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Our new Minister of Finance is not neutral. He has decided his side of the barricade. The term ‘Interim Budget’ is a misnomer. What the Minister of Finance of the Rainbow coalition introduced in Parliament on 29 January is neither interim nor tentative. It is a decided and a decisive document that frames the ideology of the rainbow coalition. Recording history needs clarity of purpose. The purpose of history is to place people in the context of their time.
There is a ‘false consciousness’ that comforts a good section of parliamentarians on both sides of the house. The leader of the opposition owes party allegiance and parliamentary loyalty to the President of the Republic and Chairman of the SLFP. The Prime Minister with no demonstrated majority in the House owes his office to the confidence of the President who is now the Chairman of the SLFP and hence in command of the largest group in opposition. The Opposition offers reluctant support and the Government claims legitimacy with an ambiguous mandate derived from its support extended to the new President of the Republic.
[False consciousness is a concept derived from Marxist theory of Social Class. It refers to a systematic misrepresentation of dominant social relations in the consciousness of subordinated classes. E.g. The certainty in the minds of many UNP Ministers that their return to absolute command is imminent.]
The Minister of Finance has demonstrated great courage and astute political will by doing what he did and saying what he said in Parliament and the business forum later.
He presented his proposals to Parliament on Thursday and explained it to the country’s business elite on Friday. This writer watched both events on TV and noted with regret the absence of Chandra Jayaratne, the distinguished chairman emeritus of the chamber at the latter event.
Way forward in first 100 days and beyond
Ravi Karunanayake belongs to that miniscule minority of UNP seniors who, at tremendous risk to their political survival, initiated, promoted and succeeded in the exercise of persuading the UNP to throw its weight behind the common candidacy of President Maithripala Sirisena. 
Therefore it is not surprising that he chose to explicitly set down the way forward in the first 100 days and beyond. This was not apparent on the day he addressed Parliament. Or if it was, it failed to register. The excitement created by the Mansion Tax drowned all else. The penalty imposed on vulgar opulence quenched the mass thirst for equity. It was a welcome diversion. It appeased the piety of a people conditioned by the dictates of a prince who left the palace encouraging others to leave their mansions.
A day later he addressed the economic elite at the forum organised by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. Together with Dr. Harsha De Silva he explained the politics of the amendments to be made to the appropriations bill that was passed by Parliament in October 2014 which was originally intended to facilitate a third term to the former President.
Someone from the media called it the ‘Interim Budget’. Captions and taglines tend to leave a persistent memory in the public psyche. Therefore it is necessary to clear the misconception implied in the term ‘Interim Budget’. Instead it is a document of some durable value to a coalition of political and social movements that worked hard to bring about ‘change’. The change was neither UNP nor SLFP.
Authoritarian rulers regard silence imposed by the deep state over the citizenry as a sign of support. In the case of those induced by incentives as acquiescence of a gullible electorate.
Transcending parochial politics
It is therefore heartening to hear Ravi Karunanayake describing the 8 January transformation as a movement that transcends parochial politics. He announced: “They gave a clear mandate emphasising that they desperately need a change. A change that goes far beyond party politics and individual aspirations to create a new political and economic culture in the country.” The supplementary Budget has received admiration of the many and acceptance of the sceptical few. It has not generated the usual denunciation that the defeated reserve for the triumphant. The exercise of amending the pre-election Mahinda budget with post-election Maithri revisions has succeeded in achieving a range of socio-economic objectives. Most objectives of the supplementary amendments proposed are framed by concerns over fairness and equity denied to a people by a regime that preached progress and practiced paranoid surveillance.
An entrepreneurial maverick
The Minister of Finance has been often described by some as an entrepreneurial maverick. This writer was one of them. It was with a large dose of surprise mixed with an equal quantity of admiration that this writer saw Ravi Karunanayake in the role of ideologue of the Maithri Movement.
The sheer élan with which he disabused the minds of the buccaneer business class that the purpose of change was to position equity ahead of profit was breath-taking. 98% of the people are in support of these measures he intoned, clearly indicating that free market ideology will not offer cover to the oligarchs trading on patronage politics and patriotic pretensions. “Yes. We did not touch the allocations for defence expenditure. Yes. Defence expenditure has continued to escalate since the war ended. Of course it is sensible to review such exorbitant figures. Do you think we could have done it with them poised to scream that national security is compromised? Yes. State-Owned Enterprises need improvement. But no plans for privatisation.”
[He was cautious enough to remark that in the case of SriLankan Airlines it needed to be decided whether it is a going concern]
Dr. Harsha De Silva defined development in precise terms. Development was measured by the increase in household incomes and not by the height of buildings altering the cityscape.
What was remarkable about the post budget forum with the Chamber of Commerce was the nonchalant approach of the two UNP Parliamentarians explaining to the business community that popular mobilisation moved democratisation farther and faster than the evicted regime imagined or the country’s business community expected. “The people wished to celebrate not the end of war but the peace that followed. Devolution of power, economic empowerment were strong political compulsions.”
Pitfalls and opportunities
The supplementary budget by Minister Ravi Karunanayake is a clear signal that the caretaker Government is clearly conscious of the pitfalls ahead as well as the opportunities within their grasp.
Movements calling for reform often make the error of assuming that success is easily achieved once the old regime is removed from office and new elections are held. Cleaning up politics cannot be done by evicting incumbents. Such assumptions oversimplify the complexity of representative democracy. Preventing ‘old’ politicians from returning to power is the easy part. The institutional arrangements that would disable and discourage the monopolisation of wealth and power is far more arduous. Change is when the new model makes the existing model obsolete. The Chambers of Commerce should next invite Samanali Fonseka and the ‘Aluth Parapura’ troupe for a performance. The theatre of the new generation is in the streets.
(Sarath De Alwis is a former journalist and a retired professional in the leisure and aviation industries.)
