BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

Political parties emanated with a variety of policies for transforming political administration from dominion or totalitarianism to a parliament rule as a symbol of democracy. A parliament rule comprises representatives of people who may be elected by the votes of the people. Democracy is a complicated word with different applications.  

Party politics in Sri Lanka have done many harmful activities to the country than innovating good policies for the benefit of the people. It is the reality of Sri Lanka, but in many countries, parliaments have braced the development and supported the role of political parties. It needs to rethink the role of political parties in Sri Lanka considering harms done to the community. To maintain democracy, does it need political parties? Democracy in Old Greece maintained without political parties and democratic way. If people think they want to see the country as an economically developed nation, are political parties an essential requirement?  It needs a broader evaluation on whether political parties have been contributed to the progress of the country or they contributed to destroying the opportunities.

The history of political parties goes back centuries and during the long history, many traditions and values have been added to political parties in many countries and political parties worked together in many instances when a country needed the unity of people. However, political parties in Sri Lanka have been working in a misguided policy framework and aimed to achieve a saying that the Queens’ opposition would be the alternate government. For example, in the last stage of LTTE war the unity was essential condition but political parties played politics at that stage. The idea of alternative government was a popular view of Sir Ivor Jennings. Since independence in 1948, it has been proved that party politics in the country has created many problems in the country and many development projects either halted or eliminated.  

The traditions and values of political parties are based on the philosophy of originators and when people are practically concerned with the policies of the party providing benefits to people, the usual practice was changing the policy structure of the party and it was done by a joint effort of members. The main question regarding Sri Lanka is that has been the political party system critical for a long time supporting for the achieving the dream of people? The answer is neither the objectives of originators of political parties have been achieved by the operating of political parties in the country.

If people want to convert the country to a developed nation, the view of the common people is to work unitedly without political differences in parties. Despite uniting people or working together political parties are a way of dividing people. Many people of Sri Lanka consider that political parties have not worked to convert the country to a developed nation because they have been worked like a virus that spread and suffers people in society. It is vicious than the covid 19.

It is observable in many democratic countries that the expected and visible changes have been incurred by the result of operating political parties, and the experience in Sri Lanka shows the party politics supported to generate benefits to so-called lower grade people until 1956, now it could evaluate that political parties have been creating and promoting politics that support to families instead of society.  Political parties are not ready to honestly talk about the truth and make a political field without parties. In fact, political parties are screens that are cover corruptions of powerful individuals of parties.

As the Sri Lankan ambassador to India recently stated the wealth production will be the way to achieve the developed status and it should not be a situation that creates controversy in the country. What is the meaning of wealth production? It is a process that everybody in the country should take part in the wealth production process and the participation of each person without differences is vital to achieving the purpose. It is a capitalist system that contradicts the politics of the party system in a democratic framework.

The political parties in the country have been promoting negative attitudes against wealth production and promoted attitudes among people resisting wealth production and cultivated a vicious psycho against the process of wealth production. Since the second decade of the 19th century, the beginning political parties adopted a system of protesting, and it shows that political parties have become disgusting without changes in society as they preached to people.

The other negative aspect of political parties is they try to claim ownership of various activities completed in the country. For example, the war victory against LTTE, the nationalization of private enterprises, and many activities are claimed political parties ignoring that funds for the changes invested from the government that are belong to public. In many countries, before implementing many activities, they were policies of political parties, and after the implementation, they become national activities, but in Sri Lanka, political parties claim every activity owned by them. The mentality of political party leaders is always wrong, and the hidden intention is to be highlighted all government work in a society in party leaders’ name rather than working to achieve policy objectives and many role players in political parties in Sri Lanka were crooks or mentally affected people or manipulators of issues.      

There are many limits to the development and growth of the country, and political parties don’t talk about the limits and work to attenuate issues. Although the limits are constraints to development, political parties attempt to convince the public that political parties could do everything that people expect, but no political party has developed workable policies to develop the country and the operational pattern of political parties showed that there were individuals who have a hidden agenda rather than working within limits. After independence, it showed that hidden agenda was corruption and making money giving publicity for government work.

Many political parties have no democracy in party management and the operational pattern shows that few persons in parties work to achieve hidden agendas that are massively related to personal wealth making by corrupt practices. For example, accelerated Mahaweli Project, the Greater Colombo Economic Zone were used to make money for politicians. In this situation, what is the use of political parties to cheat people or the country? During the reign of Kings and Queens, cheating people was not an aim of political leaders.

The visible atrocious nature of the history of political parties in Sri Lanka was the beginning of parties with a group of people who have common values and aims, but later, the political parties became enhancing family assets ignoring the party objectives. All Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim political parties later became enlarge family assets, UNP, SLFP, TC, FP, MC, and SLPJP became family assets, and the ownership of family ligature became a division of the country. The Pandora discovery indicates that how did Mr Paskaraslingam misused the office and party relationship to undue enrichment. In other countries, this situation is reflected, but the strong organizational structure of the political parties such as in the USA, UK, Japan, and Canada forced them to abandon the family ligature. Why the family gentry is abandoned, it is no other reason, than achieving undue enrichment for families that worked to begin political parties.

In this situation, Sri Lanka needs to unite against party-based politics and develop common policies that are acceptable to people without racial, religious, and caste dictions. Before the 1970 election, left political parties with SLFP developed a common program of policies, however, it was not a success because UNP was out of the common program.

All organizations that are not related to political parties need to press political parties to dissolve parties and to develop a common program. It shouldn’t be hidden political parties such as JVP and other political parties.