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Friday 31 August 2012
Monday 20 August 2012
Education Policy And FUTA’s Mandate: Some Thoughts
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Some people have made an argument that FUTA has exceeded the mandate of a trade union when it demands the government to allocate 6% of the GDP to education. This argument emanates from the position that trade unions have no business with government’s fiscal policy. According to the advocates of this position, deciding priorities and policies of allocating government expenditure is entirely the job of the government and its policy-making officials.
This essay is only supplementary to the excellent response earlier circulated by Shamala Kumar of Peradeniya.
To begin with, the argument of FUTA exceeding its mandate emanates from a narrow, minimalist, and sorry to say, outdated, understanding of trade unionism. Although trade unions have often focused their struggles on wage demands, trade unionism in general has not been confined to wage-related demands alone. Those who have the slightest understanding of the history of trade unionism in Sri Lanka would know that even during the colonial times, Sri Lanka’s trade unions combined economic demands with social and political demands as well. It is wrong to suggest that trade unionism by definition is concerned exclusively and only on wage demands.
What the critics of FUTA’s demand for increased allocation of government expenditure on public education want from FUTA is to confine its concerns to a narrow and minimalist framework. But, neither the FUTA nor many of the trade unions in Sri Lanka or elsewhere are minimalist in their orientation, agendas and demands.
This wage-related minimalism in trade union agenda is a position advocated at present in Sri Lanka by two groups of FUTA critics. The first group represents the interests and policies of the government and the Ministry of Higher Education. The second group consists mostly of economists who appear to share the view that fiscal policy decisions are the exclusive prerogative of the economists at the Treasury, and not the lesser mortals, the proletariat, organised in trade unions. The latter position gives rise to the wrong notion that ‘economists and the Treasury know best.’
The demand by the FUTA as well as well as FUTA’s responses to its critics debunks this myth of exclusive privilege of policy-making monopoly in allocating government expenditure that some economists seem to accord to the Treasury, without listening to what the society, the people, the citizens, and the so-called stakeholders have to say. In a way, it reflects a specific culture of policy-making that has been advanced in Sri Lanka and many developing countries under neo-liberal economic reforms. As many critical studies of policy making under globalization, structural adjustment programmes and neo-liberal reforms show, economic policy making has now been reduced to a small group of an exclusive elite whose members are the country’s President or the Prime Minister, Finance or Economic Affairs Minister, the Treasury Secretary, the resident representatives of the World Bank and the IMF, and a few highly-paid expatriate or self-exiled policy consultants. The majority of this group are unelected people, who are not accountable to the people. Actually, one of the most undemocratic consequences of this development for governance is that neither Parliament elected by the people nor the Cabinet of Ministers consisting of people’s representatives has any serious say in public policy-making. They can only shout in anger when they do not get enough money for their ministries! That is why our Parliament and the Cabinet have been reduced to what they are today. In fact, one major indirect implication of the FUTA demand is for the Cabinet and Parliament to retrieve their right to decide priorities of public expenditure allocations in a manner that serves the people of the country, their electors, not the agenda of a small group of economists converted to the neo-liberal ideology.
It is also necessary for our critics and for us also to recognise that wage and economic demands of trade unions are integrally linked to public policy, especially in a context where our country is in a period of rapid policy change. That is precisely why workers in the Katunayake Free Trade Zone opposed the pension reform bill and organised demonstrations to show that opposition. It was an open challenge to government policy and it reflected the fact that economic welfare of the labour cannot be detached from the policy decisions of the government. When public sector unions opposed privatisation, they were challenging government policy. When the FUTA is asking to allocate 6% of the GDP to education, it is demanding policy reforms that directly affect their wage demands as well. In Sri Lanka, many trade unions have now realised that their wage and service conditions and government policies are so intertwined that improvement in the first calls for re-orientation of the second.
Those who know about trade union politics also know that advancing wage demands alone by trade unions creates a paradoxical challenge in which the wage demands benefit only its members, not the society at large. This is a problem that has been debated in the trade union movement in the world extensively, even in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Sri Lanka, employers and governments have always resorted to the tactic of branding wage demands of trade unions as having been motivated by the selfish interests of the members. This, in fact, happened during the first phase of the FUTA struggle. When a union broadens its concerns and links itself with issues of public interests that transcends the so-called selfish interests of its members, that union is accused of going beyond its mandate!
Moreover, the minimalist construction of the FUTA mandate by its critics is also a position that refuses to consider FUTA as a stakeholder in education in the country. It considers trade unions merely as organisations of wage-slaves that should not exceed their wage-labour mandate. This is actually a colonial as well as neo-liberal attitude to trade unions. It is colonial because, during colonialism, no trade union or a citizens’ organisation was expected to challenge the state, state policy or state officials. ‘Subjects’ did not have the right to challenge the rulers. They had to fight for that right. It is neo-liberal because the neo-liberal, as well as classical-liberal, ideology does not expect the citizens to be active participants in the political or policy process, except as passive individual citizens or minimally active consumers. It is social democracy that took trade unionism beyond these narrow confines and made trade unions active agents of social, political and policy change. Most of the trade unions in Sri Lanka have been nurtured in this social democratic tradition.
And it is sad that this colonial, outdated and hierarchical attitude to trade unionism is now being propagated by some of our own colleagues in the universities, some of whom are members of our own unions. May be the FUTA should organise a short course on trade unionism – Trade Union Politics 1101 –for its members who still operate on the colonial understanding of trade unions. In that course, some readings on new trends in trade union politics globally could be easily distributed for the benefit of all.
The role of trade unions as a stakeholder of public policy is a key principle that the FUTA highlights in the present phase of its struggle. This is a task that FUTA should continue to uphold as within its trade union mandate. () (Colombotelegraph)
Home Sri
Some people have made an argument that FUTA has exceeded the mandate of a trade union when it demands the government to allocate 6% of the GDP to education. This argument emanates from the position that trade unions have no business with government’s fiscal policy. According to the advocates of this position, deciding priorities and policies of allocating government expenditure is entirely the job of the government and its policy-making officials.
This essay is only supplementary to the excellent response earlier circulated by Shamala Kumar of Peradeniya.
To begin with, the argument of FUTA exceeding its mandate emanates from a narrow, minimalist, and sorry to say, outdated, understanding of trade unionism. Although trade unions have often focused their struggles on wage demands, trade unionism in general has not been confined to wage-related demands alone. Those who have the slightest understanding of the history of trade unionism in Sri Lanka would know that even during the colonial times, Sri Lanka’s trade unions combined economic demands with social and political demands as well. It is wrong to suggest that trade unionism by definition is concerned exclusively and only on wage demands.
What the critics of FUTA’s demand for increased allocation of government expenditure on public education want from FUTA is to confine its concerns to a narrow and minimalist framework. But, neither the FUTA nor many of the trade unions in Sri Lanka or elsewhere are minimalist in their orientation, agendas and demands.
This wage-related minimalism in trade union agenda is a position advocated at present in Sri Lanka by two groups of FUTA critics. The first group represents the interests and policies of the government and the Ministry of Higher Education. The second group consists mostly of economists who appear to share the view that fiscal policy decisions are the exclusive prerogative of the economists at the Treasury, and not the lesser mortals, the proletariat, organised in trade unions. The latter position gives rise to the wrong notion that ‘economists and the Treasury know best.’
The demand by the FUTA as well as well as FUTA’s responses to its critics debunks this myth of exclusive privilege of policy-making monopoly in allocating government expenditure that some economists seem to accord to the Treasury, without listening to what the society, the people, the citizens, and the so-called stakeholders have to say. In a way, it reflects a specific culture of policy-making that has been advanced in Sri Lanka and many developing countries under neo-liberal economic reforms. As many critical studies of policy making under globalization, structural adjustment programmes and neo-liberal reforms show, economic policy making has now been reduced to a small group of an exclusive elite whose members are the country’s President or the Prime Minister, Finance or Economic Affairs Minister, the Treasury Secretary, the resident representatives of the World Bank and the IMF, and a few highly-paid expatriate or self-exiled policy consultants. The majority of this group are unelected people, who are not accountable to the people. Actually, one of the most undemocratic consequences of this development for governance is that neither Parliament elected by the people nor the Cabinet of Ministers consisting of people’s representatives has any serious say in public policy-making. They can only shout in anger when they do not get enough money for their ministries! That is why our Parliament and the Cabinet have been reduced to what they are today. In fact, one major indirect implication of the FUTA demand is for the Cabinet and Parliament to retrieve their right to decide priorities of public expenditure allocations in a manner that serves the people of the country, their electors, not the agenda of a small group of economists converted to the neo-liberal ideology.
It is also necessary for our critics and for us also to recognise that wage and economic demands of trade unions are integrally linked to public policy, especially in a context where our country is in a period of rapid policy change. That is precisely why workers in the Katunayake Free Trade Zone opposed the pension reform bill and organised demonstrations to show that opposition. It was an open challenge to government policy and it reflected the fact that economic welfare of the labour cannot be detached from the policy decisions of the government. When public sector unions opposed privatisation, they were challenging government policy. When the FUTA is asking to allocate 6% of the GDP to education, it is demanding policy reforms that directly affect their wage demands as well. In Sri Lanka, many trade unions have now realised that their wage and service conditions and government policies are so intertwined that improvement in the first calls for re-orientation of the second.
Those who know about trade union politics also know that advancing wage demands alone by trade unions creates a paradoxical challenge in which the wage demands benefit only its members, not the society at large. This is a problem that has been debated in the trade union movement in the world extensively, even in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Sri Lanka, employers and governments have always resorted to the tactic of branding wage demands of trade unions as having been motivated by the selfish interests of the members. This, in fact, happened during the first phase of the FUTA struggle. When a union broadens its concerns and links itself with issues of public interests that transcends the so-called selfish interests of its members, that union is accused of going beyond its mandate!
Moreover, the minimalist construction of the FUTA mandate by its critics is also a position that refuses to consider FUTA as a stakeholder in education in the country. It considers trade unions merely as organisations of wage-slaves that should not exceed their wage-labour mandate. This is actually a colonial as well as neo-liberal attitude to trade unions. It is colonial because, during colonialism, no trade union or a citizens’ organisation was expected to challenge the state, state policy or state officials. ‘Subjects’ did not have the right to challenge the rulers. They had to fight for that right. It is neo-liberal because the neo-liberal, as well as classical-liberal, ideology does not expect the citizens to be active participants in the political or policy process, except as passive individual citizens or minimally active consumers. It is social democracy that took trade unionism beyond these narrow confines and made trade unions active agents of social, political and policy change. Most of the trade unions in Sri Lanka have been nurtured in this social democratic tradition.
And it is sad that this colonial, outdated and hierarchical attitude to trade unionism is now being propagated by some of our own colleagues in the universities, some of whom are members of our own unions. May be the FUTA should organise a short course on trade unionism – Trade Union Politics 1101 –for its members who still operate on the colonial understanding of trade unions. In that course, some readings on new trends in trade union politics globally could be easily distributed for the benefit of all.
The role of trade unions as a stakeholder of public policy is a key principle that the FUTA highlights in the present phase of its struggle. This is a task that FUTA should continue to uphold as within its trade union mandate. () (Colombotelegraph)
Home Sri
Wednesday 1 August 2012
Sri Lankan government moves to gag web sites
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Sri Lankan Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella announced on July 12
that the government planned new regulations under the draconian Press
Council Act to control web sites. Once the cabinet approved the
amendments he would present them to parliament for approval within
weeks, Rambukwella added.
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The regulations would extend the
coverage of the Press Council, a government tribunal that can fine and
jail journalists, to web sites as well as other media outlets. This step
is part of an intensifying attack on media and democratic rights,
designed to strengthen the police-state apparatus developed by President
Mahinda Rajapakse amid an intensifying economic and political crisis.
Rambukwella
did not specify all the details of the proposed measures but said the
government would charge 100,000 rupees ($US770) to register a web site
and 50,000 rupees every year to maintain the registration.
The
minister said the provisions would apply the same rules to web sites as
to news sources. “If any person or institution is disturbed or defamed
by erroneous news reports, photographs published in any newspaper they
could complain to the Sri Lanka Press Council,” he said. These rules
against so-called “mudslinging” or “disturbing” anyone give enormous
scope to the government to crack down on dissent.
Rambukwella claimed: “The free media is not under threat.” Yet,
the announcement came just two weeks after the police raided and sealed
off the offices of pro-United National Party (UNP) opposition web
sites, Sri Lanka Mirror and Sri Lanka X News, and
arrested nine workers, accusing them of “conspiracy against the
government.” The police also seized computers and documents.
To
justify the June 29 arrests, the police cited penal code 118, which
prohibits the publication of articles defamatory of the president. When
the defence lawyers explained that the clause had been repealed in 2002,
a magistrate ordered the release of those arrested. However, the police
are now seeking to charge them under other provisions in the penal
code.
The government’s Press Council (PC) has the powers of a
district court. Its chairman and members are appointed by the president.
It can hold an inquiry into a complaint and censure the proprietor,
printer, publisher, editor or journalist of a newspaper, and also direct
them to publish an apology and correction.
If a complaint
amounts to defamation, a defendant can be punished with a fine of up to
5,000 rupees or two years’ imprisonment, or both. Penalties can also be
imposed for publishing cabinet proceedings, “official secrets,”
government financial information or defence matters. Contempt or
disrespect for the authority of the PC is an offense punishable by the
Supreme Court, but no legal action can be instituted against PC members.
The
Press Council Act (PCA) was introduced in 1973 by the coalition
government of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), Lanka Sama Samaja
Party and the Stalinist Communist Party. The legislation was adopted
after the crushing of the abortive 1971 guerrilla uprising led by the
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, during which the military killed 15,000 rural
youth.
Facing increasing opposition from the working class and
rural poor against attacks on their living conditions under conditions
of economic crisis internationally and in Sri Lanka, the SLFP-led
coalition government invoked draconian emergency laws and imposed the
PCA to muzzle the press.
Since then, governments, politicians
and companies have used the PCA to witch-hunt newspapers, editors and
journalists. Among them was Kamkaru Mawtha (Workers’ Path), the newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist League—the forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party.
A
right-wing United National Party-led government temporarily rendered
the infamous law defunct in 2002 during negotiations with the separatist
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to end the island’s protracted
civil war. However, it did not abolish the law.
The Rajapakse
government that came to power in 2005 as part of its renewed communal
war against the LTTE sought to intimidate and suppress the media. Under
this government, 16 journalists and media workers have been killed by
pro-government death squads and at least another 25 journalists
subjected to physical attack. Others have fled the country, fearing for
their lives.
In June 2009, just two weeks after the war ended in
the military defeat of the LTTE, Rajapakse reactivated the PC to
further intimidate the press.
Facing a deepening economic crisis
and developing resistance by workers, poor and young people, the
Rajapakse government—like other governments around the world—is fearful
of popular means of communication and web sites.
The government
is notorious for blocking web sites critical of it, or which expose the
corruption of ruling party politicians and the use of military
intelligence to attack opposition and workers’ protests. Last November,
without any legal basis, the media ministry requested all web sites to
register with it.
In March, the Defence and Urban Development
ministry imposed new restrictions on widely distributed SMS news alert
services. Any news related to national security, the security forces and
the police must now get prior approval by the Media Centre for National
Security.
In May, Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court dismissed a
challenge to the closure of four web sites that had failed to register
with the government. The court ruled that freedom of expression in Sri
Lanka was not an absolute right and could be restricted, even without
passing a law to do so.
The government’s latest move has been
condemned by international media organisations. “We view this move as
the third stage in a crackdown on user generated content on the web,
following the ban of four web sites in November last year for their
failure to register with the Ministry and the police raids carried out
on the office premises of two news portals in June,” the International
Federation of Journalists said.
This intensifying repression is
an attempt to counter deepening disaffection among workers, the rural
and urban poor, and youth and students. The government is imposing a
series of austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) that drastically affect living standards.
This month, the
IMF backed the austerity measures by approving the final instalment of a
$US2.6 billion loan, which was granted in July 2009 to avert a balance
of payment crisis. The government is now seeking another $500 million
from the IMF, on terms that will inevitably mean even more severe cuts
to public spending and price subsidies for essential items such as food
and fuel. (WSWS)
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