By Basil Fernando
This paper has been prepared to encourage discussion on the limits of the developments on the impact of adult franchise as a factor contributing to the present crisis in Sri Lanka
Born in 1906 J.R. Jayawardene was already 41 years-of-age at the time of independence. His formative years and the family background were rooted in colonial times and in the colonial administration. There being no political movement of significance such as the Indian National Congress, or some other independent movements as in other countries, there was no occasion for J.R. Jayawardene to be involved in any form of intense national struggle. His being a cabinet minister under the government of D.S. Senanayake and later under Dudley Senanayake and John Kothalawela, was not of much significance in terms of the political development in the country either.
The first best known political incident in post colonial Ceylon was when he, as the Minister of Finance increased the price of subsidised rice from 25 to 75 cents which provoked the biggest national protest until then by way of a nation-wide stoppage of work known as a hartal. This virtually brought down the government. This move from a budding politician with enormous ambition showed that he had ambition only for himself. It showed that he was completely unfamiliar with and did not comprehend the impact of new politics developing in the country as a result of adult franchise. Three years later his party was humiliatingly defeated in an election which reduced the number of the party’s seats to eight. He himself lost his seat at Kelaniya and thereafter he shifted to other electorates in later elections which were secure because they were urban middle class electorates.
This incapacity to comprehend the changes in the local population made him withdraw more and more to secluded positions from where he could manipulate things rather than being directly involved with the population. His completely depended in later times on persons like R. Premadasa, whose capacity for popular electioneering brought him to power in 1977 as a leader of the United National Party with 80% of the seats in parliament.
Within a year from that election he put into effect a scheme to virtually close the ‘electoral map’, as he called it by which was meant to push himself to a position of absolute power as the Executive President and thereafter to displace, in a dubious manner, the adult franchise. In 1982 when the term of office of the members of parliament elected in 1977 was to be over, he called for a referendum to extend the terms of office of the same members for a further six years, thereby completely undoing the adult franchise altogether. By this referendum the people were deprived of electing new representatives after a campaign of party competitions on the basis of various differences offered by the two parties. He aspired also for a third term beyond the two terms allowed by the Constitution but the violent politics he had generated as a result of his arbitrary actions forced his own disciples to abandon that plan and allow a different person who had the potential of winning to contest the post of president at the next election.
He was elected prime minister in 1977; he made himself the Executive President without a fresh election in 1978 with a new Constitution which gave him absolute power. His second term ended in 1988. By the end of this term Sri Lanka had become one of the most violent places on earth in all parts of the country, the South, North and East. The whole system of governance had become completely destabilized and it has proved impossible for anyone to return the country to the track of democracy.
He became the most hated leader of independent Sri Lanka and many have criticised his own personality traits as the cause of this situation. Replying to criticism on a personal basis he made the following remarks in 1981 to a correspondent from abroad:
“
… The political decisions I have taken may have been right or wrong but that doesnt matter. In my own behaviour, there is nothing to be ashamed of. I have done nothing mean. I know they say I am a strategist and a schemer but you cannot be a leader unless you scheme not in politics or in war or in any human affair. Even a boxer has to scheme and I was a boxer when I was young you pretend to hit the face but you hit the stomach. Oh yes, you have to scheme.”
New Internationalist 105 November, 1981
To strategize on political issues or to scheme on one’s own personal elevations are two different things. On the latter J.R. Jayawardene succeeded but as a political strategist he not only failed but created the worst national catastrophe known in Sri Lankan history in recent centuries. However, the issue which is more relevant for our study is to why he failed.
Understanding the country a precondition for a political strategist
To be a political strategist a leader has to understand his country. Post independence Sri Lanka was completely incomprehensible to J.R. Jayawardene. That was due to his upbringing and background. He was not a political strategist trying to exploit all favourable conditions in the country in order to improve it, but he was a swimmer against the current for his own personal survival. It he looked for the richer elements in the country to build a better country he would have realised that the greatest asset then available as against earlier times was a high political consciousness developing among all the persons including the most humble. He would also have realised that this consciousness had come to stay.
Each person with the power to vote will also want to get some benefit out of his vote. In such a situation a collective submission to powerful forces does not go as easily as it might have done in the previous centuries. A human person is a totality which includes all aspects of personality including culture, language, history and everything that goes to make people human. Every voter is an individual; he or she is also a member of a particular group and at the same time a member of the total population. All these aspects need to be dealt with in trying to find cooperation among people. Once such a consciousness has begun to grow there is no way to avoid these problems.
Not a resolver but an inflamer of conflicts
The 1978 Constitution was an attempt by J.R. Jayawardene to shield himself from the consciousness that had entered all persons in the country in post Donoughmore Sri Lanka. His attempt to ignore these forces meant the inflaming of existing conflicts instead of trying to resolve them. J.R. Jayawardene was not a conflict resolver with any sector of society, be it workers, the rural population, educated classes, the Sinhalese as a group or the Tamils and Muslims as groups. Instead of being a resolver of conflicts he became an inflamer of the conflict thereby creating avenues for Sri Lanka to be a burning place in all parts of the country. His successor, R. Premadasa is quoted to have said that when he was given the candidacy of the United National Party to contest the elections for the presidency he was given a torch burning at both ends to dance with. J.R. Jayawardene took charge of a relatively peaceful country in 1977 and left it in 1988 in a state of tremendous violence and the deepest possible divisions which devoured those who came to power thereafter. Four of his closest associates in power, R. Premadasa, Lalith Ahulathmudali, Gamani Dissanayake and Ranjan Wijeratne died within a short period as victims of separate shootings / bomb blasts.
Cynical scheming within the party
Narratives of three incidents while he was in power illustrate the sort of things he had done which contributed to such a dismal outcome. After the 1970 election which brought a coalition government to power with a two/thirds majority in parliament the United National Party, which was then under the leadership of Dudley Senanayake was in a minority. During this time J.R. Jayawardene was strategizing to emerge as the party leader. For this he was planning to reduce the large working committee of the United National Party to a smaller one which he could manipulate much more easily. A resolution to this effect was brought in a working committee which was not given much publicity. However, according to Sirisena Cooray, R. Premadasa came to the meeting and opposed this resolution as he thought that the adoption of the resolution would be likely to make the party less democratic. Premadasa’s objection to the resolution found resonance in many others and there was a possibility of its defeat. Quite close to the voting an incident happened which gives some insight into the manner of the man J.R. Jayawardene was. Sirisena Cooray writes:
“Suddenly another one of those unexpected mood changes took hold of the crowd. The majority of the participants at the congress who had been watching this altercation in silence came over to our side. Since except for that small, organized group the majority identified with Mr. Premadasas stand, we could have carried the day. It was at this point I did something which I now realize was a mistake. JR Jayewardene was watching all this in silence. He was a very shrewd man and must have realized that their entire plan was about to backfire. So he came up to me and said urgently: Cooray take him out, take him out. I think he used my desire for a peaceful resolution, my eagerness to avoid a fight to achieve his own ends. I did not realize it at that time. Looking back I think I made a mistake in listening to JR Jayewardene. I felt at that time that if there was a fight we could be at a disadvantage because though we had the backing of the majority of the participants, our opponents were organized while we were not. So I told Amarasena to bring the jeep and practically forced Mr. Premadasa to leave. He didnt want to go; he wanted to see it through. But I managed to get him out. Once we left the hall, they took advantage of the situation and got the resolution approved.”
President Premadasa and I Our Story, pg 33
The 1983 riots
Another incident narrated by Sirisena Cooray reveals the responsibility of J.R. Jayawardene for the July riots of 1983 which virtually changed the character of “the ethnic conflict” and also Sri Lankan history for the worst:
“The day we heard about the killing of the 13 soldiers in Jaffna I went to see Mr. Premadasa. He was on the phone to the President. There was a lot of tension in the country and we were extremely worried about the way things were moving. Mr. Premadasa turned to me and informed me that the President is planning to bring the bodies of the dead soldiers to Colombo, to be cremated at Kanatte. Mr. Premadasa had been trying to get the President to change his mind when I walked in. When he saw me Mr. Premadasa said: Sir, Sirisena is here; you ask him. And he put me on. The President told me: Cooray, these people want to bring these bodies to Colombo and cremate them at Kanatte. What do you think? I said: Sir why do you want to bring these bodies to Colombo? These are not people from Colombo. If you bring the bodies here there will be problems. This was precisely what Mr. Premadasa had been telling the President before I walked in. Afterwards Mr. Premadasa told me that they had decided against bringing the bodies to Colombo; I remember we were both extremely relieved.
That afternoon I went for a wedding at the Shalika Hall in Narahenpita. Mrs. Jayawardene was also there. I was talking to her when she suddenly said: Mr. Cooray, you know that they are bringing those 13 bodies to Colombo today. I was thunderstruck. I said: Madam, the President promised the Prime Minister only a little while ago that the bodies will not be brought to Colombo. She responded: No, no they are going to go ahead and bring the bodies here. I do not know whose idea it is. I had the impression she too was unhappy about it.
This was madness. Like Mr. Premadasa I knew that all hell was likely to break lose when those bodies are brought to Colombo. I just got up and walked to my car. But I had no clear idea about where I wanted to go. I couldnt think clearly. I didnt want to go home and I didnt want to go to the CMC. Finally I went to the Sugathadasa stadium. That was the time we were reconstructing the Stadium. I walked into the middle of the grounds and just stood there. That was when SP Ariyaratne came to me and told me that there was a radio message from the PM asking me to contact him urgently. When I called Mr. Premadasa he too was extremely upset and worried. He told me about the new decision to bring the bodies to Colombo that evening and asked me to make the necessary arrangements. He told me that the President is planning to attend the cremations and he too was expected to be there. He knew full well there would be problems but he had no choice in the matter. The decisions were made elsewhere and he was just informed of them. If the President listened to Mr. Premadasa, the 83 July riots could have been avoided and the history of this country would have been different.
Like Mr. Premadasa I too had no choice but to do what bad to be done, given the situation. The Kanatte is owned and managed by the CMC and as Mayor my tasks were clear. So I went to the Municipal Workshop and made all the arrangements. I also phoned the Municipal Commissioners and told them to come to the cemetery. After that I went to the cemetery. As soon as I entered I could feel the tension. There was an organized crowd present, making a huge show of grief, weeping hysterically. I walked up to DIG Edward Gunawardane and I asked him why they allowed this madness. He and the other senior police officers present told me that they had nothing to do with the decision, that they were just following orders. I warned them that this drama would end with a riot. Though the bodies were not brought yet, the crowd was organised and ready. I realized that if I stayed here I too would be thrashed. Gamani Jayasuriya was also there waiting for the bodies to be brought. I went up to him and said: Sir, what are you doing here? Dont wait here. There is going to be trouble. Then I called Mr. Premadasas security personnel who were waiting for his arrival and told them: Tell the PM that there is going to be trouble; tell him not to come here and tell him I said so. I told the same thing to the Presidents bodyguard. I explained that amidst the inevitable disturbance even if a stone hits the President it will be humiliating and therefore he should stay away. I was able to issue orders since the General Cemetery came under the CMC and I was the Mayor.
Fortunately the President decided to heed my warning; this enabled Mr. Premadasa also to stay away (he would have been forced to attend, even though he was not happy about the whole thing, if the President attended). Once I got confirmation that neither the President nor the PM would be attending the cremations I informed the Municipal Commissioners who were present that I will go and change and come back. Of course I did not go back. And as Mr. Premadasa and I predicted, rioting started immediately afterwards. I later heard that the Army wanted the bodies to be brought to Kanatte and that the President succumbed to their pressure.
It was a terrible time and the worst part was that we were almost powerless. We could do nothing to stop the killing, the destruction. The President made a mistake in putting the Army in charge of restoring law and order. After the killing of the 13 soldiers the mood in the military was a very dangerous one and they were not really motivated in stopping the violence. If the Police had been given a free hand they would have done a better job. During this period President J.R. Jayawardene was reduced to a state of helplessness. Mr. Premadasa and I used to visit him every day. That was the only time I saw JRJ being speechless. The Army was not taking orders and I think we were very close to a state of mutiny. That was why the Air Force was called in eventually and they quelled the riot.”
President Premadasa and I Our Story, pp 60-63
Bringing the IPKF
A narrative from J.N. Dixit’s Assignment Colombo explains how it was J.R. Jayawardene who brought the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) which again was to turn the violence in Sri Lanka in all parts of the country to a much higher pitch:
“Rajiv returned to his suite after the meeting for a private lunch. Jayewardene did not return to his Ward Place residence but had lunch in the Presidential Palace itself. I received a call from Jayewardenes Secretary around 2.30 p.m., saying that the President wished to see me urgently. I went to his office across the corridor. Jayewardene said that the riots and violence had now spread to Kandy and Anuradhapura and that the situation was becoming unmanageable. He said he would have to withdraw Sri Lankan troops from Jaffna and portions of Vavunia and Trincomalee to control the situation in the North-Central, Central and Southern Sri Lanka. He said developments reported to him since the morning of the 29th compelled him to convey two requests urgently to Rajiv Gandhi. First, that India should provide aircraft for airlifting Sri Lankan forces from the North and the East to the Southern portions of Sri Lanka, including Colombo. Secondly, that an Indian Peace-Keeping Force in sufficient numbers should be located in Jaffna and portions of Trincomalee for maintaining law and order and ensuring the ceasefire so that the Sri Lankan forces can take on peace keeping responsibilities in the Sinhalese areas.”
Assignment Colombo, Pg 169
It was in this way that J.R. Jayawardene trapped Rajiv Ghandi into taking charge of the security in the North. The rest of the history of this matter is quite well known.
Presidential immunity by the 1978 Constitution
Another piece of writing that reveals J.R. Jayawardene’s mind is Article 35(1) in the Constitution he created which reads as follows:
“Immunity of President from Suit
35. (1) While any person holds office as President, no proceedings shall he instituted or continued against him in any court or tribunal in respect of anything done or omitted to be done by him either in his official or private capacity”
Defending himself during retirement
In his retirement J.R. Jayawardene was aware of the serious criticisms that were made against him. He tried to answer this with a naiveté that might even be called childishness. In an address to the Young Men’s Christian Association, (YMCA) Colombo July 2, 1991 he was still trying to compare the Executive Presidency of the 1978 Constitution which he created to the American and French Constitutions. It never occurred to him that some day people might compare the text of these constitutions and find the ugly contrast that the 1978 Constitution makes as against the other two. Today even a school child can find the text of the American and French Constitutions through the Internet quite easily. Had such a comparison been made in the early part of the 20th century maybe people would have taken it as absolute truth or most people would anyway have not known the meaning of it.
In trying to defend the Constitution he stated that “the 1978 Constitution was tailor-made for a democracy” (Relived Memories pg 25. published by J.R. Jayawardene Centre Publication, Sri Lanka, 1996). Without referring to it indirectly he was trying to answer the common accusation that the 1978 Constitution was tailor-made for J.R. Jayawardene. It did not occur to him that there is nothing that can be called a Constitution tailor-made for democracy. Constitutions are created to deal with many living problems within a given historical context. The ideas of democracy should be brought in within that context so that by the practice of the Constitution a particular democracy will be able to enrich itself and keep evolving continuously. For J.R. Jayawardene to imagine that he was the tailor and that he is making the cloth to fit the country’s democracy itself shows complete incomprehension of the processes by which constitutions develop. A.V. Dicey discusses the complex processes through which the unwritten Constitution of the United Kingdom grew up slowly, developing into something like a beehive capable of dynamic interrelations. Nobody tailor-made the British Constitution. The sheer ignorance of the understanding of the constitutional process itself explains the backward political mind of the J.R. Jayawardene generation. It was with that kind of mind that he dabbled with the task of making a Constitution.
The 1982 referendum
In retirement J.R. Jayawardene also tried to justify the 1982 referendum as the most democratic thing to do. His explanation is very much like of a Sri Lankan professor of economics when having to deny the devaluation of the Sri Lankan rupee said that “a rupee was worth a hundred cents then and it is still worth a hundred cents now.”
J.R. Jayawardene said:
“If we agree that there may be occasions when the life of a parliament may have to be extended, what more democratic way than permitting the people to do so and not leave it to the Members of Parliament alone, as was the case in the 1970-1977 Parliament.”
Relived Memories, published by J.R. Jayawardene Centre Publication, Sri Lanka, 1996
J.R. Jayawardene, who was about 87 years-of-age at the time of making that statement wanted people to believe that postponement of a parliament under certain emergencies and the extension of parliament for six years was the same thing. Even worse was the excuse given for “postponement, a Naxalite threat by Kobbakaduwa and Kumaranathunga an allegation which was not proved before any court . Even out of public life he could not get over the habit of trying to fool people even on such glaring matter as this. Perhaps once again his formative years and upbringing in the background of the Sri Lankan society, where the masses were still distanced from political life may have created such incorrigible habits.
In several other speeches in his retirement he tried to say that he followed the motto: “believe in what you do; do what you believe in.” Perhaps his last defence was that he may have made political mistakes and done political wrongs but that there was no intended deception on his part. However, among the Sri Lankan politicians that have moved through the political theatre so far there is no one who created such a distance between what he said and what he did as J.R. Jayawardene. It is said that the test of integrity is as how close what one says is to what one does. The distance cannot any greater than that in the case of J.R. Jayawardene. It is truly exceptional only in very exceptional instances. Such a distance when practiced by the head of a state must lead to violence at all levels of society and also within the very government he leads.
The following appear to be the issues that J.R. Jayawardene had no comprehension of:
a. The primary duty of a head of state to maintain and to improve the state apparatus. State apparatus means the basic institutions of the state such as the civil service, the police, courts and the prosecution department, government audits and other means by which the state carries out its basic functions. Whatever the economic conditions of a country may be, whether it is a boom time or a depression the state apparatus has to keep functioning if the state itself is to be of any use to the people and to avoid creating anarchy. Many economic and social objectives may depend on factors beyond a government’s control. For example, even by 1981, which was just three years since the beginning of his presidency, J.R. Jayawardene was talking about the increase of prices in the global market as the main cause of dissatisfaction of the people against his government. This only explains how he may have been unable to guarantee economic stability and prosperity. However, the basic situation of the overall stability of a society does not purely depend on economics alone. The keeping of social stability with efficiently functioning state apparatus guarantees that a bad economic turn in itself does not lead to dysfunctionalism within the country. The basic state apparatus prevents the people from being complete victims of economic vicissitudes. By maintenance of law and order in a fair manner the state minimizes the damage that can be done by adverse economic factors.
In J.R. Jayawardene’s time it was the state apparatus that was allowed to collapse first. This collapse was due not to economic reasons, but due to the abuse of power by the executive. The very election victory of 1977 was followed by the worst ever post electoral violence that had taken place in the country. This was followed by the continuous use of violence against trade unions and liberals. It was further followed by the creation of a commission to deprive the civil rights of his most powerful opponent Mrs. Sirimao Bandaranaike and a few of her close associates. This was followed by a referendum instead of the election for the members of parliament whose term had ended. This and other elections were done in the most violent manner and in callous disregard of the normal rules regarding allowed limits for canvassing for such elections.
Also from 1977 the president continuously provoked the ethnic conflict and kept a state of violence continuing throughout the country. He also sent the democratically functioning JVP underground and then pursued them in their hiding place which thereafter also provoked them to retaliation, which again made the South of the country a dangerous place to live in. The police and the military were used for massive scale disappearances and gross abuses of human rights, which in any modern democracy would have called for criminal action against the leaders of the government as well as those engaged in such acts. What is important for the present purpose is that the result of all this on the state apparatus was to degenerate all the basic institutions to an extent that these became dysfunctional.
In 2001 the reality of this situation was admitted by all political parties including the United National Party when it agreed to the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, the primary function of which was to attempt to re-stabilise the state apparatus. Thus, J.R. Jayawardene failed in the very first duty of the head of a state to maintain and to improve the state apparatus.
b. J.R. Jayawardene failed to comprehend the meaning of a political party in a democracy. The Donoughmore Commission placed all its hope for democracy on the possibility of the formation of political parties which would be able to promote the principles of democracy. However, for J.R. Jayawardene a political party was only a tool for a political leader. The idea of democratically based parties which create their own leaders in terms of the analyses of situations and the perspectives of parties was completely outside his way of thinking. Explaining himself in his retirement, he said that most of his life he had played second fiddle in his party and government until he became the president. And he explained the manner in which a person arrives at the top of a party:
“A friend told me when I was second in command for several years, “J.R. dont bother because politics is a ‘Stayers Race’.” I do not know whether any one of you are punters, we do not have races now except in Nuwara Eliya, but a “Stayers Race” is a race where a Racer, a man or horse, who stays, who does not try to kick his neighbour or jump over him, but one who tries to stay on till all the others disappear. Therefore, for a politician good health is vital. Look after your kidney, nurse your heart, eat little, don’t exercise too much and in the end you win the “Stayers Race” and if you are a politician, you become the Leader.”
Relived Memories, published by J.R. Jayawardene Centre Publication, Sri Lanka, 1996, Pg 31
J.R. Jayawardene’s contribution to the development of political parties to serve democracy is therefore in the negative.
C.
J.R. Jayawardene failed to comprehend the link between people and the government in a democracy. In the 1978 Constitution people are stated to be the source of power. However, within the scheme of the Constitution this entire power is transferred to the Executive President. The principle of deriving power from the people meant that all institutions of state did not have any independence and they are all subordinated to the Executive President who exercises sovereignty on behalf of the people. Unlike the dictators of the past who claimed that their power was derived from God, the dictatorship created through the 1978 Constitution places the source of power of the dictator as the people.
However, the people did not have the power to take their president to court if they thought that he had done something wrong in his official or personal capacity by act or omission. The people also had little possibility of questioning the president through their elected representatives in parliament. The essence of the idea that political power is derived from the people is that of having checks and balances to control those who have been elected to exercise power. To bind power with various limitations is the manner through which people exercise their sovereignty over those who hold political power. J.R. Jayawardene abolished all the avenues for the exercise of such power. However, such checks and balances are only part of the issue of the people’s role in democracy. Various forms of the active participation of the people through multiple avenues are the method by which democratic leaders keep their links with the people, so that deep divisions within society are avoided. The politics of J.R. Jayawardene motivated only by personal survival aggravated divisions rather than helping to bring the people together. The ruthless suppression of the opposition in every possible way, and the creation of a fear psychosis in the country, altered the psychological ethos of the country radically in a negative direction. For anyone who wanted to participate in public life a threat of assassination was posted. Today death threats and the actual carrying out of the killing for anyone who is too actively involved is a most common phenomena. Even a person who may want to play just a small role within his own locality by forming or participating in some welfare group, cooperative or the like are now frightened. The ethos of active life in a community which has remained alive in the early part of the 20th century has now been badly crippled. Some form of a political and psychological link of being opposed to the government is being perceived in every initiative that any person might partake in. This has happened within a framework of the attempt by the J.R. Jayawardene regime to create a one party system similar to Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew model. All these attempts to suppress the people have resulted in all forms of retaliation within society which have in turn created more and more violence in the country. When the state treats people violently a whole psychological ethos of distrust and retaliation develops. That was what J.R. Jayawardene created by his work and policies.
Conclusion
J.R. Jayawardene’s was an obsolete and an ancient mind. He remained oblivious to the changes that were taking place in the country. Meanwhile through the Donoughmore reforms and reforms in education the country changed radically.
