After the Presidential election in Sri Lanka on Nov. 16, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said: ”Sri Lanka continued to show the strength and resiliency of its democracy with a free, fair, and transparent presidential election befitting Asia’s oldest democracy.” Further, Pompeo called upon the newly elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksa “to uphold Sri Lanka’s commitments to security sector reform, accountability, respect for human rights, and non-recurrence of violence.” However, the dilemma of new Sri Lankan rulers, with their notorious past, is how to carry forward these “commitments” while the country is in serious economic mess, with its debt rate rising to 83% of the GNP, and ethnic equality still a distant dream.
On Nov. 18, Gotabaya Rajapaksa of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna Party (SLPP) was sworn in as the seventh Executive President of Sri Lanka. In the presidential election, he received 52.25% of the votes, amounting to 6,924,255 of the total valid votes of 13,252,499 cast. Since the election was held, seven months after the “Easter Sunday attacks,” when Islamist extremists bombed hotels and churches, killing more than 250 people, tackling terrorism was also the main issue in the campaign. An anti-terrorism plank in the campaign was advantageous for Rajapaksa.
Rajapaksa, received overwhelming support from the majority Sinhalese-Buddhist community. He was not able to muster support from the minority Tamil and Muslim voters living in the Northern and Eastern provinces, and the Central province’s plantation country. His rival, Sajith Premadasa, from United National Party (UNP) received support of a majority of Tamil and Muslim voters, while most of the Sinhalese voters did not opt for Sajith Premadasa. The polarization of the voters on the basis of ethnicity is causing anxiety among those who are concerned about the future of the island nation off the southeast coast of India.
Sri Lanka witnessed an unusual scenario of some 35 candidates contesting this election. The Left formed a broader front consisting of 28 organizations of political parties, civil society organizations, intellectuals, artists and various professionals under the name of National People Power (NPP) and contested the elections. Although they campaigned with the alternative policies with better progressive orientation than the main two main parties, they could not avoid poor showing and setback in the elections.
In 2015, the former president Sirisena and former prime minister Wickremesinghe formed an alliance of rival parties and defeated the then President Mahindra Rajapaksa, whose regime was notorious for lawlessness and authoritarian tendencies. The Rajapaksawas were accused of wartime crimes against innocent Tamils. In a 2009 civil war with the separatist extremist Tamil organization, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), a UN committee reported more than 40,000 Tamils were killed by the army. The entire military operation was carried out under the command of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was then Secretary of Defense. Now, former president Mahindra Rajapaksa has become the prime minister and his brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has become the president. This situation has raised fears about the renewal of authoritarian rule of the Rajapaksa era.
However, Sri Lanka’s existing parliamentary term ends in August next year, and the country goes for parliamentary elections. The president has to secure a majority for his party in the 225-member Parliament. Now, the Rajapaksas and their allies have just 96 legislators, so it is difficult for them to pass legislation. In this situation, one could hope that the present regime, fearing backlash in the elections, would not pursue chauvinist policies that would harm minorities.
The presidential election campaign did not address the challenges facing the nation. Human development has deteriorated in the country. In this past year, Sri Lanka reported 78,429 dengue fever cases, including 16,642 in Colombo, the capital city. The new government has to look into peoples’ livelihood problems and issues affecting the health and education sectors, the economic slowdown, budget deficits, a collapse in tourism and unemployment.
The government could no more depend on external loans and facilities. Sri Lanka owes about 15% of its external public debt to China. China funded a number of state-owned enterprises directly. About 12.7% of central government external debt was from the Asian Development Bank, and from World Bank, about 10%.
Efforts to minimize the ethnic fragmentation of the Sri Lankan electorate are going on. New President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, assured the nation that he was “now the President of all Sri Lankans, whether they voted for [him] or not and irrespective of their ethnicity or religious beliefs.”
The senior Tamil leader Sampanthan, who led the Tamil National Alliance, which supported Premadasa, opposed the attribution of a“racist” dimension to the Tamil vote in Sri Lanka’s presidential election. He explained, “Both Gotabaya and Sajith are Sinhala-Buddhists. On economic matters, they are probably on the same page, but in regard to minority issues, Sajith was more forthcoming in this campaign.”
The fundamental issue in maintaining good neighborly relations with India was about fulfilling the aspirations of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka. India has some 70 million Tamils living in the southern state, Tamilnadu, who are concerned about Sri Lankan Tamils. The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his talks with the Sri Lankan President, emphasized this issue and announced a financial assistance worth $450 million (USD) to Sri Lanka.
Since Sri Lanka is in a critical spot for Indian Ocean security, and its ports are gateways for its South Asian neighbors, the US is always interested in the affairs of Sri Lanka. With its so-called “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” strategy, along with “containment of China”-policy, the US might look for Sri Lanka as a natural partner, for its hegemonic interests in the South Asian region. Whether the current regime would be subservient to the intentions of the US is yet to be seen in the coming days.
N. Gunasekaran is a political activist and writer based in Chennai, India.
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2020
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