A Portentous Result

By Tisaranee Gunasekara

“Bad is growing ever worse here; and how will the worse stop, till it have grown worst of all?”- Thomas Carlyle (The French Revolution: A History)

(April 11, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) ‘Will President Rajapakse’s family triumph in Sri Lanka’s election?’ queried the BBC in a piece on Lankan parliamentary elections. The answer is, yes. Though all the results were not in at the time of writing, the general trend is clear. The UPFA will come within striking distance of a two-thirds majority. A Rajapakse constitution and a Rajapakse future await Sri Lanka.

If the Rajapakses are the main winners of this election, the primary loser is the Lankan democratic system. The voter turnout, across the island, from North to South, was abysmally, uncharacteristically low, the lowest percentage polled in the electoral history of Sri Lanka, according to provisional figures. Around 40% of the electorate, men and women of all hues, belonging to every political party and none, opted to stay away from the polling booth, in a massive vote of no-confidence in the polity. Going by the high level of rejected votes (higher than 10% in some electorates), a sizeable segment of those who voted actually spoiled their ballot papers, as a mark of protest.

The outcome in the Rajapakse heartland of Hambantota mirrors the election in general. Though the UPFA won massively in Hambantota, its total vote decreased significantly, by 52,079, compared to its total vote at the Presidential election, barely two and half months ago. In fact, the UPFA’s performance at 2010 parliamentary election compares unfavourably with its performance at the Presidential election of 2005 and the parliamentary election of 2004 as well (the UPFA got 202,918 in 2005 and 178,895 in 2004 compared to 174,808 at 2010 parliamentary election). These trends are not specific to Hambantota but seem common to most of the Sinhala majority districts. The conclusion is inescapable; the UPFA’s massive win is due not to an increase in its popularity but to a significant deterioration in the opposition’s performance.

No political party campaigned for a boycott; on the contrary, all the major parties campaigned hard to persuade their supporters and sympathisers to vote in numbers. In such a context, the abysmally low poll (plus the unusually high percentage of rejected votes) amounts to a spontaneous collective action on the party of the voting public motivated by a common sense of disillusionment. Consequently it sends a sharp, disquieting message from the people to those who are and would be their leaders. An ominously large number of voters seem to have come to the conclusion, based on nothing more than their observation and experience, that elections are exercises in superfluity and futility, extrinsic to their wellbeing. Such a sense of cynicism and disassociation indicate a growing public perception of politics as a cornucopia for politicians and a burden to the general populace. When around 40% of the electorate says, loudly and unmistakably, ‘a plague on all your houses’ it indicates a trend which bodes extremely ill for the future of Lankan democracy. Voter apathy and disassociation are blessings in disguise for democratic leaders who dream of lifelong, uncontested, untrammelled rule, as the Rajapakses do. A majority of Tamil voters too opted to abstain, and a Sinhala supremacist constitution is likely to be their reward, which will serve to strengthen extremist elements within and outside the Tamil polity. And as the recent attacks in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia demonstrate, armed separatist movements do revive, despite conclusive military defeats and pliant war-lords, when the root causes of separatism remains unaddressed and unacknowledged.

The Ailing Elephant

The outcome of the election amounts to a stinging rebuke to the leaders of both the UNP and the JVP. The UNP’s performance has plummeted to a new low; contesting under its own elephant symbol, it has scored rather less votes than it did in alliance with Gen. Fonseka, at the Presidential election. The JVP, in a new alliance headed by Gen. Fonseka, has fared even worse. By breaking up their unity so blithely, the UNP and the JVP acted unwisely and the results demonstrate what anti-government voters feel about their infantile conduct.

In the immediate aftermath of the Presidential election, some elements in the UNP argued that the party could have won the Presidential election – or at least fared much better – had it contested under its own symbol, in its own name and with its own candidate. Soon enough, they managed to impose their interpretation on the party, compelling it to abandon the common alliance with the JVP and Gen. Fonseka (despite his politically motivated incarceration) and go it alone. The outcome of the parliamentary election has proved beyond any doubt that this interpretation was totally erroneous and the resultant policy of unilateralism was a suicidal mistake. The UNP, had it remained in alliance with the JVP and Gen. Fonseka, would have fared better last Thursday.

To talk about the state of the UNP without zeroing in on the leadership of Ranil Wickremesinghe is tantamount to ignoring the elephant in the room. Because the crux of the matter is Mr. Wickremesinghe’s leadership, his chronic incapacity to win elections, the state of organisational and psychological disarray he had reduced the once mighty UNP to, and his obdurate refusal to leave, despite consecutive defeats and spectacular failures. So long as Mr. Wickremesinghe remains at the helm of the UNP, the Grand Old Party of Sri Lanka will continue to shrink, until it becomes a political nonentity. To the question ‘If not Ranil, who?’ the answer is ‘Anyone but Ranil’.

If Mr. Wickremesinghe has any residue of honour and dignity in him, if he cares for the party he has led for 16 years, if he is even marginally concerned about the future of this country, he should resign forthwith, instead of creating yet another crisis in the party in order to cling to the leadership. If he does not go willingly, the party must act forthwith, not in secret but openly, to replace him, if not with a single leader then at least with a Leadership Council. If neither happens, the UNP will continue to go from failure to failure, enabling the Rajapakses to claim this country as their own fiefdom.

In the run up to the parliamentary election, Ranil Wickremesinghe abandoned the UNP’s long standing commitment to a political solution to the ethnic problem, possibly in order to appeal to the Sinhala South. His lapse into political opportunism was in vain, as the results demonstrate. Where the UNP performed creditably, it did so thanks to the support of the minorities. The task therefore is to focus on issues which are popular in the South, without succumbing to the dominant ideology of Sinhala supremacism. The worsening economic situation would provide an ideal opportunity for the UNP to recast itself in a new popular (as distinct from populist) mode. However this would presuppose a radical makeover of the party, with a leader who can appeal to the traditional UNP bases amongst the urban and the rural poor, without, however, alienating the minorities. Incidentally, implementing the recommendations made by the Panditaratne Commission some years ago (which were ignored by Mr. Wickremesinghe) would be a good starting point for such a makeover in the UNP.

A democracy can cease to be a democracy when the opposition erases itself out of the electoral equation due to an endemic incapacity to win elections. Sri Lanka is reaching that point rapidly. The UPFA’s victory was unavoidable; but its near two-thirds win was preventable. It was the visceral blindness of the UNP and the JVP, and their consequent incapacity to comprehend the nature of the challenge which enabled the UPFA to win so handsomely, despite the poorness of its performance vis-à-vis the Presidential election of January 2010. The two-thirds danger was a realistic one. Unfortunately neither the UNP nor the JVP paid sufficient attention to it. They were too focused on their parochial concerns and too blinded by their delusions of strength. Thanks to their avoidable errors, a Rajapakse future awaits Sri Lanka.

Due to the annulment of election results in two electorates, the final national result is unlikely to be released by Elections Commissioner immediately. Yet, by Friday night, the composition of the next parliament would become clear. If the UPFA does not manage to obtain a two thirds majority, it will launch an immediate and urgent campaign to fill the shortfall via defections. Preventing this has to be the main priority of all opposition parties with even a single representative in parliament. If the UPFA manages to secure its two-thirds, it is likely to move forthwith to craft and present a new constitution. Given the state of the opposition and the sense of apathy affecting a large segment of anti-government voters, the Rajapakses will be able to win a referendum with ease. And Sri Lanka will have its Rajapakse Constitution, a document which will be tailor-made to ensure Familial rule.

Future Trends

Two trends are manifestly active in Lankan society today. One is the rise of economic inequality. The other is the rise of Sinhala Supremacism and Sinhala Buddhist extremism. Last month, a woman walked into a suburban police station and handed over her four young children into police custody, the despairing act of a mother who had tried and failed to provide for her children. A couple of weeks previously, a poverty stricken mother had thrown her four year old son into the Kalu Ganga, a deed done not in secret but in broad daylight, in front of many witnesses. She had tried and failed to find room for her five children in the overcrowded orphanages; throwing the youngest of them into a river was perhaps an insane act of protest against a system and a society blind to the plight of the poor and the powerless, unless and until they commit some act of desperation which is ‘newsworthy’. These two incidents are not just human tragedies; they are also indicative of the direction in which Sri Lanka is headed.

Like extremisms everywhere, Sinhala chauvinism is prone to blame the ethno-religious ‘other; for all the ills besetting the country. The myth of the poor Sinhala Buddhists being exploited by rich Tamils, Muslims and Christians has been a seminal component of the Sinhala supremacist worldview and narrative. Many of the anti-minority measures of the post-independence period were justified as necessary attempts to correct this ‘injudicious imbalance’, created by the British. For instance, 1977 experienced an explosion of growth and an explosion of inequity (iniquitous growth). This led to a rise in economically motivated anti-Tamil sentiment in the South. It was argued that the open economy beggared the Sinhalese while enriching the Tamils and the Muslims. Opposition to the UNP government and to the Open economy became enmeshed with Sinhala extremism; socialism became coloured by ethno-religious chauvinism and the perception of the Black July as an attack on ‘capitalist Tamils’ was present in certain segments of polity and society.

Today the Sinhala extremists are with and in the Rajapakse administration (a fairly close approximation would be the Bush, fils administration with its preponderance of religious zealots who backed the invasion of Iraq and oppose the teaching of evolution in schools with identical zest). These elements regard a permanent war against anti-patriots as the best way of diverting Sinhala attention away from economic woes. As the Constitution-making process gathers momentum, so will the war against anti-patriots, with all those who oppose the Rajapakse constitution (with its anti-devolutions character) cast in the role of ‘anti-patriots’. After all if it can happen to the Army Commander who won the war for the Rajapakses, why cannot it happen to any other who refuse to countenance this Rajapakse future?