{"id":67237,"date":"2017-06-23T16:06:12","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T23:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=67237"},"modified":"2017-06-23T16:06:12","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T23:06:12","slug":"the-small-problem-of-the-big-parties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/06\/23\/the-small-problem-of-the-big-parties\/","title":{"rendered":"The small problem of the big parties"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
How many times have we heard that there\u2019s no room for any third party in Sri Lankan politics?\u00a0 \u2018Third party\u2019 as in an entity other than the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the United National Party or else coalitions led by one of both.\u00a0 True, parties with extremely modest strength have on many an occasion effected change, played king-maker and even been part of governments; but always, always, it has been either the UNP or the SLFP that has dominated.\u00a0 Withdrawal of support or threats of support-withdrawal have often made the particular \u2018big party\u2019 in power jittery but invariably the dominant partner has prevailed or else the bringing down of the particular government has resulted in the other \u2018big party\u2019 moving in.<\/div>\n
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These parties are resilient, no doubt.\u00a0 Both have on occasion been condemned to the dustbin of history. \u00a0 Interestingly, the United National Party which has not captured absolute power (Kumaratunge was President when the UNP ruled from 2001-2004 and Maithripala Sirisena is the chief executive now, both individuals leading the SLFP) in 23 years and having been associated with this \u2018dustbin,\u2019 making a veiled reference to the Joint Opposition talked about \u2018political forces relegated to the dustbin of history\u2019 just the other day.\u00a0 They are resilient; this has to be acknowledged.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Are they invincible, though?\u00a0 First of all the notion of invincibility rebels against the well known dictum, \u2018all things are transient\u2019.\u00a0 All things (people, collectives, geographical boundaries and even ideas) are born, suffer decay and perish.\u00a0 Sooner or later.\u00a0 The UNP and SLFP are old.\u00a0 They were formed before most people in Sri Lanka were born.\u00a0 It is natural then to mistake longevity for immortality. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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We must not forget, however, that the SLFP of Bandaranaike was not the SLFP of his daughter and certainly not the SLFP of Mahinda Rajapaksa or Maithripala Sirisena. The same goes for the UNP.\u00a0 Ranil Wickremesinghe is certainly not a D.S. Senanayake.\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
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And of course the country has changed.\u00a0 The economy has changed.\u00a0 We have less forest cover. Development priorities have changed as too the thinking on development.\u00a0 Even the name has changed. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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And yet, we have these two parties.\u00a0 The older left made its run and one might say squandered excellent chances. \u00a0 The not-so-young-anymore left tried armed insurrection and thereafter electoral politics but is still nowhere near capturing power.\u00a0 As Chiranjaya Nanayakkara observed at a rally supporting the United Socialist Alliance presidential candidate in 1988, Ossie Abeygunasekara, \u2018the left has helped these two parties into power and helped them out of power\u2019.\u00a0 The wish, at the time, was for a Left that could stand on its own.\u00a0 Well, that has not happened and one could attribute this to being out of touch with reality, ideological and political errors or something else.\u00a0 The fact remains that \u2018The Left\u2019 has always been a weak factor in the political equation, at best a wrecker (the JVP in 1971 and 1988-89 for example) or a prop to one of the two major parties. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Communalist parties have played roles similar to those played by the JVP and it\u2019s fellow old-left parties such as as the CP and LSSP \u2014 critical in presidential elections and in general elections where the major parties don\u2019t get clear majorities.\u00a0 They are less amenable to inclusion in the \u2018possible alternative\u2019 category for sheer demographic reasons. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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So on the face of it, regardless of trasience-truisms, on the face of it we have this phenomenon of \u00a0<\/span>the major political parties as permanent fixtures with one or the other always in power.<\/div>\n
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Given their track records it is legitimate for anyone to feel despondent.\u00a0However, despondency is a close relative of \u2018disillusionment\u2019.\u00a0 There\u2019s where there\u2019s hope. \u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n
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The gut reaction could be (and has been) to look to a different party.\u00a0 This is why other parties get some votes. However, we cannot escape the sobering fact that even at its best showing even the JVP got only 5% or thereabouts of the total votes.\u00a0 There were more votes spoiled than the amount the JVP secured.\u00a0 The non-voters also outnumbered the JVP vote. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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What happens, then, is what has been described as the default-option factor.\u00a0 People are voted out of power rather than being voted into power, typically.\u00a0 The proponents of this method use the easy (and erroneous) line \u2018first things first, we have to get this lot out!\u2019\u00a0 But politics is not something that begins when Parliament is dissolved or a Presidential Election called.\u00a0 It does not end when the Elections Commissioner announces the result. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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In the understanding of the political that is longer, i.e. goes beyond \u2018elections,\u2019\u00a0 political parties have failed the people and more worryingly, the people have failed themselves.\u00a0 If, for example, people abandoned political parties, they sink.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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More importantly, if the idea of political parties was dropped, people win.\u00a0 They recover some semblance of self respect and dignity.\u00a0 Since representation is a myth and since what transpires in parliamentary politics is less representation than mis-representation, such an eventuality can only enhance the worth of the citizen. \u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
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So how does this work or rather how can it be made to work?\u00a0 First, we need to draw a lesson from the fact that exchanging a sooty pot for a sooty kettle still leaves us defaced with soot.\u00a0 We have as a voting population dirtied our hands by raising them to vote one set of incompetent rogues into power in order to defeat another set of incompetent rogues.\u00a0 We have to therefore get political parties out of our heads because \u2018political parties\u2019 is like a pet parrot, a pet rabbit, a pet puppy or kitten that we love and feed in our minds.\u00a0 Unless we stop cuddling and taking care of the notion of \u2018political parties\u2019 we really don\u2019t have a moral right to take issue with the dominant mode of politics. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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There\u2019s a lesson to be learned from France too.\u00a0 A coalition led by President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s one year old party \u2018La R\u00e9publique en Marche (Republic on the Move, or REM)\u2019, won the parliamentary election. \u00a0 A 42% voter turn out prompted the leader of the party \u2018France Unbowed,\u2019 Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon to observe that the French had \u2018entered a form of civil general strike.\u2019\u00a0 Of course REM is a party but perhaps we can see that tendency as a positive development against the tyranny of \u2018big parties\u2019 (and of course their small-party enablers).\u00a0 What M\u00e9lenchon has missed is that when you add the number of those who did not vote to those who did vote for REM, the rejection of the \u2018here forever\u2019 political parties is astounding.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Invincibility of a single political party is a lie and is recognized as such.\u00a0 The invincibility of \u2018political PARTIES\u2019 is a myth that is yet to be acknowledged.\u00a0 That\u2019s not the fault of the political parties.\u00a0 We can be a \u2018republic on the march\u2019 and certainly not one that sees Macron and REM as heroes for anything other than debunking the French version of invincibility.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
We can be a republic on the march only if we recognize that recovering the republic has to happen first and that nothing inhibits such recovery than the stubborn refusal to evict \u2018political parties\u2019 from our minds.<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE How many times have we heard that there\u2019s no room for any third party in Sri Lankan politics?\u00a0 \u2018Third party\u2019 as in an entity other than the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and the United National Party or else coalitions led by one of both.\u00a0 True, parties with extremely modest strength have on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malinda-seneviratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}