Recent Developments in Sri Lanka Politics

Abstract

S RI LANKA had a great deal at stake in the July i977 elections, perhaps including the survival of its democratic traditions, for if Sirimavo Bandaranaike's left-of-centre Sri Lanka Freedom Party had won, it would have marked the almost certain demise for the right wing of Ceylonese politics and might well have ushered in an age of socialist dictatorship. There were too many totalitarian signs in Mrs. Bandaranaike's seven-year grip on the parliament and the enormous state bureaucracy to suggest otherwise. But for a variety of reasons her defeat was predictable, and in retrospect one can see a pattern of policies and events indicating that her government was sliding towards failure almost from the beginning. Though it is relatively easy to enumerate reasons for the decline of the United Front and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party' over the past few years, it is harder to see how the various issues combined to produce the defeat at the polls. But it can be said at once that unproductive economic programs and an arrogant style of administration were major sources of discontent. From these a host of other difficulties spread out to suffocate the good intentions of Mrs. Bandaranaike's government. In the field of economics, very little that the United Front introduced as reform measures produced long-term benefits. Almost all of the programs seemed to suffer from such gross mismanagement as to destroy their potential value. A prime example was the Land Reform Act of I972, widely applauded as a long-overdue measure. Over 400,000 acres of once privately-owned estate property were distributed to landless peasants. But much of the value of the program was offset by the high-handed manner in which the land was allocated, and by the inability of many peasants to make proper use of it