A watershed election

I have been reading John Richardson's Paradise Poisoned, an excellent book on conflict and development.

It uses Sri Lanka as a case study and traces important events in post-independence history to build a model of conflict. One of the most useful aspects is that gives proper weight to the economic problems and the role that they played in the development of the conflict.

I was struck by the similarities between tomorrow's election and the one faced by Dudley Senanayake in 1970.      

The election of 1970 marked a watershed. Mrs Bandaranaike swept away the government of Dudley Senananayake to be elected the Prime Minister for the second time. Dudley is said to have muddled through between 1965-70, trying to find a middle path and compromising with different forces in parliament. From the little that I have read, Dudley did seem to have carried out a difficult balancing act with relative success, a far better overall performance than the shambolic Yahapalanaya government which is it's present day equivalent.

Mrs Bandaranaike remade Ceylon in her own image with the new constitution; renaming the country, granting prominence to Buddhism, eliminating the upper house of parliament, abolishing the right of appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London and judicial review of legislation.

We face a similar moment today as the Rajapaksa family ascends to power. Like Mrs Bandaranaike 1970 they do so for the second time and like her, they promise to remake the state.

AJ Wilson, writing about the new government of 1970 said:

 

"first, the Senanayake-type Westminster-style constitution' which gave a certain entrenched status to the United National Party (UNP) will now be replaced with a Bandaranaike oriented indigenous type structure that will be advantageous to the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and its marxist allies, the trotskyist Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP; Ceylon Equal Society Party) and the Ceylon Communist Party (CP-Moscow), and will provide a socialist orientation to the island's economic development; second, the public sector will consequently have much the dominant role in economic development; and third, a foreign policy will be evolved which is not necessarily anti-west but is more deliberately contrived to obtain economic benefits from both blocs"

Fifty years on, the country finds itself at almost the same place, with similar issues being debated. At the time Prof Wilson was confident to asset that "fears of Ceylon going totalitarian are mistake". Although it did not become totalitarian, the government of the day did become increasingly authoritarian. 

We shall have to see what fate ultimately brings but make no mistake, this is another pivotal moment.