THE PREMADASA DEVELOPMENT MODEL

Premadasa's activities helped build a new development model that adapted Western frameworks to our country President Premadasa's political activities demonstrated numerous interventions that can be discussed across multiple levels In this article, I discuss his public service that spans across multiple domains. One conclusion that emerges from all this is that he proposed a new development model for our society

- By Prof. Charitha Herath, Former Member of Parliament

Thirty-two years have passed since the death of former President Ranasinghe Premadasa. The terrorist attack targeting him on May 1, 1993, undoubtedly remains in the memory of many people. To anyone studying recent political trends in our society, it is true that he can be valued as a distinguished politician who made a significant development contribution that cannot be overlooked. Beyond this, President Premadasa's political activities demonstrated numerous interventions that can be discussed across multiple levels. In this article, I discuss his public service that spans across multiple domains. One conclusion that emerges from all this is that he proposed a new development model for our society.

The meaning of representative democracy thus became reduced to a practice of seeking public opinion only once every five years. That Premadasa had a different understanding of this matter becomes evident when looking at his keynote address at the Colombo Rotary Club in 1973. Specifically, he proposed that the voter's role in representative democracy should not end with casting a vote once every five years, but rather democracy should be implemented with continuous participation in the policies, decisions, and implementation programmes that the government undertakes for development processes. This idea that Premadasa presented as an opposition MP in the 1970s aligns remarkably well with the concept of Deliberative Democracy that became philosophically discussed in the 1990s. In my view, the Gramodaya Mandala (Village Awakening Councils) initiative that Premadasa introduced in 1989 can be understood as an attempt to implement this idea.