Equally poor or equally rich? Options from two extremes
JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake told a party district convention in Kegalle last Sunday that if his party comes to power it will introduce a political culture whereby all politicians will be made to travel in public transport such as buses and trains.
‘You may have seen politicians in other countries travel in buses, trains, bicycles and public transport and work abreast with people. We will create that political culture and transformation. We will assure you that.’
He said, ‘JVP MPs had never used police personnel for their private security’ but failed to say whether JVP MPs presently use public transport to travel to attend to their public or personal affairs.
The plan, of course, is nothing new. The same old battered, worn-out, hackneyed and now discarded political and economic Marxist doctrine still touted by the JVP—as their forefathers had done half a century ago—as the addictive opium to induce an inferiority-ridden class with the promise of creating a utopian classless society by making everyone equally poor.
If you shun this leftist extreme, fear not, help is at hand. There’s an alternative right wing extreme available in the market.
It comes from the latest political party in town, entertaining presidential ambitions even before it has stepped out of its bassinet. Called the Mawbima Janatha Party it’s led by media owner of Ada Derana TV, Dilith Jayaweera.
Its manifesto holds the more positive and ambitious aim of creating the right utopian condition to make all equally rich. A rich man’s paradise where everyone’s a car owner and everyone’s a homeowner to boot. The party has drawn up a timetable and says it can even forecast the date.
Mawbima Janatha leader Jayaweera addressing a party district convention at a hotel in Kalutara last week said: ‘We intend to transform this country into one where everyone can be a car owner and a home owner. We are preparing a schedule with dates so that youth who have migrated will return home.’
The aim, of course, is nothing new either. It’s the same old rehashed gospel of hope with the tempting bait of economic prosperity for all, cast by right-wing parties across the world to catch the voter hook, line and sinker at elections.
Out of the two options the JVP promise seems much easier to fulfil. Making the minute rich equally poor with the vast majority of those languishing in poverty can be done overnight with one swift stroke of legal quill. But to make more than two-thirds of those below the poverty belt equally rich will certainly demand a miracle.
Social justice is not about condemning all to a stagnating well nor of making everyone rich. Social justice is about levelling the ground and creating an equal playing field for all to rise above their positions by their own efforts and merits.