours and slogans. We need politicians who believe in a programmatic politics and a belief system that will prevent them from hopping around political parties to suit their own personal interest. Such actions should be recognised and rejected by the public to hold them accountable. But I do see the pre-requisite to all this being the establishment of strong parties and then scrutinising the ways in which these parties organise themselves nationally. All parties cannot and should not be everything to every single person in society. That in itself is the lie. A party with a clear vision and an ideology that aligns with a certain set of interests cannot possibly also position themselves as an ally to an opposing set of interests.

I say all this because, unlike in other post-colonial societies Sri Lanka, owing much to the aragalaya of 2020, is in a particularly unique crossroad; the citizenry as voters are now in a remarkable position to insist on such a demand from the ruling classes and parties. Revolutions happen often. They are seldom of the middle or learned classes. Clientelism is a cyclical pattern that entrenches the most vulnerable and poverty stricken factions of society. Revolutions of the working classes often tightens the strongholds of the patron-client relationships. But a revolution of the educated can birth political parties of their own making and polish up great political thinkers and critics. Because of this I believe there is yet some hope left that perhaps we can make some way towards a programmatic type of politics.

The impression created by many experts, pundits and forecasters is that politics is chemistry and elections are arithmetic. This political chemistry is at fault. Not the electorate, not necessarily even the individuals who operate in this politics. We need to change what the citizens expects from their politicians and more fundamentally from democracy. Otherwise the state-society dynamic will be unchanged.