Political Commentary

The visit of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, later this month may possibly be overshadowed by the eruption of hostilities in the Middle East following Israel’s attack on Iran. The High Commissioner’s visit to Sri Lanka relates to the series of resolutions passed by the UN Human Rights Council over the past sixteen years since the end of the war. It will highlight the contradiction in the rules-based international order when geopolitical interests override legal commitments. These resolutions highlight the importance of protecting human rights during times of conflict and ensuring accountability for war crimes. They are part of the enduring legacy of international human rights and humanitarian law, as exemplified by the Geneva Conventions and the global post-war consensus that atrocity crimes should not go unpunished.

The people’s mandate at the general election seven months ago was for “system change”. The main hope of those who voted overwhelmingly for the NPP was to improve the economic situation. Those who live in the north and east of the country, where the long civil war took place, voted along with their fellow citizens in other parts of the country for an improvement in their economic circumstances and a break from the decades of exclusion they have experienced. One way they thought this would happen was through the reduction of corruption that took resources away from economic development. The NPP’s central promise was to govern cleanly, hold the corrupt accountable, and recover the billions of dollars allegedly looted and hidden abroad. A common and growing criticism of the government, however, is that this recovery has yet to materialise in any significant form.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, is expected to visit Sri Lanka later this month. This will be an important visit as he will be seeking to assess the progress that the new government has made in implementing resolutions passed by the UN Human Rights Commission which his office facilitates. The last such visit was by former High Commissioner Al Hussein in February 2016, during the period of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government. At that time the relations between the Sri Lankan government and the UN Human Rights High Commissioner’s office were mutually supportive as the Sri Lankan government had co-sponsored UNHRC Resolution 30/1 which specifically included international participation in the transitional justice process.

It appears that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake was a reluctant participant at the 16th National War Heroes Commemoration event. The government announced he would attend the event after strong criticism from sections of the opposition and social media. The printed invitations to the event did not contain the president’s name. The government explained this was due to a miscommunication and the president always intended to attend the commemoration. According to the constitution the president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces and the president usually takes on the office of Minister of Defense, with President Dissanayake also following this tradition. As the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and Minister of Defense, his presence was both symbolic and necessary.

The dates May 18-19 highlight a continuing divide in the country with few willing to look at the losses on the other side though they were all Sri Lankans. These two days in particular surface the uncomfortable truth that the country’s people have different memories, including the manner in which the three decade long war ended. The Tamil people have commemorated May 18 as the day on which many of them, including LTTE members, were killed and the war was lost. This year there were commemorations in different parts of the country, including in Colombo. It was not only Tamils who commemorated their loved ones on May 18. Sinhalese did so too at ceremonies they organized. They were all sorrowful occasions.

The local government elections that took place last week saw a consolidation of the democratic system in the country. The government followed the rules of elections to a greater extent than its recent predecessors some of whom continue to be active on the political stage. Particularly noteworthy was the absence of the abuse of state resources, both media and financial, which had become normalized under successive governments in the past four decades. Reports by independent election monitoring organisations made mention of this improvement in the country’s democratic culture.

The local government elections, long delayed and much anticipated, are shaping up to be a landmark political event. These elections were originally due in 2023, but were postponed by the previous government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe. The government of the day even defied a Supreme Court ruling mandating that elections be held without delay. They may have feared a defeat would erode that government’s already weak legitimacy, with the president having assumed office through a parliamentary vote rather than a direct electoral mandate following the mass protests that forced the previous president and his government to resign. The outcome of the local government elections that are taking place at present will be especially important to the NPP government as it is being accused by its critics of non-delivery of election promises.

The international system, built at the end of two world wars, was designed with the aspiration of preserving global peace, promoting justice, and ensuring stability through a Rules-Based International Order. Institutions such as the United Nations, the UN Covenants on Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Council formed the backbone of this system. They served as crucial platforms for upholding human rights norms and international law. Despite its many imperfections, this system remains important for small countries like Sri Lanka, offering some measure of protection against the pressures of great power politics. However, this international order has not been free from criticism. The selective application of international norms, particularly by powerful Western states, has weakened its legitimacy over time.

Minister of Agriculture K D Lalkantha, one of the most senior members of the government, has made a statement regarding former president Ranil Wickremesinghe which has been a subject of speculation. Minister Lalkantha said that the former president has the best understanding of the present international economic order and the economic challenges facing the country. He had asserted that the former president has a distinct worldview, rooted in neoliberalism, which continues to shape his approach. He is quoted as having said, “This shift towards neoliberalism is what we are witnessing now. Ranil was the first politician in Sri Lanka to openly embrace neoliberalism,” he remarked. “He is the knowledgeable figure in this area.”

The sudden reemergence of two major incidents from the past, that had become peripheral to the concerns of people today, has jolted the national polity and come to its centre stage. These are the interview by former president Ranil Wickremesinghe with the Al Jazeera television station that elicited the Batalanda issue and now the sanctioning of three former military commanders of the Sri Lankan armed forces and an LTTE commander who switched sides and joined the government. The key lesson that these two incidents give is that allegations of mass crimes, whether they arise nationally or internationally, have to be dealt with at some time or the other. If they are not, they continue to fester beneath the surface until they rise again in a most unexpected way and when they may be more difficult to deal with.

Six months into the term of office of the new government, the main positive achievements continue to remain economic and political stability and the reduction of waste and corruption. The absence of these in the past contributed to a significant degree to the lack of development of the country. The fact that the government is making a serious bid to ensure them is the best prognosis for a better future for the country. There is still a distance to go. The promised improvements that would directly benefit those who are at the bottom of the economic pyramid, and the quarter of the population who live below the poverty line, have yet to materialise. Prices of essential goods have not come down and some have seen sharp increases such as rice and coconuts. There are no mega projects in the pipeline that would give people the hope that rapid development is around the corner.

The Batalanda Commission report which goes into details of what happened during the JVP insurrection of 1987-89 has become the centre of public attention. The controversy has long been a point of contention and a reminder of the country’s troubled past and entrenched divisions that still exist. The events that occurred at Batalanda during the violent suppression of the JVP-led insurgency, remain a raw wound, as seen in the sudden resurfacing of the issue. The scars of violence and war still run deep. At a time when the country is grappling with pressing challenges ranging from economic recovery to social stability, there is a need to keep in focus the broader goal of unity for long-term peace and prosperity. But the ghosts of the past need also to be put to rest without continuing to haunt the present and future.

It was three years ago that the Aragalaya people’s movement in Sri Lanka hit the international headlines. The world watched a celebration of democracy on the streets of Colombo as tens of thousands of people of all ages and communities gathered to demand a change of government. The Aragalaya showed that people have the power, and agency, to make governments at the time of elections and also break governments on the streets through non-violent mass protest. This is a very powerful message that other countries in the region, particularly Bangladesh and Pakistan in the South Asian region, have taken to heart from the example of Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya. It calls for adopting ‘systems thinking’ in which there is understanding of the interconnectedness of complex issues and working across different sectors and levels that address root causes rather than just the symptoms.

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) sessions in Geneva have regularly been a focal point of controversy for Sri Lanka. Since 2009, the year the thirty-year internal war ended, the country has been the subject of multiple resolutions aimed at addressing human rights violations and war crimes committed during and after the war. These resolutions have been met with strong resistance from successive Sri Lankan governments, which have accused the UNHRC of double standards and external interference in the country’s internal affairs. Nationalist political factions have often used the UNHRC’s actions as a rallying point to stir anger against the international community and ethnic minorities within Sri Lanka, further deepening divisions within the country.

President Donald Trump in the United States is showing how, in a democratic polity, the winner of the people’s mandate can become an unstoppable extreme force. Critics of the NPP government frequently jibe at the government’s economic policy as being a mere continuation of the essential features of the economic policy of former president, Ranil Wickremesinghe. The criticism is that despite the resounding electoral mandates it received, the government is following the IMF prescriptions negotiated by the former president instead of making radical departures from it as promised prior to the elections. The critics themselves do not have alternatives to offer except to assert that during the election campaign the NPP speakers pledged to renegotiate the IMF agreement which they have done only on a very limited basis since coming to power.

The virtually overnight suspension of the U.S. government’s multibillion dollar foreign aid programme channeled through USAID has been headline news in the U.S. and in other parts of the world where this aid has been very important. In the U.S. itself the suspension of USAID programmes has been accompanied by large scale loss of jobs in the aid sector without due notice. In areas of the world where U.S. aid was playing an important role, such as in mitigating conditions of famine or war, the impact is life threatening to large numbers of hapless people. In Sri Lanka, however, the suspension of U.S. aid has made the headlines for an entirely different reason.