India must be wary of hawkish Gotabaya

Lt Gen PC Katoch (retd)
Distinguished fellow, United Service Institution of India

THE election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the seventh President of Sri Lanka, riding on the wave of ‘native nationalism’, mirrors similar electoral waves in India and the US. But Gotabaya’s credentials were loved by the Sinhala majority for having decimated the LTTE. It didn’t matter that the some 40,000 massacred included innocent local Tamils, men, women and children, in addition to LTTE cadres. As the defence secretary, his missive was, perhaps, even more ruthless than recent revelations of Xi Jinping ordering ‘no mercy’ against Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Gotabaya’s own family and that of his other eight politician brothers lovingly call him the 'Terminator'. 

In his pre-election rallies, Gotabaya cashed in on the Sunday Easter Islamic bombings by fanning flames of Sinhalese nationalism and promised that if he became President, he would re-introduce surveillance of citizens in order to crush extremism and would strengthen intelligence services. His most significant declaration was that on becoming President, he would ‘restore’ ties with China. His elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, when President, had already turned Beijing’s surrogate, allowing rapid expansion of China’s influence in Sri Lanka and drowning the country in Chinese debt. 

Before being elected, Gotabaya announced that he would not honour the deal of the previous government with the UN concerning war crimes and that he would release and rehabilitate soldiers jailed for war crimes. He has renounced his US citizenship and the two lawsuits pending against him in a US federal court over war crimes committed as defence secretary are passé. So is the testimony of a Sri Lankan army commander in 2017 that Gotabaya used his own secret unit to specifically target journalists and dissidents, while the Criminal Investigations Department revealed the autopsy of newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunge was falsified to conceal that he was stabbed to death.

The Sri Lankan public expects Gotabaya to improve the country's economy. Sri Lanka’s interim budget passed on October 23 of Sri Lankan Rupees 1.47 trillion ($8.11 billion) in spending for the first quarter of 2020 expects Rs 745 billion in government revenue and sought permission to raise it to Rs 721 billion as loans. This would be music for China’s ‘debt trap’ policy. Beijing’s political warfare is made easy with Gotabaya’s record of still facing charges of corruption related to alleged misappropriation of Rs 33.9 million ($1,88,340) of state funds to build a memorial museum for his parents in his hometown of Medamulana. On September 16,  President Maithripala Sirisena had said the Chinese firm contracted in 2012 during President Mahinda Rajapaksa disappeared with $11.09 million (over Rs 2 billion) state funds. 

Saleable politicians are intrinsically suited to China’s political warfare. Most politicians are not saleable, but those that can get away or don’t mind with demonstrated misappropriations endear more. Gotabaya’s win is a special bonanza for China as it will provide a big boost for China’s Belt and Road project, with Sri Lanka straddling the busiest global shipping lanes in the Indo-Pacific. India’s relief over the Maldives coming out of Beijing’s hold has been outweighed many times more with Sri Lanka landing up in China's lap. Gotabaya is not the one to view China's financial overtures as a debt trap, much as China’s offer of $54 billion investment is being viewed by the Nepalese government notwithstanding an odd incident of Xi Jinping’s effigy burnt by some in Nepal over territorial encroachment.

There is speculation over Gotabaya making his first foreign visit to New Delhi or Beijing indicating his priority. Others say that he has the difficult task of balancing relations with India and China. But the writing appears very much on the wall — Sri Lanka under Gotabaya will plunge deeper into China's gravitational pull. This could make Sri Lanka harden its stance against India. Witness Nepal’s Prime Minister asking the Indian Army to withdraw from the Kalapani area rather than calling for dialogue. China’s consolidation in Sri Lanka would challenge the alternative to its Belt and Road plans by the US, Japan and others that are rooting for free and open seas and global commons. China has never bothered about international norms and neither is it likely to do so in future. 

There have been incidents of buses transporting Muslims to cast their votes in the Sri Lanka presidential elections attacked with gunfire. Gotabaya would likely make life difficult for minorities, turning Sri Lanka into a police state. He can be expected to go after Islamic fundamentalists with a vengeance, showing no mercy and without a bother, encouraged by China and without a whimper from Pakistan. Pakistan is immune to treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang while China assists Pakistani military genocide in Balochistan. 

India should be wary of the military hawk in Gotabaya as well. While both China and Pakistan helped Sri Lanka in decimating the LTTE, he is unlikely to forget the Indian intelligence-trained cadres of the already established powerful terror organisation of the LTTE replete with ground, air and naval wings. It is a different matter that Indian intelligence bungled its operation totally, with the Indian army ending up fighting the LTTE, R&AW helping LTTE chief Prabhakaran escape from Alampil forest and Sri Lanka finally helping LTTE inflict casualties on the IPKF in the process of winding up. 

Given the above setting, India should be prepared for a boost to Pakistan’s ISI activities against India from the Sri Lankan soil. This would increase terror threat to South India where radicalisation is already stirring. Ironically, the focus of India remains on state-level elections that come in quick succession. India has not really capitalised on Buddhism as part of its strategic depth to consolidate its links with the Sinhala of Sri Lanka as also the Buddhists all over the world. Akin to the Ramayana circuit in India, could we have helped Sri Lanka develop a similar circuit and link the two, given the many important remains of the epic in Sri Lanka? But this apart, pragmatism in geopolitics is the need of the hour to cope with the emerging dynamics in Sri Lanka.