{"id":206011,"date":"2019-11-03T00:00:19","date_gmt":"2019-11-02T18:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=206011"},"modified":"2019-11-07T02:24:10","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T20:54:10","slug":"a-centrist-social-compact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-centrist-social-compact\/","title":{"rendered":"A Centrist Social Compact"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\"><b><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">By <a style=\"color: #ff6600;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Sarath+de+Alwis\">Sarath de Alwis<\/a> &#8211; \u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_201439\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Sarath-de-Alwis.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-201439\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-201439\" src=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Sarath-de-Alwis-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Sarath-de-Alwis-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Sarath-de-Alwis-45x45.jpg 45w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-201439\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sarath de Alwis<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The hullabaloo over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=sanitary+hygiene+products\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">sanitary pads<\/span><\/strong><\/a> has served a salutary purpose. It has exposed our collective confusion over what is \u2018poverty\u2019 and what is \u2018development\u2019.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Other than \u2018National Security\u2019 that acquired a new urgency in the light of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Easter+Sunday\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">the Easter Sunday massacre<\/span><\/strong><\/a>, poverty and development are the two central issues dominating the furious debate on who should be our next president.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The subject of menstrual hygiene of women and girls who constitute 52 percent of the population was first taken up by candidate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Sajith+Premadasa\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">Sajith Premadasa<\/span><\/strong><\/a>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>It promptly elicited a studied response from Candidate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Anura+Kumara+Dissanayake\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">Anura Kumara Dissanayake<\/span><\/strong><\/a>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>While it has not appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Gotabaya+Rajapaksa\"><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">Gotabaya Rajapaksa<\/span><\/strong><\/a>\u2019s teleprompter, Bandula Gunawardane his spokesman on matters economic and Wimal Weerawansa his villifier <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>extraordinary have dismissed any discussion on the subject as out of bounds in refined society.<\/p>\n<p>It is pure, simple sanctimonious humbuggery.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u2018Pohottuwa\u2019 politicians who scoff at this very human issue are brazen bounders.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>They have forgotten that some of our modish lasses of the \u2018Lamborghini \u2018and \u2018Aston Martin\u2019 class were brave and brash to throw their \u2018bras\u2019 on to the stage of pop singer Enrique Iglesias who performed in Colombo.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Yet, Menstrual hygiene is not a subject for discussion in a society that is reconciled to have a Buddhist monk as the president of the largest trade union of female nurses.<\/p>\n<p>It is evidence of our limitless capacity for self-delusion.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sajith\u2019s manifesto is an honest attempt to rise above partisan, clientelist political culture.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>It opens, the possibility for a new majority of the center with the potential to become a genuinely new governing coalition.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sajith has done something that even Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the JVP has not done at this threshold point in our politics.<\/p>\n<p>He has brought back state intervention to ensure social equity as declared government policy. Something that senators Elisabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are attempting to do in the heartland of free market capitalism during their primary campaigns. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Ranil\u2019s free marketeering stripped the UNP of its identity with the ordinary people \u2013 a folk consciousness that was ingrained in the public psyche for generations since the founder of the party opened the dry zone to settle the land less in their own homesteads.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>A culture that Gamini Dissanayake painstakingly infused in to UNP politics under JR Jayewardene the essential free marketer. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sajith has restored the legitimacy of the party by distancing himself from value neutral economics based on mathematical models. Such planning sounds good in Washington. It fails to take note of subtleties of human behavior which is more often erratic than rational.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>It is drawn up in the realization that the last four and half years have been years of locusts, frittered away in promises not kept and slogans debased.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sajith Premadasa was right in focusing attention to an issue that cried out for remedial action by the state.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Women and adolescent girls face multiple challenges in the current consumer culture.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Ensuring proper menstrual hygiene management is not a mere matter of personal hygiene but an important step towards safeguarding the dignity, bodily integrity and overall life opportunities of women and girls.<\/p>\n<p>Poverty is not about money. It is about opportunity. Amartya Sen the economics Nobel laureate defines poverty in his classic \u2018Development as Freedom.\u2019<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>\u201cPoverty is not just a lack of money; it is not having the capability to realize one&#8217;s full potential as a human being. Economic growth without investment in human development is unsustainable &#8211; and unethical\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p>The label \u2018neoliberal\u2019 is an empty epithet that \u2018Pohottu Politicos\u2019 defending the family kleptocracy often use to win a political argument.<\/p>\n<p>Gotabaya Rajapaksa has also adopted the practice of using the term \u2018neo liberal\u2019 in his carefully framed homilies on economic development and helping the poor. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In the current equation Sajith Premadasa is ahead in the game. Gotabaya addresses poverty with social order and national security. He is the quintessential \u2018neo liberal\u2019. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sajith identifies poverty as deprivation of opportunity. He is the social democrat.<\/p>\n<p>Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx defined \u2018value\u2019 as based on objective conditions of labor, machinery and capital.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>For neo liberals\u2019 \u2018value\u2019 is a function of exchange. Only what has a price is valuable.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Collective effort is ignored. As economist Mariana Mazzucato points out, neo liberals consider \u201ceven wages as outcomes of the wage earners choice between leisure and work.\u201d <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Remember how Gotabaya used troops to manicure lawns and clear the clogged drains in the city. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Let us not beat around the bush.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>Ranil Wickremesinghe and Nivard Cabraal share the same idea. In this indictment of right wing neo liberal school, we must not be too harsh on Mahinda Rajapaksa the prime ministerial choice of candidate Gotabaya.<\/p>\n<p>The two brothers have no idea of value creation.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>For them, value is something that is out there with the Chinese. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The UNP has finally stumbled upon reality. It has discovered social democracy. It has embarked on the practical path of redefining market economics and capitalism. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sajith Premadasa must make a clean break with crony market economics of Ranil Wickremesinghe.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>As Senior Journalist and peerless iconoclast, Victor Ivan pointed out at Sajith Premadasa\u2019s manifesto launch, in the next fortnight we should hope to see the emergence of a broad alliance of progressive and democratic forces.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>That alone is the sine qua non to prevent a neo fascist dictator ship of either one man or an entire family brood.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Some retrospective soul searching is required. Why did the alliance of democratic and progressive forces disintegrate in the last four years?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The first budget of the \u2018Yahapalanaya\u2019 regime proposed a \u2018mansion tax\u2019. The wizard who introduced the innovative revenue proposal moved into a penthouse. That is the last we heard of the mansion tax.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In the age of connectivity, proclivity for the preposterous has a price.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>This is a Candidate-Centered contest. Sajith Premadasa has come this distance by clearly straying away from the politics of the last four years.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In the next fortnight he must make a clean break. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>His manifesto has its own brand and messaging. It demands not growth in terms of per capita income. In a sharp rerouting of strategy, it demands target-oriented state intervention in education, healthcare and social inequality.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Sajith\u2019s manifesto is an honest attempt to rise above the partisan clientelist political culture that has lasted since the 1972 Republican constitution blurred the distinction between the executive and the legislature.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>That is when members of parliament became guidance counsellors on all matters in our daily lives. It acquired added weight when members were given decentralized budgets.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Now we stand in bus halts provided under the \u2018Sankalpaya\u2019 the oft abused Sinhala word for \u2018concept\u2019 of some jackass who has condescended to <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>provided it with our own money. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Joseph Goebbels, Hitler\u2019s Minister of Propaganda explained for all time the idea of propaganda in a democracy. <b><i>\u201cThis will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gives its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p>\u2018Liberty \u2018is not a shopping mall. Independence is not an arcade. Freedom is the capacity of people to do something and to make things happen, to bring about change for the better in their lives.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>What people can achieve is influenced by \u201ceconomic opportunities, political liberties, social powers.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Development is not building highways that only a fraction of the population use. Development is the process of expanding human freedom. It is \u201c<b><i>the enhancement of freedoms that allow people to lead lives that they have reason to live\u201d.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p>Development is not hyperactivity by a repressive state apparatus in the guise of \u2018national security\u2019.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>As professor Jayadeva Uyangoda points out, this presidential contest has brought about a realignment of rightwing Sinhala nationalist forces. It has also precipitated a fragmentation of<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>democratic and progressive elements. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The need of the hour is a consolidation of the democratic center. That calls for a rejection of both neo liberal economics and extreme ethnoreligious tribalism.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In order to reach that broad consensus, Candidate Sajith Premadasa must decidedly and determinedly jettison the politics of the privileged and reach out to social segments that Victor Ivan identified as those clamoring to be heard after seventy-one years of independence.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>At the launch of Sajith\u2019s Social Revolution manifesto, Lakshman Kiriella, reminisced on the inclusive ethos of the historic Kandyan kingdom which successfully repelled foreign invasions for three hundred years.<\/p>\n<p>The Kandyan kingdom offered a safe refuge for Muslims who fled Portuguese pogroms. It offered asylum to the Catholic missionary father Joseph Vaz fleeing Calvinist persecution by the Dutch.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>The two Buddhist monastic orders of Kandy had opted for a Dravidian prince in preference to a Sinhala contender for the throne of Kandy purely on his fealty and devotion to the Buddhist faith.<\/p>\n<p>King Kirthi Sri Rajasinghe of this Tamil dynasty was instrumental in restoring the important Buddhist institution \u2013 that of higher ordination which had become extinct due to colonial intrusion and political strife. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>King Kirti Sri Rajasinghe got down monks from Siam (Thailand) for the purpose. Without ordination, Buddhism as we know, would be extinct.<\/p>\n<p>What Kirielle did not say or failed to say, is that in precolonial Sri Lanka there were no sperate Sinhala and Tamil identities. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>As some of our main Electronic media outlets and most Sinhala print media demonstrate in the current stampede for hearts and minds, demagoguery has an effective rhetorical strategy to corner the media market. Racist conspiracy theories are much easier than serious ideological debate.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Demagoguery is simple.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>The demagogue exhorts;<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>\u201cI am not wrong. I am always right. There is no such thing as a complicated problem. Only people complicate things. Even listening to\u00a0those who differ is a betrayal of the nation.\u201d<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><i>\u201cAll you need to know is that you are safe in my hands. And it will be a very pleasurable experience! \u201c<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p>When you believe in the strong leader who needs more clarity?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":205983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Centrist Social Compact - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-centrist-social-compact\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Centrist Social Compact - 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