Who are the would- be new guards of Sri Lanka and what are they saying?

• It is more accurate to say that the new political entity, NPP, has replaced the Pohottuwa/SLFP

The old guard has collapsed is the popular catchphrase after Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s presidential election victory.   If the result of the presidential poll is the basis of that assumption, it is an oversimplification. 

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake

True that the well-funded candidacy of Anura Kumara Dissanayake defeated equally two well-funded candidates who represented roots in the UNP and traditional old-guard politics, but the duo collectively polled one million more votes than the winner. At the same time, there is no gainsaying the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (Pohottuwa) and the SLFP, which represented one side of the traditional duopoly of Sri Lankan politics, has collapsed along with the dynastic enterprise Mahinda Rajapaksa had funded state resources for over a decade. It is more accurate to say that the new political entity, NPP, has replaced the Pohottuwa/SLFP. That, at best, means the collapse of one side of the duopoly. However, there is no gainsaying that a new guard is emerging and they will consolidate their place in Sri Lankan politics in the general election on November 14th. 

Parliamentary elections that follow the presidential election generally favour the president’s party, which provides a natural advantage to the NPP. The SJB’s own troubles also make it less appealing to the voters. In their admission, SJB is not running to form a government but to become the opposition. That should make things easier for the NPP. It would be the new guards of the NPP who would rule the country for the next five years -- probably much shorter if it shoots its foot with a series of myopic economic policies as did Gotabaya Rajapaksa, or much longer if the SJB, UNP, or other parties in the opposition fail to get their acts together and innovate themselves and emerge as a group worthy of governing the country. 

Therefore, it is important to ask who this new guard. The public will have a more nuanced picture sometime after they are in power. However, in their relative obscurity, they appear enticing enough to the voters, who were previously attracted to another group which looked strikingly similar, except in the name: Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s Viyath Maga.

A few snippets would give a general, though not a complete, idea of this group.

Many professionals 

First, the JVP nomination lists: The NPP has fielded many professionals, doctors, lawyers, university dons, indigenous businessmen, etc. In most electoral districts, except Colombo, their leader is a JVP old-guard. This is a classic strategy of revolutionary Marxist parties at their initial stage of taking state power, appearing more palatable to the general public by placing a diverse set of amenable and like-minded actors while keeping the core control of the group under the party’s grip. (China’s People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body, still has eight legally allowed minor parties, including one aptly called the  China Democratic League.)

Perhaps the JVP and NPP would claim that the district leaders were picked based on their long political careers. 
Second, the NPP has fielded a large cohort of professionals of various disciplines, which one would say is a genuine effort to bring the right people to politics. More so, politics has been devalued in the eyes of the voters exactly because of the type of lowlifes who have infested the system. That is a commendable gesture. At the same time, that can do only so much.

Consider G.L. Peiris, who is one of the few world-class Sri Lankan academics who could overwhelm any of his international peers with his sheer academic and professional merit. I doubt whether all of the NPPs experts could put together could match his credentials. But, in politics, G.L.Peiris became a two-tongued charlatan and relegated himself to the nanny of Rajapaksa offsprings, so much for Oxford professorships. There is something equally important in politics: Integrity. 

The NPP projects its candidates as having that elusive ingredient that is lacking in most Sri Lankan politicians. We still don’t know, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. 

 
Integrity alone wouldn’t help. Like it or not, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, N.M Perera and Colvin et al. va et all of the 1970-77 government were people of integrity. Sirimavo alone gave away thousands of acres of ancestral land to the government under a land reform act passed by her government when a committee identified landlessness as a cause for the 1971 youth unrest. No political leader in world politics is known to have made a similar sacrifice. Why countries like Pakistan are in the throes of deep-seated inequality is exactly the politically powerful feudal landlords hold onto large swaths of lands amidst a feudal serf-like landless rural majority. 

Still, despite all the well-intentioned decisions, the Sri Lankan economy crashed during 1970-77 and lost its competitive advantage due to their misplaced statist economic policies inspired by their own idealism. 
This leads us to economic ideology, perhaps the most important element of a successful government. This is where one should be worried about the new guard. Whenever an NPP candidate speaks, one cannot help but spot dark clouds of economic protectionism. This is a lose-lose ideology that has made Sri Lanka an economic backwater.

From restructuring the State- Owned- Enterprises to large-scale investment projects, you hear chants of protectionism. This sense of protectionism fosters state monopoly and inefficiency. One should welcome the government’s commitment to spend more on education and tertiary education. Still, given the usual slogans, one might have reason to worry that, rather than encouraging the Private Public partnership in higher education, it may take a turn to state monopoly, depriving opportunity to a large swathe of students of a decent education.
The recent episode of egg prices is a microcosm of how protectionist taxes on maize have distorted the market and killed growth opportunities. But, the JVP speakers misread the market dynamic and attributed it to the absence of a commission under the new government. Then, suddenly, the price skyrocketed, and now the opponents ask who is now making an 8 rupee commission from an egg or whether the hens themselves take the bribe. 
It is the economic populism and economic protectionism of the new guards, which broadly fit the JVP ideology, that the voters should be worried about. No matter how well-intentioned they are, it would destroy the economy and rob the country of yet another opportunity for economic takeoff.

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