Defeated by ballot

In the early morning of May 19, 2009, the most revered and feared leader of the Sri Lankan Tamils, Velupillai Prabhakaran together with almost all his close associates was killed by the security forces of Sri Lanka, marking the end of over 25 years of internal armed conflict in the ravaged island nation. In spite of Prabhakaran’s ruthless handling of the Tamil population, Tamils in the North and East of the island recognised him as an icon of the Tamils’ fight against the Sinhala Buddhist-dominated state of Sri Lanka. Hence, a physical elimination of him was widely read by the Tamils in Sri Lanka and elsewhere as a serious blow to their pride and identity. 

Mahinda Rajapaksa won the election in 2005 with a thin majority primarily because of the boycott of the elections imposed by the LTTE on Tamil people. The LTTE had to pay a heavy price for this decision in 2009. Hence, Tamils sought revenge against Rajapaksa whenever they sensed an opportunity to do so. When the ex-Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka, who conducted the war on the ground, contested against Rajapaksa in the 2010 Presidential Election, Tamils were hesitant to vote for Fonseka, although the Tamil National Alliance wanted them to do so. 

The voter turnout in Jaffna was just 25 per cent in 2010. So voters in the Sinhala south who gathered around Rajapaksa voted for him, outweighing the protest votes of the Tamils. Waiting hurts, but Tamils, not having faith in bullets but in ballots waited patiently for the right moment. President Rajapaksa, in the face of his dwindling popularity and enormous faith in his astrologer, called an early election with the hope to endure in power for another six years. The Opposition was in disarray so he smelled an easy victory. 

Machiavellian moves by the former President, Chandrika Bandaranaike, and the leader of the opposition Ranil Wickramasinghe completely changed the game plan as they brought in Rajapaksa’s Minister of Health and the General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party as the common candidate to face the incumbent president. Maithripala Sirisena won the election held on January 8, 2015, by a majority of 449,072 votes. A back of the envelope calculation shows that Sirisena was given a majority of 654,521 by the people of Northern and Eastern provinces dominated by Muslims and Tamils. This advantage of a huge majority was substantially reduced to 450,000 because of the majority of support that the Sinhala voters in the south extended to Rajapaksa. The irony is they voted for Rajapaksa despite their unhappiness with his regime on several counts. 

It is instructive to keep in mind that the above description does not imply that minorities are inherently revenge-taking peoples. Essentially, it's a reflection of the failure of the Rajapaksa regime in building a new overarching Sri Lankan civic identity by meeting the demands and aspirations of the numerically small nationalities and ethnic groups in the island.

The Rajapaksa government appeared to have wrongly believed that just extending developmental efforts in the form of railways and highways would resolve the specific grievances of minorities. He even refused to honour the promise made by him to successive Indian governments that he would introduce an amendment more efficacious than the India-backed 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, to satisfy Sri Lankan Tamils. 

Under Rajapaksa, things turned worse. Over the last five years, certain subterranean forces with overt/ covert blessings of some elements in the government began to attack Muslim and Christian religious places as well as their property. The government did not take necessary action against the attacks on Muslims in Aluthgama, and Beruwala. 

Against this backdrop, how Sirisena regime would handle the problem of national integration is one of the critical issues facing the new government. When the Tamil National Alliance and Muslim parties informed that they would support Sirisena’s candidacy, they had not particularly raised the nationality issue. Their argument was that extending the democratic space in general through establishing rule of law and good governance would also facilitate and protect minority rights. 

In my opinion, this view — like the developmental welfarist view of the previous regime — is equally flawed. Hence I submit that the new Sri Lankan government will not be able to find a sustainable long-term solution to the Sri Lankan national question for three reasons. First, since it is clear that the new government would continue to operate within a neoliberal economic framework, its notion of democracy will essentially be limited. Neoliberal strategy needs liberalisation of labour market, capital accumulation through dispossession, privatisation of health and education (clearly stated in Sirisena’s election manifesto). This would definitely generate opposition from students, organised working class and poor peasants. In such a situation, the government may move towards oppressive and suppressive counteraction. Hence neoliberal democracy would be confined to guarantee of contract, competitive bidding, imposing the rule of law, and many such things. The nationality question needs transcending liberal democracy to recognise the issue of identity that requires multiple legal systems, devolution of power, autonomy and veto powers. 

Secondly, the forces in the Sirisena coalition include extreme nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU). Sirisena’s election manifesto shows many footprints of the JHU, especially on constitutional issues. JHU was the organization that led the campaign against the constitutional bill of Chandrika Bandaranaike government and the peace agreement of 2002-05. It was had a hand in framing the national policy of the Rajapaksa regime.

Moreover, as the election results show — majority of the Sinhala population stood with Rajapaksa so that Rajapaksa and his party could mobilise against any move to go beyond the 13th Amendment for their own advantage. 

Finally, by promising to never tamper with the unitary and non-secular nature of the constitution, Sirisena himself, has imposed some constraints on his 100-day programme.

Sri Lankan people wanted a change, whatever that may be. The change has now been ushered in. Nonetheless, whether that change would go beyond merely changing of faces, in embodying a change in social, political and economic fabric of the Sri Lankan society, is yet to be seen. Maithripala Sirisena was able to mobilise and unite diverse forces. Hence, one may assume that he would be able to fulfil the hopes and aspirations of the masses who voted for him. Arithmetic may be important in winning elections, but the direction the government walks, is ultimately determined by the parallelogram of forces. 

The author is the Dean, Faculty of Management and Finance, SANASA University, Sri Lanka