Image: German Chief of Staff General Alfred Jodl with Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and General Keitel planning dispositions. Original Publication - 01 Jan 1942 Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Keitelby C. A. Chandraprema
(February 02, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In October 2000 I was invited by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation to attend a seminar on Public Management in Gumersbach, Germany. The most useful aspect of this trip was not what I learnt about public management, but my exposure to German Liberalism. Before my trip to Germany, my impression of a ‘liberal’ was that he was the supremely impractical, utterly naive, incompetent and woolly headed cousin of the conservative. Liberals and conservatives share the basics of their creed in common, the free market economy, democracy, plurality, individualism and the rule of law etc. But according to my impression what distinguished the liberal from a conservative was the ‘Parish priest’ like attitude of the liberals. (My friend Rajiva Wijesinghe should not get worked up about this because what I am referring to are the free floating NGO liberals and not the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka.)
The ‘Hitler’ of Hagen
This impression of liberalism that I had was probably because I am from a country where liberalism is not a practical political reality. In Sri Lanka we have only conservatives (UNP) and socialists PA, JVP. There is Rajiva’s Liberal Party in existence but it is too elitist to be of any political consequence. Hence most of the liberals that I would come across are ‘free floating’ individuals who go around wringing their hands in anguish at all the illiberal things happening in Sri Lanka. I have had no experience of liberals with experience in governance. All liberals that I have come across here are NGO type liberals. Hence my experience with the German liberals was quite a pleasant surprise.
The first thing that I discovered was that the German liberals were not naive ‘Parish priest’ types. They were like us ordinary humanbeings. They thought like us, made decisions like us. We were taken to an institution run by a liberal politician turned public administrator in the town of Hagen. This administrator had been placed in charge of an old folks facility by the liberal administration of Hagen. In almost all the advanced countries, the old folks issue is about as important as the ethnic issue is in Sri Lanka. With the rapid increase of over 65’s in their populations, many advanced countries are facing the prospect of having a large proportion of senior citizens to look after. And these old people have to be looked after at state expense from the current year’s revenue in a situation where the number of economically productive people is decreasing.
This facility that we visited was run by a unique character. He was the first liberal go-getter I ever saw! He boasted to us about the manner in which he managed to turn around the organization from a loss making operation to a profit making one by implementing ‘lean management’ principles. Lean management we were told is a principle that can be applied even in public institutions. (By profit making what is meant is that the pension receipts of the old folks at the home was enough to cover the costs of running the institution.) He also told us about the long fights he had been having with the city administration to get things done. I discovered to my surprise that even Germany which is one of the most developed and efficient countries in the world has an administrative system riddled with red tape. Listening to the kind of obstruction that could be found in the German administration, one wonders how Germany managed to develop at all. The universal inefficiency and red tape in public administration was another factor that I became conscious of during this trip.
That was the first time that I even thought of public administration since I sat for the public administration paper at my undergraduate final examination over fifteen years ago. That seminar was attended by participants from countries at varying levels of economic development. There were representatives from chronic cases like Sri Lanka and Egypt and also other less underdeveloped countries like South Africa and Croatia. One thing that struck me was that in all these countries and in Germany itself the public administration was inefficient, lethargic and riddled with red tapism. This experience left me with the feeling that the public administration in Sri Lanka is not all that bad because here we can at least galvanize the public administration into action with bribes or political threats. But in countries where the public administration is not corrupt and politicized, even threats or bribery will not get one anywhere! The only thing worse than a corrupt and politicized bureaucracy is a clean and de-politicized bureaucracy! The German local administration was abysmally red tapist and the administrator of the old folks home that we were talking about had tried unsuccessfully to obtain permission to construct a new wing for the old folks home that he was running, but had been unable to do so.
Then he had gone ahead and constructed the building without permission. And he was mightily pleased with his exploit. When the local administration had threatened to stop the construction, he had threatened to hold a press conference. If the public had been told that the local authorities were trying to stop the construction of an old folks home, that would have reflected badly on the local authorities who were also dependent on the good will of the public to remain in office. The general thrust of the lecture we got from this public official was how he ‘rammed through’ this decision or that decision. At the end of this lecture, a woman participant sitting next to me commented, "This man is not a liberal, he is a Hitler!" The attitude of this woman epitomes the liberal attitude as I was used to in Sri Lanka.
Two kinds of Liberals
Since my trip to Germany, I discovered that liberals come in two varieties. There are the NGO type liberals and the governing liberals. The NGO type liberals will be so ‘liberal’ that their attitude when taken to its logical conclusion will result in nothing ever getting done. This attitude also meshes with the NGO ethos which is aimed more at studying and exploiting issues than solving them. If the issue in question is ever solved, the NGO will be out of work. An NGO that specializes in violence against women will always want the violence against women to continue otherwise they will lose their lucrative jobs and relaxed and privileged lifestyles with plenty of foreign trips etc. So the NGO liberal always tends to posit impossible ideals which in human society will never be realized. The kind of liberal that I have come across in Sri Lanka belongs to this breed.
But then there is that other kind of liberal, the liberals with governing experience who know that in human affairs there are round holes and square pegs. The German liberals seem to be of this latter variety. Like liberals everywhere, they share much of their basic political creed with the conservatives. But the German liberals have gone a little further and they are in political partnership with the conservatives which would make them even more practical. The impression that I got of that public administrator in charge of the old folks home in Hagen city was that he was a ruthlessly practical man who wanted to get things done. He reminded me of President Premadasa! If the local authorities did not give him permission to put up a building merely due to red tapism, he went ahead anyway and constructed it without permission. To be called a Hitler by an NGO liberal because of his bulldozer like attitude was to my feeling a little excessive. He might be called a Hitler with justification if he had ordered the police to machine gun a peaceful demonstration. But to be called a Hitler for putting up an old folks home without permission from the local authority was a little out of context.
I discovered from my German experience that a governing liberal would be as practical as a conservative. For instance one question that arose during this seminar was how a liberal would react to a situation of war or civil conflict. In Sri Lanka, anybody claiming to be a liberal would react to any kind of violence with the standard worried look on the face accompanied by the wringing of hands and uttering of words of anguish. In countries like Sri Lanka also, the natural instinct of the NGO liberal would be to capitulate to the more powerful ruthless or intractable of two contending parties. Especially in a situation of ruthless and unrelenting terrorism, an NGO liberal would advocate placating the terrorist by giving him what he wants. But a governing liberal would be quite different.
I asked the moderator of our seminar Peter Schroder - a man with much experience in Sri Lanka, how a liberal would react to the September 11th attacks. He told me that he had written a book on Fundamentalism (not just the Islamic variety but all kinds of fundamentalism including Christian) where he had stressed that when a liberal democracy is confronted by a fundamentalism that does not accept the norms of liberal democracy, that liberal democracy has to react to the fundamentalist threat with all the might at its command. I asked Peter Schroder the pointed question that after the September 11th attacks there was a debate whether the CIA should be allowed to recommence their dirty tricks department and what the liberal attitude would be to that. His answer was that this is exactly what this seminar was about, that government was not doing what it should be doing but had needlessly burdened itself with all kinds of unnecessary operations. Security is a major aspect of governance. Every government had the obligation to protect its citizens and they had to do whatever was necessary to do so. If the government is remiss in that, they have not fulfilled their obligations. The concept of lean management was to take government away from unnecessary roles into their actual areas of proper concentration - such as state security.
One thing that I noticed at the Freriedrich Ebert Stiftung facility in Gummersbach was that all their stationery had the motto "Training in Freedom". That motto said it all. People have to be house trained into the concepts of liberal democracy. The principles of liberal democracy cannot be operative among populations that refuse to accept and live by the principles of liberal democracy. A liberal democrat cannot afford to be naive. he cannot afford to be a parish priest in civvies. He has to be ruthlessly practical in protecting the principles he stands for. A true liberal democrat does not capitulate to the first gunman that comes his way. The gunman will either be converted to the ways of liberal democracy or either the gunman or the liberal democrat has to depart - that is how the conflict between liberal democracy and fundamentalism and extremism will be resolved.
(February 02, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In October 2000 I was invited by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation to attend a seminar on Public Management in Gumersbach, Germany. The most useful aspect of this trip was not what I learnt about public management, but my exposure to German Liberalism. Before my trip to Germany, my impression of a ‘liberal’ was that he was the supremely impractical, utterly naive, incompetent and woolly headed cousin of the conservative. Liberals and conservatives share the basics of their creed in common, the free market economy, democracy, plurality, individualism and the rule of law etc. But according to my impression what distinguished the liberal from a conservative was the ‘Parish priest’ like attitude of the liberals. (My friend Rajiva Wijesinghe should not get worked up about this because what I am referring to are the free floating NGO liberals and not the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka.)
The ‘Hitler’ of Hagen
This impression of liberalism that I had was probably because I am from a country where liberalism is not a practical political reality. In Sri Lanka we have only conservatives (UNP) and socialists PA, JVP. There is Rajiva’s Liberal Party in existence but it is too elitist to be of any political consequence. Hence most of the liberals that I would come across are ‘free floating’ individuals who go around wringing their hands in anguish at all the illiberal things happening in Sri Lanka. I have had no experience of liberals with experience in governance. All liberals that I have come across here are NGO type liberals. Hence my experience with the German liberals was quite a pleasant surprise.
The first thing that I discovered was that the German liberals were not naive ‘Parish priest’ types. They were like us ordinary humanbeings. They thought like us, made decisions like us. We were taken to an institution run by a liberal politician turned public administrator in the town of Hagen. This administrator had been placed in charge of an old folks facility by the liberal administration of Hagen. In almost all the advanced countries, the old folks issue is about as important as the ethnic issue is in Sri Lanka. With the rapid increase of over 65’s in their populations, many advanced countries are facing the prospect of having a large proportion of senior citizens to look after. And these old people have to be looked after at state expense from the current year’s revenue in a situation where the number of economically productive people is decreasing.
This facility that we visited was run by a unique character. He was the first liberal go-getter I ever saw! He boasted to us about the manner in which he managed to turn around the organization from a loss making operation to a profit making one by implementing ‘lean management’ principles. Lean management we were told is a principle that can be applied even in public institutions. (By profit making what is meant is that the pension receipts of the old folks at the home was enough to cover the costs of running the institution.) He also told us about the long fights he had been having with the city administration to get things done. I discovered to my surprise that even Germany which is one of the most developed and efficient countries in the world has an administrative system riddled with red tape. Listening to the kind of obstruction that could be found in the German administration, one wonders how Germany managed to develop at all. The universal inefficiency and red tape in public administration was another factor that I became conscious of during this trip.
That was the first time that I even thought of public administration since I sat for the public administration paper at my undergraduate final examination over fifteen years ago. That seminar was attended by participants from countries at varying levels of economic development. There were representatives from chronic cases like Sri Lanka and Egypt and also other less underdeveloped countries like South Africa and Croatia. One thing that struck me was that in all these countries and in Germany itself the public administration was inefficient, lethargic and riddled with red tapism. This experience left me with the feeling that the public administration in Sri Lanka is not all that bad because here we can at least galvanize the public administration into action with bribes or political threats. But in countries where the public administration is not corrupt and politicized, even threats or bribery will not get one anywhere! The only thing worse than a corrupt and politicized bureaucracy is a clean and de-politicized bureaucracy! The German local administration was abysmally red tapist and the administrator of the old folks home that we were talking about had tried unsuccessfully to obtain permission to construct a new wing for the old folks home that he was running, but had been unable to do so.
Then he had gone ahead and constructed the building without permission. And he was mightily pleased with his exploit. When the local administration had threatened to stop the construction, he had threatened to hold a press conference. If the public had been told that the local authorities were trying to stop the construction of an old folks home, that would have reflected badly on the local authorities who were also dependent on the good will of the public to remain in office. The general thrust of the lecture we got from this public official was how he ‘rammed through’ this decision or that decision. At the end of this lecture, a woman participant sitting next to me commented, "This man is not a liberal, he is a Hitler!" The attitude of this woman epitomes the liberal attitude as I was used to in Sri Lanka.
Two kinds of Liberals
Since my trip to Germany, I discovered that liberals come in two varieties. There are the NGO type liberals and the governing liberals. The NGO type liberals will be so ‘liberal’ that their attitude when taken to its logical conclusion will result in nothing ever getting done. This attitude also meshes with the NGO ethos which is aimed more at studying and exploiting issues than solving them. If the issue in question is ever solved, the NGO will be out of work. An NGO that specializes in violence against women will always want the violence against women to continue otherwise they will lose their lucrative jobs and relaxed and privileged lifestyles with plenty of foreign trips etc. So the NGO liberal always tends to posit impossible ideals which in human society will never be realized. The kind of liberal that I have come across in Sri Lanka belongs to this breed.
But then there is that other kind of liberal, the liberals with governing experience who know that in human affairs there are round holes and square pegs. The German liberals seem to be of this latter variety. Like liberals everywhere, they share much of their basic political creed with the conservatives. But the German liberals have gone a little further and they are in political partnership with the conservatives which would make them even more practical. The impression that I got of that public administrator in charge of the old folks home in Hagen city was that he was a ruthlessly practical man who wanted to get things done. He reminded me of President Premadasa! If the local authorities did not give him permission to put up a building merely due to red tapism, he went ahead anyway and constructed it without permission. To be called a Hitler by an NGO liberal because of his bulldozer like attitude was to my feeling a little excessive. He might be called a Hitler with justification if he had ordered the police to machine gun a peaceful demonstration. But to be called a Hitler for putting up an old folks home without permission from the local authority was a little out of context.
I discovered from my German experience that a governing liberal would be as practical as a conservative. For instance one question that arose during this seminar was how a liberal would react to a situation of war or civil conflict. In Sri Lanka, anybody claiming to be a liberal would react to any kind of violence with the standard worried look on the face accompanied by the wringing of hands and uttering of words of anguish. In countries like Sri Lanka also, the natural instinct of the NGO liberal would be to capitulate to the more powerful ruthless or intractable of two contending parties. Especially in a situation of ruthless and unrelenting terrorism, an NGO liberal would advocate placating the terrorist by giving him what he wants. But a governing liberal would be quite different.
I asked the moderator of our seminar Peter Schroder - a man with much experience in Sri Lanka, how a liberal would react to the September 11th attacks. He told me that he had written a book on Fundamentalism (not just the Islamic variety but all kinds of fundamentalism including Christian) where he had stressed that when a liberal democracy is confronted by a fundamentalism that does not accept the norms of liberal democracy, that liberal democracy has to react to the fundamentalist threat with all the might at its command. I asked Peter Schroder the pointed question that after the September 11th attacks there was a debate whether the CIA should be allowed to recommence their dirty tricks department and what the liberal attitude would be to that. His answer was that this is exactly what this seminar was about, that government was not doing what it should be doing but had needlessly burdened itself with all kinds of unnecessary operations. Security is a major aspect of governance. Every government had the obligation to protect its citizens and they had to do whatever was necessary to do so. If the government is remiss in that, they have not fulfilled their obligations. The concept of lean management was to take government away from unnecessary roles into their actual areas of proper concentration - such as state security.
One thing that I noticed at the Freriedrich Ebert Stiftung facility in Gummersbach was that all their stationery had the motto "Training in Freedom". That motto said it all. People have to be house trained into the concepts of liberal democracy. The principles of liberal democracy cannot be operative among populations that refuse to accept and live by the principles of liberal democracy. A liberal democrat cannot afford to be naive. he cannot afford to be a parish priest in civvies. He has to be ruthlessly practical in protecting the principles he stands for. A true liberal democrat does not capitulate to the first gunman that comes his way. The gunman will either be converted to the ways of liberal democracy or either the gunman or the liberal democrat has to depart - that is how the conflict between liberal democracy and fundamentalism and extremism will be resolved.
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