By Mahinda Gunaratne –

Recently, several senior figures in Sri Lanka’s current government have been complaining that although they have obtained governance power, they have not received state power. However, they have yet to realise that the government has not received only state power but also political power. They lost this political power in the last presidential election. What, then, did the National People’s Power (NPP / Compass) receive in the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections?

They received only governance power, that is, the right to run a government in accordance with the Constitution. Since Sri Lanka became a republic under the 1972 Constitution, every government that came to power has received governance power while inherently losing state power. However, several previous governments also managed to secure political power as well.

The people temporarily delegate these governance powers for a specified period in two primary forms: executive and legislative power. This constitutes a contractual transfer of power between the government, or regime, and the people. This transfer of power occurs across all democratic republics through various elections. If the government breaches the terms of this contract, the people transfer governance power to another group, that is, another political party, in the subsequent election.

Chapters I through XIV of the 1978 Constitution formally define how these governance powers should be granted and acquired in our country, and how the government in power ought to exercise them. Furthermore, Chapters XV onwards set out how the judiciary is to resolve disputes that may arise between the people and the government from one election to another, detailing the judicial structure, composition, powers, and procedures. Consequently, let us now examine what the current government did and did not receive in the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections.

What Did the NPP Receive?

Although Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who contested the 2024 presidential election under the Compass symbol, received administrative or governance powers, he did not secure political power because he failed to obtain a simple majority – that is, 50% plus one vote of the valid votes polled in that election. He secured 42.31% of the vote, while rival candidates collectively secured the majority, at 57.69%. Accordingly, we have a president who came into power after the counting of second-preference votes, rather than an executive president who secured a simple majority in the election, defeated opponent candidates, and thereby acquired political power. This was the first time such an outcome occurred since the establishment of the executive presidency under the 1978 Constitution.

However, because 159 NPP representatives were elected in the subsequent 2024 parliamentary election, enabling the government to secure a two-thirds majority in the legislature, the administration gained legitimacy; yet this does not erase the predicament of the presidential election. This is because the elected executive president exercises executive (or governance) power on behalf of the people, whereas Parliament exercises only the people’s legislative power. Furthermore, because the people also exercise legislative power directly in a referendum, legislative power is a shared, delegated power rather than an absolute or intrinsic power.

The executive power the people temporarily delegate is exercised directly by the President, as well as through the Cabinet of Ministers, headed by the Prime Minister, and the public service. This also includes Provincial Councils and Local Government bodies, for which representatives of the people are elected through respective elections. A question that now arises for us is whether the public service, or the state apparatus, is a permanent or absolute structure. That, too, is not the case, because the public service functions through temporary authority delegated by the executive President, rather than through an inherent absolute power or authority of its own.

Moreover, officers appointed to the public service perform their duties for a specific, limited period under a power structure delegated according to their roles and responsibilities. The remarkable aspect of this delegation and transfer of power is that this social contract process also applies to the judiciary. Accordingly, all three powers – executive, legislative, and judicial – must be exercised under the temporary authority delegated by the people, in compliance with the checks and balances stipulated in the Constitution and other legal provisions. In doing so, they are legally bound to be accountable to the people for the actions they take or fail to take. Furthermore, they receive salaries and allowances from the people for all functions they perform. Therefore, everyone employed in the executive, legislative, and judicial systems is a public servant and nothing more.

Accordingly, the people are the core of democracy and the source of power. For this reason, we must decisively advance and apply the doctrine of the four pillars of democracy (People, Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary) rather than the latter three. However, to the misfortune of both the people and the state, we not only remain unaware of or deliberately ignore this fact, but the people are also completely excluded from state governance and development decision-making between elections. Therefore, we must now critically examine what the state and state power are, and to whom they belong.

Governments Come and Go, but States Endure

A state is an independent social, economic, and political structure within defined geographical boundaries, comprising a permanently settled population, sovereignty, and a government operating under legally vested authority. State power is the supreme authority and enforcement power a country legally and independently possesses to govern. It differs from mere governmental or governance power in that it is supreme over all organisations, institutions, and structures within the state. The state has the supreme authority to enforce and execute laws, administer justice, impose punishments, and even declare war or peace. Thus, the state is a stable structure, and even when governments change, the state and its fundamental power and authority remain unchanged.

The people are the source of the state’s power and its sovereign authority. In this context, the government is the state’s representative body, operating under authority temporarily delegated by the people and grounded in their sovereignty. Therefore, a government is an administrative mechanism appointed to govern the state for a specified duration, operating under legitimate authority granted by the people. In all democratic republics, governments gain and lose this power through elections and political activity. Hence, the people’s sovereign power cannot be captured, and seizing it is neither legal nor democratic.

Moreover, capturing state power is a characteristic feature of a monarchy or a dictatorial government, and it is by no means a power that accrues to any government coming into office in a democratic country or republic. State power represents ownership of the country. In a kingdom or dictatorial state, the king or queen, or the dictatorial ruler or ruling class, owns the country. The United Kingdom is an example of this type of monarchy. Although a ruler in such a system could theoretically exercise state power as they wish, even in modern monarchies this is not the case because the ruler is a nominal king or queen. In the modern world, state power is captured and arbitrarily exercised only in states ruled by dictators.

In a republic such as our country or India, state power or sovereignty belongs to the citizens and is the collective property of the people. It is inalienable. This is clearly set out in Article 3 of Chapter I of our 1978 Constitution: “In the Republic of Sri Lanka sovereignty is in the People and is inalienable. Sovereignty includes the powers of government, fundamental rights and the franchise.”

Furthermore, the Constitution clearly sets out how the people exercise sovereignty through the franchise. Likewise, the Constitution establishes mechanisms to curb the abuse of power through checks and balances, including the supreme Constitution, an independent judicial system, fundamental rights, and the franchise.

Therefore, in a country governed by a democratic system elected by the people’s vote, no government ever acquires state power. Nor does our Constitution define or state that a government receives state power or sovereignty. Yet does the present government now seek the inalienable sovereign power of the Republic’s people?

Governments come and go, but states endure. Above all of these stand the people and their sovereign power. A country’s state power belongs to the people, not to their temporary representatives or to the temporary mechanism known as the government through which they operate. Therefore, securing governance power constitutionally through popular vote for a defined term while dreaming of capturing state power to remain in office perpetually is akin to falling into the same pit in broad daylight that one fell into at night.

Furthermore, the dilemma is whether the JVP, having made futile attempts to seize state power in 1971 and 1988–89 while disregarding Marxist-Leninist theories and practices, is now preparing to rebel against its own government, given that it is bringing these past events back into the spotlight. Therefore, if the JVP is unwilling to engage in self-criticism or learn from contemporary global experience, at least understanding Karl Marx’s famous dictum that “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce” would be a foundational step towards healing our motherland.

What Should the Government Do Now?

Therefore, the leaders and theorists of the current government must immediately stop lamenting the loss of state power and instead swiftly move towards building a “Rich Country, A Beautiful Life,” as outlined in their election manifesto. Moreover, they should read the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (1978). To understand the state according to Marxism-Leninism, they should urgently read Friedrich Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), and Lenin’s The State (1919) and The State and Revolution (1917).

For those seeking to study this further and eager to explore how Communist thought and theory on the state were refined to align with contemporary socio-political realities, two thinkers who must be urgently studied are Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) and Nicos Poulantzas (1936–1979).

According to Gramsci, the state is not merely the governmental apparatus, the military, and the police; rather, the cultural hegemony that shapes public opinion through institutions such as schools, churches, and the media is also an integral part of state power. Here, the government (ruling class) uses its authority to enforce its orders and laws on the people, while also seeking the public’s “voluntary consent,” or consensus, by justifying its ideology through social hegemony. In light of this, the question naturally arises as to whether the present leftist government in Sri Lanka is deploying the full force of the bourgeois state apparatus against the people.

However, Nicos Poulantzas takes a critical view of the traditional Marxist conception of the state, arguing that the state is a social relation formed by the conflicts and power balances among social classes. In this context, the bourgeois ruling class maintains relative autonomy within the state for its own survival, using it to manage internal conflicts and meet certain demands of the working class, thereby securing their consent. Yet, because of inherent conflicts, modern capitalist states tend to shift towards authoritarian states centred on executive power. Therefore, instead of a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship of the proletariat, he proposes transitioning towards “democratic socialism” by making state institutions more populist, establishing community-led popular movements, and creating direct democratic structures in which people participate in development decision-making and practice.

Furthermore, contemporary Marxist theorists (such as Bob Jessop, David Harvey, Slavoj Žižek, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri) who analyse the operation of the state and power in today’s context of globalisation, science and technology, and neoliberal political patterns emphasise that national state power structures adapt into multifaceted institutional arrangements to protect capitalist systems in the face of globalisation. In doing so, public rights are plundered through the privatisation of public property and the curtailment of the welfare state, while the public mind is controlled via “ideological state apparatuses” such as culture, mass media, and new technologies, which enforce voluntary acceptance of capitalism. Consequently, only global alternative mass movements composed of all oppressed people can rise against this global capitalist power structure.

Accordingly, should the present government not immediately lay the civic foundations necessary for a transition towards democratic socialism, rather than dreaming of rebelling against its own government and state while contemplating a dictatorship of the proletariat or one-party rule? Instead, implement pro-people socio-economic reforms as Poulantzas proposes and as promised in the government’s election manifesto, rendering state institutions and structures flexible and populist, and establishing structures that maximise public participation in development decision-making and execution. If this is done, there would surely be no need to panic over the upcoming 2029 election or fear having to abandon power and flee, would there?