Power is a heady drug and can make one feel
invincible. As Lanka’s former president alienated his own party and minorities
with strong-arm tactics, the electorate handed him a defeat he least expected
By Col R Hariharan | INDIA LEGAL January 31, 2015 |GLOBAL
TRENDS| Sri Lanka polls
THE recently concluded Sri Lankan presidential
elections belied President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s confidence as he was beaten by
Maithripala Sirisena, former health minister and a long- term colleague of his.
People seem to have preferred “unknown angel” Sirisena to “known devil”
Rajapaksa, as he described himself in an election rally.
Rajapaksa was so confident of winning the people’s
mandate for a third term that he advanced the election by two years before his
second term ended. But Sirisena, general sec- retary of the Sri Lanka Freedom
Party (SLFP), emerged as a challenger on the eve of the election announcement.
According to the official results, Sirisena won by
a 3.7 percent margin over the more crafty Rajapaksa and was preferred by 51.38
per-cent of the 121 million voters. This may not appear to be a bad performance
if we consider that in 2005, Rajapaksa’s scrapped through with a wafer-thin
1.86 percent majority over his rival Ranil Wickremesinghe to become president.
But a decade later, Rajapaksa went to the polls with the enormous executive
powers of a serving president. In 2009, he used the popularity he earned after
the victory in the Eelam War to gain two- thirds majority in parliament for his
United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) coalition and also handsomely wIn the
presidential election for a second time in 2010.
Despite these advantages, Rajapaksa seemed to have
lost direction and that cost him this presidency. But the central reason for
his electoral debate has been the loss of support within his own party and the
people at large, particularly minorities.
Two major aberrations—concentration of power in the
hands of the Rajapaksa family and the misuse of executive presidency— marked
his second term as president. Since 2010, he used his parliamentary majority to
consolidate his power base. In the process, he manipulated it to pass the 18th
Amendment to the constitution, neutralizing the 17th one which gave a role to
parliament in appointments for national institutions such as the judiciary,
election commission, etc, and which made the president more accountable. But
the 18th amendment gave the president overriding powers to appoint candidates,
who did the damage control caused by poor governance.
CHINESE PRESENCE
Typically, many mega projects like the construction
of Hambantota Port and airport complex and Colombo port development were financed
by Chinese loans offered at usurious interests and executed by Chinese contractors.
The whole process lacked transparency, as there was no open bidding. There were
also reports of widespread corruption in public sector bodies, draining the
exchequer.
Opposition efforts to inquire into allegations of
corruption came to naught. Instead, threat and intimidation were often used to
discourage them. For instance, the opposition United National Party (UNP) Commission
that looked into allegations of corruption in the Hambantota project was threatened
in public by a pistol-waving SLFP deputy mayor. The Bribery Commission and the Police
were ineffective in taking quick follow- up action in such cases. Scribes who
criticized these aberrations were hounded out of the country. The army, instead
of the police, handled trade union protests and other civilian activities, indicating
increased militarization of public affairs.
The writ of the president’s two brothers, Basil and
Gotabaya, who were minister for development and secretary for defense and urban
affairs respectively, seemed to influence most government decisions.
Thugs and ruling party goons, often led by elected
representatives, were involved in many a criminal case and disrupted political
meetings of the opposition and terrorized the free press. This did not stop
even in the pre- election period. Ruling party goons attacked the residence of
former president and estranged SLFP leader, Chandrika Kumaratunga and the
election offices of Sirisena and the UNP. The Campaign for Free and Fair
Elections received a record 574 com- plaints of election-related incidents, including
500 cases of election law violation. There were 47 cases of election violence,
16 relating to the use of firearms.
SIDELINED LEADERS
Overall, Rajapaksa family’s enormous clout and its
arrogant use of power seem to have alienated many senior leaders of the SLFP
like Sirisena, who were sidelined in decision- making. The decline of
Rajapaksa’s public image, coupled with his failure to carry his team, probably
disillusioned Sirisena and as many as 26 MPs and scores of UPFA provincial
council members crossed over to the opposition. This gave an opportunity for
Chandrika Bandaranaike loyalists to encourage Sirisena to contest against the
president. She joined hands with Ranil Wickremesinghe, leader of the UNP, and
former army commander Sarath Fonseka, who gave up their own presidential
aspirations to field Sirisena as a common opposition candidate. Surprisingly,
this seems to have energized other UNP leaders, who were wrangling for control
of the party. Their sole aim was to defeat Rajapaksa using Sirisena.
Even the Buddhist right-wing party, the Jathika
Hela Urumaya, a long-term ally of Rajapaksa and the UPFA coalition, deserted
him to support Sirisena when he did not respond satisfactorily to its
complaints of poor governance, cronyism and corruption.
Rajapaksa fared no better with his Muslim allies,
who generally supported him. Muslims, who form about 10 percent of the island’s
20-million population, had their faith in Rajapaksa shaken after he failed to
prevent anti- Muslim activities of Buddhist fringe groups. The Bodu Bala Sena
led an anti-Muslim riot in Alutgama that quickly spread to Beruwala (close to
Colombo) on June 15, 2014, leaving three killed, over 80 injured and nearly 200
houses and property of Muslims torched and destroyed. Over 2,000 were rendered
homeless. This forced the two major Muslim partners of UPFA—the Sri Lanka
Muslim Congress and the All Ceylon Makkal Congress—to cut loose from the ruling
alliance. Their support to Sirisena brought him the solid support of Muslim
votes.
IGNORED TAMILS
Despite Rajapaksa’s unchallenged power after the
Eelam War, he didn’t kick-start a political process to resolve the Tamil
minority’s long-standing grievances. He did not fulfil even the basic demands
of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which captured power in the Northern
Provincial Council elections. Though Sirisena offered no specific plans to address
the Tamil issue, TNA decided to support him to remove Rajapaksa, and this paid
him dividends, as the Tamils voted in his favor.
As promised in the election manifesto, Sirisena was
sworn in as president and Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister. Siri sena’s
manifesto focuses on three weaknesses of the Rajapaksa rule—corruption,
cronyism and accumulation of power in the hands of the president and his
family. It promises to replace the “present autocratic executive presidential
system” with a “constitutional structure with an executive that is allied to
parliament through the cabinet”. Sirisena hopes that within 100 days, he will
form a multi-party National Unity Alliance government to address urgent issues,
and then, hold parliamentary elections to repeal the 18th Amendment by bringing
in a 19th Amendment to free national institutions from the president’s control
in the next six years.
This is a tall order, because his New Democratic Front
does not control the parliament. However, after defections, the UPFA’s strength
has also come down. So Sirisena is likely to face a turbulent time in the next
100 days.
Whether he succeeds or not, democracy has succeeded
in Sri Lanka, freeing it from the autocratic rule of Rajapaksa. Only time will
tell if Sirisena can redeem the peoples’ faith in democratically setting things
right.
(Col R
Hariharan, is a retired military intelligence specialist on South Asia and
served with the IPKF in Sri Lanka as head of intelligence. He is associated
with the Chennai Centre for China Studies and the South Asia Analysis Group)
Written on January 14, 2015
Courtesy: INDIA LEGAL January 31, 2015 www.indialegalonline.com
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