Sri Lanka Perspectives: August 2016
Col
R Hariharan
President
Sirisena cracks the whip
President Maithripala Sirisena appointed
40 new electoral and district organizers of Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)
after sacking 13 SLFP dissidents from the post of electoral organizers in ten
districts. Last month, the President had warned the dissidents, who are
loyalists of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, that they would lose their posts
unless they support party activities.
After the sacking of dissidents from
the party post, Mahinda Rajapaksa appointed a committee to deliberate upon follow up action. The dissidents have decided to form a new
political party consisting of Rajapaksa loyalists of the SLFP who form the
backbone of Rajapaksa’s United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) front and the
Joint Opposition group in parliament. The name of the party is yet to be decided.
However, the leftist allies of the
UPFA- the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), the Communist Party, the Democratic
Left Front – are said to be lukewarm to the idea of forming a new party. They
feel it would only strengthen Sirisena’s hold on the SLFP as he would have a
free run.
Apparently, the President wanted to
demonstrate his control over the party before the 65th SLFP national convention to be held on September
4. The dissidents after taking part in a
five-day rally organised by Rajapaksa loyalists in end of July 2016 had been
increasingly opposing the actions taken by Sirisena government. In the
meanwhile, the dissident group would like to stage a showdown by persuading
party members to boycott the SLFP national convention. Even after the SLFP dissidents form a new
party, the Sirisena-Rajapaksa political tug of war is likely to continue.
Politics of the “missing and disappeared”
Sri Lanka parliament passed the Office
of Missing Persons (OMP) on August 23. The OMP enactment is first
reconciliation mechanism to be implemented by the government in compliance the
2015 UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution. It is apt that it came into being before
“International Day of Enforced Disappearances” on August 30. The OMP provides a
structural mechanism to handle enforced disappearances inflicted upon both
Tamil and Sinhala population during Sri Lanka’s civil wars – during the JVP
armed revolt in 1971 and 1987-89 and in the operations against the LTTE
particularly in the Eelam war that ended in May 2009.
In fact, the government announcement
earlier this year that it would issue a certificate of absence to the relatives
of over 65000 persons missing during the operations against the JVP and the
LTTE, to enable them to benefit from government welfare schemes gives an idea
of the problem faced by the government.
The OMP has been welcomed by civil
society organizations and both the JVP and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA)
parties as it brings fresh hopes to
thousands of families whose loved ones have been missing for years. The
government has clarified the OMP was a truth seeking agency that does not make
judgements on disputes. According to the act, the functions of the OMP are searching
and tracing of missing persons, clarifying the circumstances in which such
persons went missing and their fate, making recommendations to reduce such
incidents of missing persons, and identifying
avenues for redress. As per the act, its findings would not give rise to
any criminal or civil liability.
However, the Joint Opposition has
described the provisions of the OMP as draconian. Prof GL Peiris, former
minister in Rajapaksa government, in a strong indictment of the OMP described
it as “a fully fledged quasi-judicial mechanism with extensive coercive powers
to compel giving of testimony and the production of documents and other
material including sensitive military installations.” He said the OMP was
envisaged to function entirely outside the country’s institutional framework as
it denies the right to available information, not only to the public, but also
to the courts of law.
The OMP is yet another example of the
Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government’s efforts to improve the structural
mechanism of governance that were degraded in the earlier years. This had
resulted in human rights aberrations, absence of rule of law, lack of
accountability and poor governance. This had tarnished Sri Lanka’s
international reputation particularly after the Eelam war.
The President is also constituting the Secretariat
Coordinating the Reconciliation Mechanism (SCRM) to coordinate the work of all
reconciliation mechanisms. The SCRM is slated to function for two years,
indicating the government expectations to complete the process for smooth
operation of its reconciliation efforts.
However, as the Daily Mirror, Colombo, considered the move of SLFP’s
Rajapaksa loyalists (including 50 MPs) to form as a “serious negative feature….
amid the positive moves for reconciliation, deeper interracial and inter-religious
unity in diversity.” The dissidents’ competitive politics pampering the Sinhala
nationalist agenda can result in ethnic provocation that could slow down the
process.
India-Sri Lanka relations
India always makes good copy in Sri
Lankan media. So it was not surprising to see one columnist linking President
Sirisena’s private visit to worship at Tirupathi temple in India to the fears
of an impending split in the SLFP after the Rajapaksa-led Matara rally last
month. Notwithstanding such reports, the Sirisena government has continued to
do some tightrope walking to balance the country’s relations with India and
China. After signing a renewed agreement
with China to go ahead with the stalled Colombo Port City Project, the
government seems to be moving towards finalizing the Economic and Technical
Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) with India.
A four-member delegation led by joint
secretary of the Indian ministry of commerce visited Colombo to hold
preliminary talks for the first time on the ETCA. The visit was in keeping with
the decision taken to speed up the negotiating process when Sri Lanka’s
minister of development strategies and international trade Malik Samarawickrama
visited New Delhi in July 2016 and met with Indian minister of commerce and
industry Mrs Nirmala Sitharaman.
During their talks with the Sri Lankan
counterparts both sides were expected to understand each other’s needs and
concerns based on their experience in implementing the Free Trade Agreement
(FTA) during the last decade and a half while exploring the broad contours of
the ETCA. Sri Lanka hopes use the ETCA to benefit from Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s “Make in India” initiative giving a boost to the manufacturing sector by
joining the Indian supply chain.
Sri Lanka ministry of strategic
development and international trade in a statement said the ETCA would enable
Indian manufacturers to set up factories in Sri Lanka to export their products
to Pakistan and China with which Sri Lanka had or was planning to have FTA. On
the other hand, India is looking at ETCA as a mechanism to participate in the
post-war economic development in Sri Lanka.
Even though India has reassured that
the objective of the ETCA was not to open up Sri Lanka to Indian service
personnel, Sri Lankan professionals suspect the country would be flooded with
Indian professionals if ETCA is signed. However, Prime Minister Modi has
assured that Indian economic cooperation would be based upon Sri Lanka’s
needs. Sri Lanka government will have to
allay the fears of professionals as the ETCA issue has already become a part of
the country’s contentious politics.
Written on August 31, 2016
[Col R Hariharan, a
retired MI officer, served as the head of intelligence of the Indian Peace
Keeping Force from 1987 to 90. E-mail: haridirect@gmail.com Blog: http://col.hariharan.info ]
