Term limits for elected politicians

The uprisings in North Africa, popularly labelled as the ‘Arab Spring,’ have without doubt caused a great deal of introspection and concern among autocrats and leaders the world over.Reactions have been generally, among dictators, to repress public discontent further, tighten up the internal security apparatus and empower the forces of repression and suppression with enhanced powers.

These are short-term responses; the lessons of history clearly prove that in the medium- and long-term, such responses are not sustainable.

Cuba is one nation that has responded in a sensible and mature manner. True, it is a communist autocracy; until recently, not only a one party but also a one man state – Fidel Castro. But Fidel is a sick man and has handed over the baton to his brother Raul, who was earlier Army Commander.  Addressing the annual communist party congress, Raul recently said: “We have come to the conclusion that it is advisable to recommend limiting of time of service in high political office and state positions to a maximum of two five year terms.” As readers know, in Sri Lanka we have just abolished the term limit imposed by the Constitution on the president holding office. There are no term limits imposed on any other elected political office in Sri Lanka either.

Cuban example

Raul Castro’s possible reasons for doing this in Cuba are interesting. Raul termed it “embarrassing” that Cuba had failed adequately “to secure the promotion of women, black people and people of mixed race and youths to decision-making positions” based on “their merits and personal qualifications. We have not been able to solve this problem in more than half a century,” he said.

He admitted that Cuba lacked “a reserve of well trained replacements with sufficient experience and maturity”. Another reason may be that Fidel is approaching 85 years and is sick; Raul himself is 80; the first Vice President Jose Machado Ventura is 80; and the average age of other top party officials is over 70. So succession must have been also an issue.

As Bert Hoffman at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg points out: “It is somewhat ironic that the idea of term limits comes only when it does not affect the historic generation any more, due to the age of its leaders!”

The leaders who led the erstwhile Cuban Revolution in 1959 are all in the proverbial departure lounge awaiting the call; maybe they want to ensure that their successors will not inherit the privilege of lifetime rule!

Host of changes

This change is among a host of others Raul proposed to the congress, consisting of 1,000 delegates who appeared much younger and more mixed in gender, age and race than the party’s ageing leaders.

The congress was presented with more than 300 proposals, aimed at transforming the Cuban economy from a state-dominated system, riddled with paternalism and subsidies, to one in which markets and private initiatives in agriculture and retail services play a greater role.

The intention seemed to be to create more consumer choice and to better target welfare provision. The reforms are designed to rescue an economy that can no longer feed Cuba’s 11 million people in the face of low productivity at home and a chronic shortage of foreign exchange.

However, the Cubans maintain that these changes are to update the model to ‘perfect socialism’ and not to scrap it. Although the dinosaur of state planning will remain paramount, about a million workers now on the state payroll will leave their public service jobs and set up small enterprises.

The ‘Liberta’ ration card which guarantees Cubans a steadily dwindling monthly food allocation was described by Raul as “an unbearable burden for the economy and a disincentive to work”. In future it will be targeted to the neediest. Critics have made similar criticisms on Sri Lanka’s poverty relief Samurdhi and other handout schemes programmes.

Term limits

Term limits for elected officials have been discussed by commentators at length. Prof. Larry J. Sabato, Director of the Centre for Politics, University of Virginia, USA, in a recent publication – ‘A More Perfect Constitution’ published by Walker & Co. of New York – has proposed 23 changes to reform the Constitution of the USA. In his words, “to revitalise our Constitution and make America a fairer country”. Prof. Sabato requests his readers to remember that the framers of the US Constitution, at Philadelphia, around 1789, were working in a pressure packed vacuum, attempting to build a system which had never existed before. Further, he quotes a letter from Constitutional framers, Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, written at the time the Constitutional Convention first met, to the effect that “no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. Every Constitution, every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years” (a generation, in those days before longevity). Among the changes proposed by Prof Sabato, which would interest us, is one for ‘Term Limits for Elected Politicians’. Sabato quotes American term limits advocate Richard Davies: “Politicians in government should be changed regularly, like diapers, and for the same reason.”

Sri Lanka

We, in Sri Lanka – who, ever since an elected legislature was created, have over the years watched legislators elected by voters supporting one set of policies crossing the floor of the House and sitting and voting with the government or the opposition, with legislators who were elected to support a diametrically opposite set of policies, thereby completely negating the mandate from the voters – should consider seriously Davies’ point of view.

The problem here has been compounded by the district list system, which severed the link between the elected politician and a specific electorate as against the administrative district and also by attempts in the past to legislate to keep members unseated by election petitions in the House and further by large numbers of legislators crossing the floor and supporting policies which they were originally elected to specifically oppose! Rotation in office rests on the notion that one individual holding on to any single office for an extended period of time is anathema to the mechanism of representative democracy. New ideas and fresh blood, perhaps even greater representation for historically underrepresented youth, women and minorities, are guaranteed with term limits.  In the absence of term limits, political behaviour is based on a desire to get re-elected, rather than on conscience or on a policy. With term limits, the prevention of the emergence of ‘career politicians’ (like our crossovers) and the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of an unaccountable few can be avoided.

US term limits

Sabato argues that the authors of the American Constitution fully expected that there would be frequent rotation in office. He says they could not have even imagined the professionalisation of the political class which is seen in the US of A today. Increasingly, in American legislatures, voting and other related decisions are made out of a pressing desire to ensure re-election, rather than out of national or state interest.  Over a dozen US States have imposed term limits, similar to the US and (at one time) Sri Lanka presidency. Revolutionary law makers in the US drafted new state constitutions in all the former colonies to ensure that foreign colonial tyrants would not be replaced with new, home grown demagogues.

For example, the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution barred lawmakers from serving as state representatives for more than four years within a seven year period. The Virginia Constitution of the same year provided that legislators should ‘be restrained from oppression, by feeling and participating [in] the burdens of the people. They should at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies supplied by frequent, certain and regular elections.’ Here then was the Roman ideal of citizen-legislator serving his country and then happily returning to private life. Benjamin Franklin puts it succinctly: “In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns. For the former, therefore, to return to the latter [is] not to degrade them, but to promote them.” Today’s reality of career politicians would have made very little sense to the founders of the US. George Washington solidified the principle of voluntary rotation of office as a central facet of American politics with his decision not to seek a third term as president, long before the limit for the presidency of the USA was legislatively mandated.

Strong case for term limits in SL

There is a strong case for term limits to be imposed in Sri Lanka for legislators at the three levels of government – local, provincial and national – thereby providing for an upward graduation process for the successful and an ‘honourable’ retirement for those who reach the limit at whatever level.

Our political culture is dominated by career politicians; there is no age of retirement. To remain a legislator in ‘power’ by hook or by crook, at whatever level, pradeshiya sabha, provincial or national, seems to be the sole motivating and driving force. After them, their progeny; political dynasties are the rule and not the exception! The Arabs joked that the similarity between their rulers and HIV AIDS was that both were sexually transmitted!

What drives such career politicians is longevity in power, not policy, not responsibility to electors, not accountability, not morality, not national or even regional interest; there are of course some honourable exceptions which reinforce the rule, few and far between.

The perquisites of office, far too many to mention, for which the increasingly burdened taxpayer pays, and the ephemeral myth of power, seem the attraction. We need effective term limits at all legislative levels to re-establish the sovereignty of the voter urgently, before the concept of voter sovereignty is also dumped in the dustbin of history.

One is reminded of when a former Prime Minister of Ceylon, after his party had won the election, was asked by a reporter: “Now that your party is in power, what are your plans?” The PM responded: “I wish to correct you; my party has ‘taken office,’ we do not ‘take power,’ unlike some other political parties may!”

Excellent example

What Cuba has done, maybe for all the wrong reasons, serves as an excellent example for all democracies to follow. Rulers should realise that when a planned legal and systemic succession is not provided for by law, other forces, most times outside the law, which know no law, take over.

In that context commentators have predicted that the current ‘Arab Spring’ will be followed inevitably by a ‘scorching Arab summer,’ in which it is hoped the rule of law and good governance will be successfully re-imposed. Realistically this seems implausible, judging from events just now. Current indications are certainly not conducive to predicting such a benign outcome.

The recent elimination of Al Qaeda’s Osama Bin Laden at Abbotabad near Islamabad in Pakistan takes away another option the Arabs would have had of a fundamentalist Islamic Emirate.

(The writer is a lawyer, who has over 30 years experience as a CEO in both government and private sectors. He retired from the office of Secretary, Ministry of Finance and currently is the Managing Director of the Sri Lanka Business Development Centre.)