Political Commentary

The sudden recommencement of the constitutional reform process after a break of over six months coincides with JVP’s proposed 20th Amendment to the constitution which would abolish the executive presidency in its present form. The parliamentary steering committee which is headed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is reported to have instructed its experts committee to submit a paper for consideration within two weeks. If the 20th Amendment were to become law it would mean the diminishing of the president’s role in governance and a corresponding enhancement of the prime minister’s power. It would also do away with the need for a national election for the presidency, as the president would be elected by parliament. This would present a scenario that could see the evolution of a new partnership between President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

The rise in public manifestation of ethnic nationalism in the North was evident at this year’s commemoration ceremonies of the last phase of the war at Mullivaikkal of May 18, 2009. Several thousands of people attended the ceremony of remembrance held there at the monument erected in memory of the civilians killed in the war. This is the first time since the end of the war that a political event took place on May 18. Politicians from the moderate TNA who attended the event were not permitted to speak and instead university students and nationalist members of civil society groups took the centre stage. Although it was the Northern Provincial Council that had resolved to remember the Tamil civilians who died in the war, it was reported that even the Chairman of the Northern Provincial Council was physically stopped from entering the podium.

On Sunday a meeting of a truth commission took place in Kandy in which I was an observer. This was not the truth commission promised by the government to the international community in Geneva in October 2015. Rather, it was an unofficial body, a citizens’ truth commission, set up by the District Inter Religious Committee of Kandy. The District Inter Religious Committee (DIRC) had previously been involved in mitigating the violent situation that had arisen Kandy in early March 2018 and which lasted for a week in defiance of police curfews declared in the district. The DIRC members influenced the government officials, relevant religious leaders and academic persons in the area to take necessary action to solve the problem. In the midst of the troubled period, the DIRC also held a media conference to request all communities to be peaceful and to avoid escalating the problem.

One of the promises of the government alliance when they contested the 2015 presidential and general elections was to end corruption. The belief that corruption was deep rooted in the former government was well entrenched by the time of those elections. The promise to end corruption by the new government leaders was also believable as both President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe did not come with such baggage. This belief was increased by the immediate passage of the 19th Amendment to the constitution that strengthened the independence of the judiciary, the police and the bribery commission.

The political debate about the proposed 20th Amendment needs to be considered in the national perspective. The JVP’s proposed amendment is intended to abolish the popularly elected executive presidency and replace it with a significantly less powerful presidency to be elected by parliament rather than by the people. Those in the political opposition are currently the most vocal in their opposition to the proposed amendment. Those on the government side have been more or less silent so far.

The JVP is proposing a 20th Amendment to the constitution which will centre around the abolition of the executive presidency. This follows on the crisis in governance that culminated in the no-confidence motion in parliament against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. The background to this was the open manifestation of a power struggle between President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe which highlighted the problem of having dual centres of executive power. On the one hand, the president who is directly elected by the people enjoys the position of head of state and head of government. On the other hand, the prime minister who has the support of the majority in parliament is also vested with executive powers.

While the impact on the general population is not decisive, the aftermath of the no confidence motion against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in Parliament has seen a potentially decisive shift in the power balance within the government alliance. This will have crucial implications with regard to the future course of the government, especially on the knotty issue of who will be the next presidential candidate of the government alliance. It is this elephant in the room that has been at the root of the failure of the two leaders to build a relationship of trust between themselves. Both have been taking pre-emptive actions against the other. One of the main causes of the rivalry between the President and Prime Minister was, and probably remains, the issue of who will be the next presidential candidate of the government in 2019.

The defeat of the no confidence motion against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe by the relatively large margin of 122-76 votes in Parliament has renewed the fortunes of an ebbing government. Just a fortnight ago it was reeling under the twin impacts of the loss suffered at the local government elections held in February and its inability to nip the anti-Muslim riots the following month in Kandy in the bud. There was concern that the government had been rendered ineffective due to its internal divisions and was adrift in the ocean of politics without a sense of direction. However, by prevailing at the no confidence motion with a comfortable majority, the government has renewed the impression that the coalition of political forces that brought it to power in 2015 is still intact.

The no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe will be taken up on Wednesday. The no-confidence motion against the prime minister is primarily on the basis of his involvement in the Central Bank bond scam. In the motion against the Prime Minister there are 14 charges including placing the Finance Ministry under the purview of the Prime Minister with the intention of committing the bond scam, appointing Singaporean Arjuna Mahendran to the post of Governor of the Central Bank, directly involving in the Treasury bond scams, appointing a committee comprising his friends to exonerate those responsible for the scam, and misleading Parliament by giving false statements on the bond commission on March 17, 2015.

The ongoing deliberations of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva have not yielded any surprises. Delivering a joint statement on behalf of Macedonia, Montenegro, the United States and the United Kingdom during the UN High Commissioner's report on Sri Lanka, held on 21 March 2018 in Geneva, the UK said Sri Lanka is safer and freer than it was in 2015. However, it added that it was disappointed that the pace of progress has been slow. It stated that “Much still remains to be done to implement Sri Lanka's commitments. We remain concerned about reports of abuse of authority by some security officials. And multiple incidents of inter-communal violence, attacks, and hate speech against minorities are alarming and demonstrate the need for reconciliation efforts."

Any apprehension that the government would take to a more authoritarian path through the extension of the State of Emergency was dispelled by its revocation by President Maithripala Sirisena. When the president declared a State of Emergency to cover the entire country there was criticism that this was an overreaction to the problem of anti-Muslim violence as the violence was largely confined to the Kandy district and did not cross over to the other 24 districts. However, to the targeted Muslim population who live as minorities throughout the country, and to the great majority of peace loving citizens of all communities, the declaration of a countrywide emergency was primarily a reassuring signal that government wanted to make sure it would not spread.

The quelling of anti Muslim violence in Kandy took longer than anticipated. The curfew in the Kandy district continued for close on a week. A state of emergency, which gives the government special powers, and which enables the military to take on police functions, has been in effect since Tuesday. The protracted anti Muslim violence is a wake-up call about the tensions that line beneath the surface in society, which make them susceptible to abuse by powerful forces with larger political motivations. In a manner reminiscent of the prelude to the three decade-long war against the Tamil rebel movement, the sentiment is being promoted amongst sections of the Sinhalese ethnic majority is that the Muslim minority is a source of threat to their own security.

The setback suffered by the government at the local government elections has not dissuaded it from following through on its plans for national reconciliation. This is a cause for hope that the battle for national reconciliation through a lasting political solution is not yet lost, although it has got much delayed and the best time for moving forward is now gone. The government recently appointed the members of the Office of Missing Persons and is preparing to pass a new law on enforced disappearances. However, the time frames for visible action may change, with constitutional reform being pushed to the back. The political vulnerability of the government will be greatest with regard to constitutional reform that changes the nature of the state, and brings into focus the long term apprehension regarding the devolution of power.

The unexpectedly strong electoral performance by the newly formed SLPP whose chief protagonist is former President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the recent local government elections was a wake-up call to the parties in government. The opposition has argued that the elections, which came a little after the mid-point of the government’s five year term, was akin to a referendum and therefore those in government had lost their mandate to govern. This argument has been countered on the basis that a local government election cannot take the mandate away from a national election. As the pressure on the government has subsided the timing of the election can be said to be a blessing in disguise. It is clear from the election results that if the parties in government had continued in the same manner, they risked being badly defeated at the next general elections in 2020.

Sri Lanka’s three year journey with a national unity government comprising the two major national political parties is in doubt. The unity arrangement whereby the two traditional rivals shared power was always a contested one. Both parties felt they deserved better and each felt undermined by the other. They had different political visions, one more grounded, the other more cosmopolitan, and so deciding together was different. This was also the government’s strength, as it brought in a better balance, but decisionmaking was always slow. The local government election that they kept on postponing for more than two years has been the government’s undoing. When the government finally held those elections, the two main partners, the UNP and SLFP, turned against each other to give victory to the SLPP.

The recently formed Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) led by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa won most of the local government authorities in the South of the country in a landslide victory that caught the government and many others by surprise. The next few days will show if the SLPP, which is the breakaway faction of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) will be able to woo the newly elected council members from the SLFP-led United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) of President Maithripala Sirisena to enable the SLPP to form the administration of more local authorities. There is also the possibility that similar crossovers can be generated at the national level, leading to instability in the government itself.