The Rajapaksa Dynasty in Sri Lanka: Democracy in Decline

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was swept into power with 6.9 million votes in November 2019 and subsequently saw his party’s control bolstered with a two-thirds majority in Parliament in the general election of August 2020. Yet by the summer of 2021, the popularity of the Rajapaksa presidency and regime is fast eroding. Social media in particular is rife with criticism of the president and his government, and there have been strikes in the health, education, administration, electricity, railways, and plantation sectors in recent months.

The management of the COVID-19 pandemic is one factor, although there is a prevailing belief that it could have been worse. The real issue is the economic repercussions of the pandemic in terms of the daily lives of Rajapaksa’s base constituency: the ability of people to provide their families three square meals a day, cover their medical expenses, and pay for their children’s education. In addition the government abruptly banned the import of chemical fertilizer, heralding a move toward organic agriculture. The manner in which this is being done has led to serious discontent within the farming community.

Overall, in economic terms, the key issues are the repayment of debt and the foreign exchange crisis. Reserves are at an alarming low, rating agencies have downgraded the economy considerably, and payments mount. Fitch Ratings, for example, estimates that the government will need $29 billion between now and 2026 to meet debt repayments. Currently foreign currency reserves are at $4 billion, sufficient for only 2.7 months of imports. The government nevertheless is adamant about not going to the International Monetary Fund for assistance.

Amid the deepening economic gloom, the government was keen to pass the Colombo Port City Commission Bill, which sought to set up a commission to regulate activity on land reclaimed from the sea by the Chinese. A substantial proportion of this land has been handed over to the Chinese on a 99-year lease. The Chinese investment of $1.4 billion stands as the key development project in the country. The Supreme Court, in response to a number of petitions challenging the original bill sent to Parliament, declared that 25 of its 75 articles required passage by a two-thirds majority of Parliament and by a simple majority in countrywide referendum. The concern was that the government sought to effectively establish another country under Chinese control, immune from parliamentary oversight and possibly an opportunity for money laundering.

The government’s chief lawyer even declared in open court that there was no obstacle to a foreigner being a member of the Sri Lankan Supreme Court. Apparently the Rajapaksa government has forgotten its earlier hysteria over the possibility of foreign judges serving in a mechanism designed to provide accountability for war crimes.

The Colombo Port City project developments should be viewed in the context of the Rajapaksa regime’s further turn toward China. There were already close relations between the Chinese Communist Party and the ruling Sri Lanka People's Front (SLPP). Now, via a string of foreign policy decisions, Sri Lanka is being drawn more and more into the Chinese orbit and into opposition with the interests of the Quad countries (the United States, India, Japan, and Australia). The Millennium Challenge Corporation agreement with the U.S. was rejected, along with the Japanese and Indian funded Eastern Port Terminal of the Colombo Harbor, even while Chinese companies were granted energy projects close to the Indian coast. All this is in addition to the previous Chinese mega-projects of Hambantota port in the south of Sri Lanka and Colombo Port City, agreed upon during the Rajapaksas’ previous tenure.

The confrontationist orientation of Sri Lankan foreign policy, backstopped by the Chinese, has also resulted in a severe resolution on Sri Lanka in the U.N. Human Rights Council. The office of the High Commissioner is now tasked with setting up a unit to look at accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sri Lanka.

Put it all together, and the Rajapaksas’ return to power has been a decidedly difficult time for Sri Lanka.

Dynastic Politics and a Succession Struggle

Gotabaya Rajapaksa is one of four brothers at the heart of government in Sri Lanka, who together control approximately 75 percent of the national budget and key ministries along with other close relatives. Gotabaya is the first president of Sri Lanka without any political experience; he was the secretary of defense under the presidency of his all powerful and charismatic brother Mahinda, currently prime minister. Consequently Gotabaya, despite being president, has no power base of his own in terms of a party. The SLPP, which is the governing party, is essentially the organ of his brother Basil, recently made minister of finance, and founded on the continuing popularity of Mahinda.

Gotabaya’s first and last option in government therefore is to rely on former and serving officers from the security forces to man key offices of state – some 29 of them, according to a recent count. The Army commander, for instance, is in control of managing the pandemic, and former service personnel serve on or head presidential task forces to enforce a “disciplined” society and to look into the restoration of Buddhist archaeological sites in Eastern Province. The latter task force does not have minority representation, despite the pluralist and multiethnic composition of the province.

The family’s two-thirds majority in Parliament is essentially a rubber stamp, but as with all such dynasties there are rumblings focused on eventual succession.

The key to the dynasty is Mahinda Rajapaksa, still considered to be the most charismatic politician in Sri Lanka. The belief is that because of his failing health, he will not be a force in the next presidential election, set for three years from now in 2024. Mahinda’s overwhelming desire is said to be to make his son Namal, the current minister of sport and youth affairs, the next president. Brother Basil may not agree and is positioning himself to succeed Gotabaya, who recently announced that he will stand for a second term of the presidency.

The vicissitudes of dynastic politics are playing out while the country is in an economic crisis. So far, the president and his government have proved unable to formulate a clear and coherent policy to handle these difficulties.

Human Rights in Decline

On the human rights front, the situation has worsened as well.

The pandemic provided the president and government with an excuse to govern the country by regulations and presidential task forces and to continue their policy of restricting the space for civil society and minority rights. COVID-19 also provided the government with an alibi for further centralization of power in the fields of health and education, in violation of the devolutionary provisions of the constitution.

Civil society organizations working on human rights and governance complain of regular visits by the intelligence services and officials of the Secretariat of Non-Governmental Organizations, questioning them about their activities and funding. The NGO Secretariat is once again under the Ministry of Defense, as it was under the previous Rajapaksa regime. Although the government has not moved as yet on the matter, there is also the threat of new legislation to regulate the work of non-governmental organizations. The government’s attitude toward NGOs is that they should work with the authorities on development, since according to the government there are no other outstanding issues of concern.

While appointments to the state institutions of the Office of Missing Persons and the Office of Reparations have been made, there is serious concern about the suitability of these appointments as well as with regard to those made to the Human Rights Commission and the Election Commission. The 20th amendment to the constitution passed by the Rajapaksa government effectively removed all checks and balances on the executive that were instituted by the previous government under the 19th amendment. Whereas previously, appointments had to be approved by the Constitutional Council with civil society representation, the current position is that appointments made by the executive are presented to the Parliamentary Council for “observation.”

Continued use of the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and even the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Act against political dissent has aroused international condemnation. The detentions of the lawyer Hejaaz Hizbullah and the poet Ahnaf Jazeem are cases in point. A bill to “de-radicalize” those detained under the PTA is currently being challenged in the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the current government has doubled down on ethnic and religious faultlines, stoking populist sentiment among the Sinhala Buddhist majority. In addition to the military, the Rajapaksas rely on Sinhala Buddhist ideology to keep their power, as seen in their regular consultation with the Advisory Council of the Sangha and emphasis on Buddhism in public discourse.

Of late, Sri Lanka’s Muslims, in particular, have borne the brunt of discriminatory policies against minorities. For decades, the Muslim community has been targeted in a series of attacks by extremist Sinhala Buddhist organizations, with the alleged support of then-Defense Secretary and current President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Recently, a key issue targeting the Mulsim community in particular, was the government’s policy banning the burial of COVID-19 victims, despite local and international scientific evidence to the contrary. Muslim religious practices call for the dead to be buried, but many families were forced to cremate loved ones’ bodies under government orders. The issue was finally resolved, to an extent, after the intervention of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan: Sri Lanka deigned to allow COVID-19 victims to be buried on a remote island. But just a month later, another round of discrimination began when Sri Lanka approved a proposal banning full-face coverings, including the burqa and niqab, on national security grounds.

In the north and east of the country, the issues of land return and land grabs are reported to remain and the militarization of civilian life has not abated. Indeed after the end of the war in 2009, the guns fell silent, but a true post-conflict situation – one in which the roots of conflict are addressed and not reproduced – has proven elusive.

On the contrary, a culture of impunity continues to be a cancer on the body politic of Sri Lanka. For instance, Lieutenant Sunil Ratnayake was convicted of killing 11 Tamil citizens, including children whose throats he slit, by every court of law in the country, only to be pardoned by the president. Likewise, Duminda Silva, a close political ally of the president, was convicted by the courts for the shooting of another political ally, Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra. Silva also received a presidential pardon and was subsequently appointed chairman of the National Housing Authority.

At the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2015, the government of Sri Lanka, under previous President Maithripala Sirisena, co-sponsored a resolution that provided for the establishment of an accountability mechanism, which would include the proactive involvement of foreign judges and prosecutors. The mechanism was immediately disowned by the government and opposition alike, on the grounds that no foreigner would be allowed to pass judgment on Sri Lankan war heroes and turn them into war criminals. But if even convicted murderers are pardoned, what faith and confidence in justice without fear or favor can be placed in the Sri Lankan judicial system?

Conclusion

Last month, Basil Rajapaksa was brought into Parliament as finance minister, perhaps to find an agreement with the International Monetary Fund and stem the tide of economic disaster, despite the government’s stated aversion to any IMF deal. More likely though, his entrance into Parliament is meant to rally the troops that make up the SLPP’s two-thirds majority. Two sets of elections are pending: provincial elections, which have been delayed over attempts to change the electoral system; and elections for local government bodies scheduled for 2023. Each of these will be a litmus test for the Rajapaksa dynasty and will help determine who should be its standard bearer in the presidential and general elections to come.

What is of deepest concern in terms of the future trajectory of Sri Lankan politics, however, is the monk-and-military alliance that the Gotabaya presidency has allowed to hold sway and its deep imprint on the architecture of governance. It has allowed for authoritarian government to be legitimized by ethnic majoritarianism. Will the military and majoritarian mindset become so deeply institutionalized in government and governance that the notion of Sri Lanka as a formal, functioning democracy, founded on the idea of “Unity in Diversity,” will forever be lost?

Sri Lanka lives in interesting times and the next national elections promise to be decisive in its sojourn as a democracy.