Reading Election Manifestos
Sumanasiri Liyanage
Tariq Ali, once informed us that democracy will perish even before capitalism reaches its end. Does it imply a new phase of capitalism with the absence of democracy? In a way it is not a novel phenomenon since in its short history, not going beyond 300 years, capitalism and democracy have not always co-existed. Modern democracy was invented under capitalism, but it has not been an outcome of capitalism. It has been an outcome of multiple struggles waged by different social layers of society invariably against capitalism. Sri Lanka has witnessed a strong tendency towards authoritarianism since the advent of a constitution with executive presidential system as its constitutional architecture and neoliberalism as its economic framework. While the presidential system facilitated the introduction of neoliberalism the latter in its turn reinforced the executive presidential system. This has made it easier us to imagine a life without democracy but not a life without capitalism. Nonetheless, once again, democracy has become a key issue in the forthcoming presidential election in Sri Lanka ambiguity prevails over what democracy really means notwithstanding.
The forces that have been mobilized against the incumbent president have rightly raised the issue of democracy as a central issue facing the country today. Democracy means different things for different people, for different social groups. However, almost all the oppositional forces, except Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) had come to a consensus that in order to reestablish democracy in Sri Lanka one of the crucial prerequisite is the abolition of the executive presidential system. It was explicitly states what is needed is to abolish it and replace it with a different system. There was a debate on the alternative system but the majority of the opposition wanted to go back to the Parliamentary system. Will the democratic aspirations of the people fulfil after the presidential election? Let us review the election manifestos of the candidates. At the moment, I have three manifestos with me. I will focus first on the Manifestos of Candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR) and candidate Maithripala Sirisena (MS). It is not uncommon to have some degree of rhetoric in election manifesto. Figure 1 summarizes proposals in two manifestos on the issue on constitutional change. ( Click here to read MS manifesto and here to MR manifesto)Read More