Australian Labor Party Example For Sri Lanka?
Dr. Laksiri Fernando
After becoming again the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd has now announced significant changes to the internal party structure which gives more say to the ordinary party members in selecting the party leader without completely depending on the parliamentary caucus. The main thrust is to democratise the internal party organization. In recent times, there had been some discussions on internal democracy of political parties in Sri Lanka and this short article speculates how far and in what ways Sri Lanka could take the example of the ALP if at all.
Of course there are some who would offhand reject taking any example from outside Sri Lanka particularly from ‘Western’ countries for misplaced nationalist reasons. There are others who would think that Sri Lanka is not developed (or good) enough to have meaningful democracy and therefore deviations from democracy might be acceptable or a fact of life. But there is a strong emerging segment particularly among the youth, I believe, who would yearn for democracy both inside political parties and in the country.
