Sri Lanka: Rajapaksa Foiled Again

Sri Lankan voters have snubbed former President Mahinda Rajapaksa for the second time in months. On January 8, Rajapaksa was ousted from power in the presidential election, an upset that denied him a third term as the island’s president. And now, in parliamentary elections held earlier this month, voters have quashed his hopes of returning to power as prime minister.

Although voters gave neither of the two main coalitions, the United National Party (UNP)-led United National Front for Good Governance (UNFGG) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)-led United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), an outright majority, the UNFGG emerged as the single largest group from the August 17 elections, with 106 seats in the 225-seat parliament. The UPFA, whose campaign Rajapaksa spearheaded, was relegated to second place.

Accordingly, UNP chief Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in as prime minister on August 21. Wickremesinghe has held the post since January, following his appointment by Sri Lanka’s new President Maithripala Sirisena.

“For now, Rajapaksa will have to be content with functioning only as a member of parliament (MP) representing Kurunegala constituency,” an SLFP parliamentarian who spoke to The Diplomat on condition of anonymity said.

Rajapaksa’s fall was as spectacular as his rise.

It was during Rajapaksa’s first term as president (2005-10) that the decades-old civil war ended with the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). That brought Rajapaksa demigod status  among the island’s Sinhalese ethnic majority, and contributed to his emphatic victory in the January 2010 presidential election. A few months later, the UPFA, riding on the Rajapaksa wave sweeping the country, emerged victorious in parliamentary elections. Its victory was unprecedented, bringing it just two seats short of a two-thirds majority, a difficult feat under Sri Lanka’s proportional representation electoral system. A string of victories in elections to provincial councils and local bodies followed. “Rajapaksa seemed invincible,” the SLFP parliamentarian recalled.

And then in 2014 the tide began to turn. Opposition to Rajapaksa’s autocratic rule, and the widespread corruption and nepotism that marked his presidency, especially during the second term, began to gather momentum. Together with the antagonism of Tamils and Muslims – the two minorities who combined account for 30 percent of Sri Lanka’s population and who suffered grievously under Rajapaksa’s rule – this snowballed and culminated in his defeat in the presidential election early this year.

Scandals and Probes

These same factors were at play in the parliamentary election earlier this month. In fact, Rajapaksa’s electoral appeal had already declined further in recent months, as the Sirisena government launched probes into corruption and murder scandals involving Rajapaksa and his kin. The fallout from those investigations severely dented the former president’s image in the eyes of his nationalist supporters, who had until recently believed he could do no wrong.

Rajapaksa’s chances were further damaged by his rift with Sirisena. A former health minister in the Rajapaksa government, Sirisena defected to challenge Rajapaksa in the presidential election and, after defeating him, wrested the leadership of the SLFP and the UPFA from Rajapaksa. Relations between the two have deteriorated since.

Under pressure from Rajapaksa loyalists, Sirisena gave the former president a seat to contest in the parliamentary election but repeatedly made it clear that he did not endorse Rajapaksa’s comeback bid. He “undercut Rajapaksa by publicly announcing at the start and end of the election campaign that he would not appoint him prime minister, even if the UPFA obtained the majority in parliament,” recalled Jehan Perera, executive director of the Colombo-based National Peace Council. This caused “confusion” in the minds of SLFP sympathizers, prompting some to stay home on election day.

The UPFA’s election campaign also worked against Rajapaksa. The “only item” on its campaign agenda “was the need to make Rajapaksa the prime minister,” John Gooneratne, a retired Sri Lankan diplomat pointed out.

Importantly, Rajapaksa repeated the mistakes he made in the January presidential election. In that campaign, he wooed the Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalists, believing that their votes alone would deliver him the presidency. It did not, as Tamils and Muslims voted overwhelmingly for Sirisena, sufficient to give him victory.

Instead of reaching out to the minorities to secure their votes in the parliamentary election, Rajapaksa and his allies again “engaged in a strident Sinhalese nationalist campaign that portrayed the ethnic and religious minorities, and their international connections, as threats to the Sinhalese majority. This reinforced the sense of insecurity experienced by the minorities and turned their vote against him once again,” Perera told The Diplomat.

Voting patterns in the parliamentary election confirm that while Rajapaksa’s strength continues to lie among rural Sinhalese Buddhists, their support has eroded. The UPFA’s vote share in the general election in several constituencies that were markedly pro-Rajapaksa in January was clearly “less impressive,” the SLFP parliamentarian pointed out. Overall the total number of votes the UPFA could muster was around 4.7 million, a “significant drop” from the roughly 5.8 million votes Rajapaksa secured as the presidential candidate seven months ago. It ended up winning just 95 seats, a precipitous fall from the 144 it secured in the wake of the Rajapaksa wave in 2010.

Liberal Relief

Wickremesinghe’s victory has evoked a sigh of relief from liberal Sri Lankans who feared that Rajapaksa’s return to power as prime minister would reverse the progress the government has made over the last seven months in constitutional reforms, the revival of democratic institutions, and other areas. Through the 19th amendment to the Constitution, Sirisena and Wickremesinghe have been successful in diluting some of the powers of Sri Lanka’s executive presidency, among other reforms bringing back the two-term limit for incumbents that Rajapaksa had scrapped. However, the reforms have been limited, as the Wickremesinghe government lacked a two-thirds majority and the process was being blocked by Rajapaksa loyalists in parliament. It was to overcome this hurdle that Sirisena dissolved parliament and called for fresh elections.

The general election result is a mandate for “completing the partial political change” that was set in motion with the January presidential election The result “will ensure that the changes” that followed Rajapaksa’s ouster from the presidency “will be sustained,” Perera says.

The UNFGG is seven seats short of a simple majority. In a bid to provide stability to his government, Wickremesinghe has formed a “national government” through a memorandum of understanding between the UNP and SLFP. It could help him muster the numbers needed for constitutional reform. However, this is a government with disparate, even antagonistic components. The prime minister’s political skills will be tested.

His government faces several challenging tasks. The first will require it to respond to the UN Human Rights Council report on alleged war crimes committed by members of the Rajapaksa regime and the military in the final stages of the civil war. Unlike the Rajapaksa government, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government had agreed to co-operate with the UNHRC and promised to respond to the findings “within the country’s legal framework.” It  can be expected to work with the UNHRC to set up a domestic mechanism to inquire into the war crimes allegations.

Reconciliation with the island’s Tamils and a resolution to the ethnic conflict must be a priority of the government. Sirisena and Wickremesinghe “have a track record of promoting reconciliation among the different ethnic groups of the country,” says Gooneratne, who was deputy secretary-general of the government’s Peace Secretariat (2002-2006).

After becoming president, Sirisena “set in motion a number of measures to meet the grievances of the Tamil population.” Besides replacing the military governors in the North and East with civilian ones, “considerable extents of land” belonging to Tamils that were requisitioned by the military during the war were returned to their original owners. The Northern Provincial Council was given space to function more effectively. Importantly, the Tamil Diaspora “was not treated as enemies to be shunned,” Gooneratne pointed out, adding that “both the president and the foreign minister on their visits to the West were open to meeting with Tamil diaspora representatives.”

During the campaign for the parliamentary election, Wickremesinghe “spoke of his thinking on further devolution for the whole country,” Gooneratne noted. This bodes well for the possibility of the new government pursuing a political solution to the ethnic conflict.

On the Tamil side, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) won a strong endorsement in the North and East, winning a total of 16 seats to emerge as the third largest party in parliament. Ex-LTTE cadres who contested the election as an independent group failed to win a single seat. This should ease the way for the TNA to reach a compromise with the government. But both sides need to accelerate the process of finding a negotiated solution to the conflict, as there are incipient signs of radicalization in the North.

The new government’s achievements will depend on how well the second term of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe co-habitation works. The two belong to different parties. The president remains powerful but he now faces an empowered prime minister. Will the two indulge in struggle for power or will their shared antagonism to Rajapaksa hold them together?

As for Rajapaksa, his repeated rejection by voters in recent months notwithstanding, Sri Lankans will be reluctant to write him off entirely. This is not necessarily the end of the road for the former president, who was once Sri Lanka’s unquestioned strongman. A mere parliamentarian he may be today but at a minimum he has the capacity to stir trouble for the new government in parliament and on the streets.

Rajapaksa’s rapid fall is a “salutary lesson for Sri Lankan politicians who hope to reach the pinnacle of power,” Perera observed. Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country and Rajapaksa’s defeat serves as a lesson that victory “in national and country-wide elections” will not be possible “without a substantial fraction of the minorities voting for them.” Victory will require an inclusive approach.

This is a lesson that Rajapaksa will have to learn if he still hopes to return to power.