The NPP’s proposed way out

by Uditha Devapriya

Promisingly titled “Rapid Response”, the NPP’s policy manifesto pits the party against the status quo and depicts itself as the clearly superior alternative. It advocates a politics free of corruption, a politics of the people. Written simply and striking an idealistic chord, it indicts every government since independence for the crisis we are in. This is to be expected with an outfit that views itself as better than the rest, and it is in line with the present mood, where people no longer care to distinguish between the regime and the opposition.

In such a scenario it is easy to claim, as the NPP does, that there’s no difference between the SLPP and the SJB. This explains Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s recent outbursts at Sajith Premadasa, the party’s rejection of the SLFP’s offer to get together, and its cold response to the prospect of an alliance with the Frontline Socialist Party. As far as sectarianism goes, the parliamentary avatar of the JVP is no different to the JVP.

The NPP is targeting something of a common denominator, what I have elsewhere called the golden mean of disgruntled voters. It reduces nearly everything to the corruption of the political class and comes close to condemning the idea of politics itself. That its policies are coloured by a jaundiced view of political representatives and that it considers other issues as peripheral can be gleaned from the opening lines of the manifesto: “We do not need a sophisticated grasp of statistics or politics,” it bluntly informs us, “to understand the socio-political catastrophe that has befallen our country.” In other words we don’t need to know: the facts speak for themselves and the writing is on the wall.

To indict all politicians apart from the NPP as equally responsible for the mess we are in is of course a convenient way out of figuring out what needs to be done to resolve that mess. It is for that reason, perhaps, that the NPP document does not offer substantive solutions, but veers with despairing frequency to vague suggestions and broad generalisations.

More pertinently, the authors of the manifesto draw a line between two kinds of people: those suffering and those responsible for the suffering. Laudable, but in trying to maintain that division everywhere, the NPP fails to come up with clear solutions; to give perhaps the best example, in its section on “Government Debt”, the authors admit to the severity of the crisis, but then offers to “develop a formal plan for the next five years.”

To be sure, the document is not without its merits. It is very clear about what it considers to the root of all our problems: the Open Economy. Whether or not you agree with its take, the NPP is specific on the point that it is the Open Economy that has entrenched corruption and greed, as well as the “unnecessary expansion of financialisation, austerity measures, subsidy cuts, market monopolies, inefficient borrowing, and sale of public property and state-owned enterprises.” To the best of my knowledge, the FSP is the only other party in the Opposition which traces the problems of our time to the post-1977 liberalisation of the economy. As far as its diagnosis goes, then, the NPP-JVP touts a distinctly socialist line.

Yet the NPP-JVP has evolved from what it used to be. Tactics and strategies are no longer what they once were. This, of course, has always been the JVP’s hallmark. As the late Hector Abhayavardhana used to say, it veered to the left of its leftwing opponents in the United Front government and to the right of its rightwing opponents in the Jayewardene regime. It opposed whoever was in power without formulating a clear programme that went beyond the goal of bringing down elected governments: this is why both its insurrections failed, and why the heroes of the first of them later turned to civil society outfits that are as opposed to political authoritarianism as they are to the JVP’s brand of “socialist” reform.

Today the JVP retains its critique of the Open Economy, but it has enmeshed it within an obscurantist anti-corruption discourse. That has made it eminently marketable to those who think the problems of the country are reducible to the excesses of its politicians, but at the exorbitant cost of ideological coherence. Indeed, the JVP’s shift from its supposedly Marxist roots to a parliamentary avatar housed by liberal and left-liberal intellectuals, activists, and artists, many of them allied with the yahapalana regime and not a few of them beneficiaries of yahapalanist largesse, points to a pivotal ideological turnaround.

The reforms these intellectuals urge are no different to those prescribed by the JVP’s liberal critics. They want to abolish the Executive Presidency and replace it with a parliamentary system. They want greater oversight over parliament. They want independent commissions and “completely independent” security services. They want asset declarations for MPs. They want more of what yahapalanist ideologues demanded, which was to reduce the powers of the government and transfer some of them to unelected professionals.

What is ironic here is that even MPs once allied with the spirit and letter of the yahapalanist project have swerved from these principles. Champika Ranawaka, for instance, no longer views the Executive Presidency as an evil to be abolished; replying to Victor Ivan, his proxies, including Anuruddha Pradeep Karnasuriya, now suggest that calls for abolition are based on exaggerated notions of the Presidency conceived by, of all people, Marxists.

Ranawaka has almost always been frank in his demonization of the Left, which is why these critiques should come as no surprise. What is surprising, however, is that those who batted for the overhaul of political systems, Ranawaka included, have turned the other way. The SJB is no different: it houses some of the most vociferous critics of the presidential system, but they are no longer as open about their criticism as they once were.

The point I am trying to make here is that the crisis we are undergoing today has swamped issues that we once thought mattered. Abolishing the presidency may have been the grand call of yahapalanist idealists, but now we have other things to worry about. What solutions do parties have vis-à-vis these issues? Do those solutions hold up? Are they clear or definite enough? Have they been conceived with the interests of the suffering many at heart? Can they be implemented, and if they can, how? If recent political turnarounds in Latin America and Central America are anything to go by, parties have a whole range of strategies open to them. Is the NPP availing itself of such strategies? Is it aware of them?

The NPP does not seem to be aware of them. Even if it is, it is not taking stock of them. Instead the NPP, and even the JVP, has caved into an abstract anti-political, anti-corruption discourse that has won it many fans, but not too many voters. Like its liberal critics, it has embraced a notion of politics free of politicians, a Radical Centrist view which reduces the problems we are facing to politicians and identifies the ruling class with their kind. It does offer criticisms of proposals like the privatisation of health and education, but then traces all these problems to the same source: the much derided 225 (MPs).

In aiming at a Centrist position, moreover, the NPP appears to be privileging compromises to hard-hitting reforms of the sort that progressive outfits in Latin America have opted for. This much is clear from a recent interview with the party leader: while highlighting the need for a better vision and reiterating they have that vision, Anura Kumara Dissanayake outlines a plan to “acquire at least USD 15 billion” by restructuring investment procedures. The NPP plans to do this, Dissanayake informs us, through “a long-term plan” that accounts for, inter alia, the “geographic setting”, “human resources”, and “civilisation” of the country. He does not specify what these are, where they can be found, and what should be done about them, but exudes a confidence in his party’s ability to make use of them.

In the final analysis, the NPP wants to bring together a broad coalition of anti-regimists. The clearer its policies are, the more specific its audience will be, and the more exclusivist it will appear to be. Hence, by limiting proposals like the implementation of import substitution to mere words, it can leave the task of specifying them to the future, no doubt after it wins an election. The NPP’s plan, in other words, is to keep as many as possible happy, targeting that golden mean of disgruntled voters I mentioned earlier.

Three decades of Third Way Centrism should make us realise that such tactics can only lead to electoral suicide. An obsession with reaching a compromise may win votes in the short term, but in the longer term it can only deprive parties of the radical potential they require to propose a way out. Why the NPP, of all parties, should opt for such a path, when recent developments in Latin America point to other strategies, boggles me.

Already influential think-tanks in the country are recalling and critiquing the JVP’s policies under the Chandrika Kumaratunga government. Already the middle-classes who professed admiration for the likes of Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Sunil Handunnetti are expressing disappointment with their proposals. What is the NPP’s response to them? We clearly need to know, but they are not giving us answers. This is to be regretted.

The writer can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com