The state is cleaning up. Those who have threatened the very stability of the violent state structure (pardon the redundancy) are now being sought. Arrest warrants are making the rounds. State goons seem keen to pursue those who stood up to represent the masses. Those who spoke for those suffering. Those who put a face to the pain and the struggle. Perhaps lady justice is not blind after all. She wants only one kind of perpetrator.
Questions arise about the roots of this witch-hunt and when the state might have started planning for it. Was it when the millions found at state premises got returned rather than redistributed to the masses? Was it the almost storming of the sacred parliament but not quite breaking the barrier? Was it when the occupied state structures were peacefully unoccupied so state goons can take over again? Was it in the limited set of demands that were made at the start of it all?
Maybe it’s time to make just one demand. Make it an impossible one.
Let people vote on the budget.
This suggestion has been laughed at and mocked relentlessly by the bourgeois classes clutching to the remnants of their propertied worldviews. Let the masses vote? What horror! How could they understand the intricate details of political systems of governance or the balance of economic factors in budgetary debates? Considering the lack of transparency when it comes to the educational qualifications of the current office holders, it is highly doubtful the men in white robes understand any of it either. Regardless, there is a difference: the masses understand more than politicians ever could. Because what there is to understand the masses live. It is ultimately their lives that are being negotiated and voted on. Just without their say. Let’s be real: what we really get a say over is which rascal gets to steal our money. We can decide nothing else.
Why shouldn’t we change that?
Let me explain. People voting directly on the budget is called participatory budgeting. In the few places where it has managed to be allowed to be implemented (because god knows capitalism would hate it more than it hates feeding the poor or protecting our forests), participatory budgeting leads to a reduction in inequality and a fairer distribution of public resources. More money goes into public institutions, like hospitals and schools, and less money is spent on luxury cars, mansions, and bodyguards for politicians.
This shouldn’t really be a surprise. The masses rely on public hospitals and schools. Naturally they would vote to improve those institutions. Masses rely on public transportation. Naturally they would vote to improve the roads, railway tracks, and the quality of the buses and trains. What the masses don’t tend to rely on are racetracks for the silver-spooned, cafes with imported coffee and chocolate, apples in grocery stores, airports for private planes, purple towers that serve no real or imagined purpose, and tax breaks for conglomerates building oceanside condominiums. So perhaps we can tell the capitalists to keep funding those. Let public money go to public uses.
Of course, participatory budgeting will not be allowed. No vulturous state in its right mind would let this happen. It is impossible. The powerful will raise hysterical objections and appeals to emotion. “Participatory budgeting will cause chaos,” they’ll predict without an ounce of actual evidence. “The masses can’t be trusted,” they’ll insist based on bourgeois viewpoints tinged with elitism. “Everyone will just vote for their own interests,” they’ll argue. Doesn’t this happen anyway with the current system except in a far more exclusive and opaque manner? Isn’t that why the masses were in the dark as war criminals worked the country speedily toward bankruptcy?
Wouldn’t participatory budgeting allow more transparency about the income-and-expenses balance sheet of the island? Wouldn’t it allow a say over what politicians (and other public servants) are to be paid? Wouldn’t it allow public money to go toward fixing our roads and dangerously uneven sidewalks, funding our amazing public hospitals, creating accommodations like ramps for the differently-abled, updating our museums and libraries, equalizing access to phone and internet services throughout the island, and revitalizing our schools and universities to bring them into the twenty-first century? Wouldn’t it allow us to spend money on renovating aging children’s parks or building new ones or repurposing unused land for community gardens? Wouldn’t it allow us to develop industries that could pave the way for some degree of self-sufficiency in the future rather than always hedging our bets on tourism and remittances? Wouldn’t participatory budgeting actually allow some degree of collective agreement as to what the needs of our society actually are?
Why not make this demand even if it’s impossible?
Since its inception in Porto Alegre in the late 1980s, participatory budgeting has been implemented throughout the world in nearly every continent with over 1,500 documented instances. However, so far, participatory budgeting has only been implemented at the city or county levels or with specific institutions like schools or public housing. No country in the world has tried participatory budgeting at the national level. Sri Lanka could be the first. The question becomes whether we are willing to truly democratize our society and demand that people have this say. The state is coming for those who stood up to highlight its abuses. The state will not stop coming for others who continue to voice dissent. The state will not give in voluntarily. This must be demanded.
Isn’t it time to demand the impossible? What do we have to lose?