Against Majoritarian anti-Democracy

by Izeth Hussain-December 12, 2014

A plague on both your houses

Shakespeare
There is much glib talk nowadays about the formation of a national
Government after the January elections. It is based on the facile
assumption that the coming together of the two major parties, the UNP
and the SLFP, together with some minority ethnic parties, would amount to
a national Government. But most Tamils dont accept either of our two
major parties as national parties: they see them rather as Sinhalese ethnic
parties in all but name. As for the Muslims, they dont unequivocally accept
them as national parties either. The late Mr.Ashraff, the founder of the
most important Muslim Party, the SLMC, established its rationale on the
ground that all Sri Lankan political parties are in reality ethnic parties. The
SLMC could conceivably join a supposed national Government but that
would not be because it has swallowed the rhetoric about a national
Government. It would really be an instrumental tactic arising out of the
fact that the most effective way of securing the legitimate interests of the
Muslims is by joining the Government of the day. As for the TNA, joining a
national Government seems most unlikely.

Therefore a supposed national Government will really be a Government in

which power is decisively exercised by the two major Sinhalese ethnic
parties, the UNP and the SLFP. Can such a Government be properly
described as a national Government? One problem is that our minorities
constitute not a minuscule but a very substantial proportion of the Sri
Lankan population. Depending on whether or not the Sinhalese Catholics
and other Christians are included in the category "Sinhalese" there are
Sinhalese Buddhists who would not agree with that categorization - the
supposed national Government will represent no more that 70% to 75% of
the Sri Lankan population. A Government in which one ethnic group, the
Sinhalese, is dominant and does not allow a real sharing of power by a
quarter or more of the people cannot be called "national".
It might seem that I am laboring the obvious. If all our parties are ethnic
parties except of course a miniscule one such as the Liberal Party it
might seem to follow that our politics will be dominated by the majority
ethnic parties, and there can be no question of an authentic national
Government that is inclusive of the minorities. That might seem to be
inevitable, but in fact it isnt so. I have in mind the counter-example of
Lebanon. I must confess that I have no expertise on Lebanese politics of
the present-day, but I know the salient points about it in the pre-Civil War
period of the last century. It was a politics based on a frank avowal of
religious and sectarian particularities. As far as I am aware there was no
national Party worth the name; instead there were Parties reflecting those
particularities. But they came together through a common accommodation
of interests, and Lebanon certainly was a nation. It had a fully functioning
democracy, its economy prospered, and it was way ahead of all the other
Arab countries.
The Lebanese Parties reflecting religious and sectarian particularities were
the equivalents of Sri Lankas ethnic parties. Yet Lebanon was a success
story in stark contrast to Sri Lankas political and other failures. What is
the explanation for the difference? I believe that the crucial determinant is
democracy: Lebanon had a flourishing fully-functioning democracy
whereas Sri Lankas democracy was deeply flawed over long periods
because of an authoritarian and dictatorial drive underlying it. But even
worse than that, we have always had, not just over long periods but
always since 1948, what might be called majoritarian democracy, a form of
democracy under which the will of the majority is supreme over everything
else. Actually it is anti-democracy, the very antithesis of democracy. As

long ago as the eighteenth century de Tocqueville argued that the "tyranny
of the majority" negated democracy, and since then it has been an integral
part of the Western tradition of democracy that it requires not just the will
of the majority but the scrupulous observance of the sacrosanct principles
of democracy, which might be encapsulated in the secular trinity of the
French revolution: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. In Sri Lanka, on the
other hand, our Governments have for the most part equated democracy
with the will of the majority, and too often they have shown contempt for
liberty, equality, and fraternity. In Sri Lanka the will of the majority has
always meant the will of the Sinhalese ethnic majority, and that has been
the source of the Sri Lanka tragedy.
In Sri Lanka we have come to a political crossroads at which we obviously
have to seek new directions. The Opposition gives primary importance to
doing away with the Presidential system of Government which in Sri Lanka,
though not elsewhere, is seen as ineluctably leading to authoritarianism
and dictatorship. In other words primacy is given to the restoration of a
fully functioning democracy. This is quite understandable considering what
has been happening in this country after 1977. In that year a new
Government came to power with the brightest of imaginable prospects, but
it proceeded to spit on democracy and to spit on the Tamils, and by 1989
the bright promise was belied and the country was facing doom. The
present Government had the brightest of imaginable prospects after the
LTTE was defeated in 2009, but it spat on democracy through the
eighteenth Amendment and the outrageous impeachment of the Chief
Justice, and it spat on the Muslims creating yet another major ethnic
problem. Will we again have to face doom as in 1989?
So the clamour against the Presidential system and in favour of democracy
is easily understandable. What should be done? The text-book
prescriptions for a fully functioning democracy are well-known: free and
fair elections, an independent Judiciary, a depoliticized Administration,
separation of powers, freedom of the press and other media, freedom of
information, the rule of law, and so on. However, in terms of the argument
developed in this article, we cannot have a fully functioning democracy if it
applies only to 75% of the people consisting of the majority ethnic group
and not to the 25% consisting of the minority ethnic groups. In concrete
terms this means that the Tamil and Muslim ethnic problems have to be
seriously addressed in the Presidential and Parliamentary election
campaigns.

I cannot possibly deal with the question of what the Opposition should do
about those two ethnic problems in the course of the election campaigns. I
have written twenty four articles on the Muslim ethnic problem and I will
here briefly mention a few points that might be made by the Opposition.
A) There cannot be the slightest doubt that the Government has given
implicit backing for the anti-Muslim campaign. This has been shown by the
refusal to apply the law against the BBS leaders, and to take disciplinary
action against police officers who played the role of passive spectators
even when the anti-Muslim demonstrations turned violent. B) There are
good reasons to suspect that the anti-Muslim campaign has had foreign
backing. That must be thoroughly investigated in the national interest. C)
It is alleged on two grounds that the Muslims pose an existential threat to
the Sinhalese, one of which is Muslim extremism. Not a single jihadist or
jihadist group has been uncovered in Sri Lanka. The charge is nonsensical.
D) The other charge is that the Muslims will outnumber the Sinhalese
before long. The dynamics of population increase have been well
established. With literacy birth control comes into operation invariably,
unless there are religious sanctions against birth control. There arent
under Islam. The average Muslim family of today consists of two to three
children, just as among the Sinhalese and Tamils. It is impossible to
believe that the Muslims who are ten percent of the population can come
to outnumber the Sinhalese who are seventy five per cent of the
population in the near future or the distant future. Again the existential
charge is utterly nonsensical. E) Issues such as cattle slaughter can be
dealt with satisfactorily through resolute Government action.
Will the Opposition make those charges against the Government in a
telling manner during the election campaigns? It may make those charges
in a rather perfunctory manner without making too much of them. The
reason is that going further could result in the loss of a substantial
proportion of the Sinhala Buddhist votes. People like myself can theorize
without counting the costs but the politicians will have to go to the
hustings, they will have to make speeches that garner votes not alienate
them, and they will have to strictly eschew anything that might be
counterproductive to their purpose of gaining power. Therefore speaking
up for the rights of the Muslims and the Tamils is out.
If indeed speaking up for the rights of the minorities will alienate Sinhalese
votes to a substantial extent, a horrible conclusion has to be drawn: this
country will not be fit for a fully functioning democracy for the foreseeable
future; it will be fit only for majoritarian anti-democracy. Minority members
like myself have the option of telling our two major ethnic parties, the UNP

and the SLFP, A plague on both your houses, and then abandoning political
action. But that would amount to a counsel of despair. The only sensible
option would be to work together with the sane and wholesome elements
among the Sinhalese to bring about a fully functioning democracy. That
would require the destruction of majoritarian anti-democracy.
izethhussain@gmail.com
Posted by Thavam