POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF THE BUS STRIKE
What is happening in the economic front? I am no western Economist, and to me it is clear that the Sandhanaya government is not doing well at all. I suppose that is not a secret, and the western Economists would not find fault with me for stating that. However, what has the Sandhanaya government done within the last five months to drive the country to the present position? The economic policies of the Sandhanaya government are only slightly different from those of the UNF government and does anybody think that those differences are the cause of the current situation? I doubt very much that within five months the policies of the Sandhanaya government have created the problems that the country is facing today.
It is true that the present Sandhanaya government is not doing well, though it is not due to the policies that the government follows.Their policies could succeed under different circumstances. In general, the SLFP led coalitions have not done well in the economic sphere. It appears that there are two reasons for this phenomenon. Firstly the policies of the SLFP do not match with the global policies of western Christian modernity not only in economics, but also in politics and culture. Secondly the SLFP does not have a bold leadership that is committed to the policies of the coalition governments that the party has successfully formed. In the case of the Sandhanaya government apart from the work connected with the thousand "wevas" and finding "employment" to all those graduates, there is not much of a difference between the policies of the present government and the previous government. These two policies of the Sandhanaya government would not have caused problems of such magnitude within a space of five months.
It is said that a country gets a government that the people deserve. However, in so called democratic countries it is also said that a country gets the government that the people want. After all it is the people who elect a government and the wish of the people is supposed to be expressed at the general elections held periodically. The people may elect governments that they want. However, it is not the people who maintain the governments. A country could maintain a government that the west wants to be established in that country. If the west likes a government then they would maintain it at a considerable cost. On the other hand if the west does not like a government that the people of the country had elected, then they (west) would make use of all the experience they have to make sure that the government falls either democratically or undemocratically.
It is not only the economic policies that matter in this connection. The political as well as cultural policies are also considered by the west in deciding whether a "freely elected" government should be maintained or kicked out. In Sri Lanka the SLFP dominated governments have in general not followed the policies of the west in any of the above fields. In spite of Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga who follows the policies of the Mahajana Party, the Sandhanaya government has so far refused to give in to the ISGA demand of the LTTE terrorists. The west operating through the Norwegians are not tolerant of this policy of the government. If the west is thinking of "punishing" the Sandhanaya government then nobody should be surprised.
The bus owners, at the time of writing this column, were threatening to go on strike and also challenging the government not to maintain even a partial service during the period of the strike. It was an open challenge made through the media, and they were confident that they could go on with their strike even if the government attempts to provide some kind of a service to the public. The bus owners were talking of their solidarity and the "brotherhood" (sahodarathvaya) when they challenged the government. The private bus owners who would kill each other, and the public, in their competition for the passengers, have united against the government. They want to increase the minimum bus fare to five rupees, by more than forty percent, or to bring down the fuel price. What would the government do now? Do they have the support of the public to resist the demands of the bus owners?
The government had to increase the fuel prices due to the current trends in the so called world market. Now what would the UNF government have done under such circumstances. Mr. Bandula Gunawardhane, the former MEPer, and who loves to give tuition in economics to the public, has said that the government is collecting a tax from fuel and they could do away with that and bring the fuel price down. Would a UNP government have followed the advice of Mr. Gunawardhane however competent he may be in Advanced Level economics? I doubt very much. If a UNF government was in power they would have increased the fuel price long time ago without considering the views of the public. They would also have allowed the bus owners to increase the bus fares and not considered the hardships that the public would have had to face under those circumstances.
The SLFP led coalitions, on the other hand wait for sometime considering the public opinion, and then reluctantly do the same thing that a UNF government in power would have done. What the SLFP and the coalitions do not realise is that they cannot have the cake and eat it. Either they have to follow the global policies of western Christian modernity, of which capitalism is only the economic arm, or challenge the west with the support of the public. The SLFP does neither, and that seem to be their so called middle path.
Perhaps the SLFP know that the public would not support them in such an eventuality. In the seventies, the people did not agree with the policies of the SLFP-LSSP-CP coalition and were waiting for an opportunity to bring down the government. When Mr. J. R. Jayawardhane promised eight measures of grain the people voted for the UNP and for the open economy. It is not Mr. Jayawardhane alone who "ushered" in the era of open economy, the public was in support of him. Of course, one would say that the coalition leaders only preached the public and did not practice the worthy ideals, and that led to their downfall. Even today most of the leaders of the Sandhanaya government are not different from the leaders of the ULF coalition in the seventies in this respect.
It is not difficult for the west to manoeuvre the economy of Sri Lanka. We depend on so called aid to such an extent, and our economy being small when compared to even some private companies in the west (including Japan), that the aid donors could control the economy for better or worse, by throwing away or withdrawing a few billions of dollars. The west know whom to support in what they call the third world, and Sri Lanka has not "progressed" because the west know that we are not with them when it comes to the general global trends of western Christian modernity. Neither we have a policy alternative to it though we know by "cultural intuition" that the general western policies are not for us.
If there was one SLFP led coalition that had the support of the west, it was the "podu peramuna" government that was formed in 1994. The NGOs that are maintained by the west and certain religious leaders who generally support the UNP campaigned for the ULF in 1994 on the assumption that through Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga who was made the leader of the ULF, the non national forces would be able to establish a confederation of Sri Lanka and Eelam. The politics of Tamil racism that has the support and the encouragement of the west took the upper hand, and the economics was not considered as important during that period. However, it was realised later that even Ms. Kumaratunga was not capable of "convincing" the SLFP, in spite of some cabinet ministers and media people who gave a different picture to the public and the world, of the "reasonableness" of the Tamil racist policies and the infamous package had to be torn and thrown. The UNP was also against the "package" thinking that the government could be brought down through opposition to package policies.
However, the west has now learnt the lesson and they know that with the JVP being a partner of the government there is not much room to implement the "package" or something worse than that. From day one the west has been occupied with the task of bringing down the Sandhanaya government through "democratic means". The present economic crisis is not due to the policies of the Sandhanaya government but has been manipulated by the so called global system. The value of the rupee has been falling with respect to the dollar and the pound at an alarming rate and there may be "good" economic reasons for the trend. However, it is not a difficult task to prevent foreign exchange coming to the country and to manipulate a crisis.
It is not necessary for the bus owner, the mudalali, the sophisticated entrepreneur and the local and foreign experts to come together to work out a mechanism to manipulate an economic crisis. The system works in such a way that if the western Christian modernity does not like a government, then all those components work "independently" bring it down through what are known as democratic means. If the democratic means fail due to some reason or other then there are the not so democratic methods that the west has used in many other countries.
What is significant about western Christian modernity is that in spite of encouraging "private" or "personal freedom" and atomisation of the society the system works in unison as a whole. It is as if the individuals are "entangled" in some sense and there is some kind of unconscious communication through which information is passed from one individual to another or from one company to another. The west knows that either the Sandhanaya government has to be brought down or the JVP has to be sacked and a coalition of the UNP and the SLFP has to be established in order to carry out their policies. It is time that the nationalist forces in the Sandhanaya government realise the precarious situation they are in.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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