Hoping for a new dawn in India-Lanka ties

SY quraishi
Former Chief Election Commissioner of India

With Mahinda Rajapaksa’s oath-taking ceremony for the prime ministerial post complete, the reign of the Rajapaksas has fortified and how. The ceremony was a foregone conclusion of the parliamentary election results declared on August 6.

Held on August 5 after a series of delays owing to the coronavirus pandemic, the parliamentary elections recorded a voter turnout of 71 per cent, lower than the 77 per cent turnout in the elections of 2015.

From the beginning, the General Election seemed heavily skewed towards the Mahinda Rajapaksa-led Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), which single-handedly won a thumping majority of 145 seats in the 225-seat national legislature. Casting 59% of the total votes to the SLPP, the Sri Lankan public has wholeheartedly given the nod to the two strongmen and brothers — Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the President and Mahinda Rajapaksa as the Prime Minister.

The breakdown of political opposition was signalled by the landslide victory of Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the presidential elections last November. The first nail in the coffin was the resignation of Ranil Wickremsinghe from the prime ministerial post due to the humbling defeat of the joint opposition candidate, Sajitha Premadasa, as soon as the younger Rajapaksa won. The shattering loss brought to the fore the tussle between Wickremsinghe and Premadasa, tall-standing leaders of the United National Party (UNP), which culminated with the latter breaking away from the parent organisation to form his new venture, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB). The decision bore fruit as the SJB rose as a distant second with 54 seats in the recently concluded elections, whereas the UNP was reduced to just one seat, prompting the resignation of Wickremsinghe, the UNP chief. The fractured Opposition paved the way for the Rajapaksa brothers to pursue their ethno-nationalist political campaign uninhibited.

Before contesting in the General Election, Mahinda Rajapaksa served as the interim caretaker Prime Minister, appointed by his President brother soon after Wickremsinghe left the post. Under the duo’s synchronised governance style, the country was able to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic. This aggressive flaunt of unity, be it in the administration or photo-ops, also intended to serve the campaign promise of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to promulgate constitutional reforms and possibly a new Constitution. His vow to consolidate power under an executive presidency has gained momentum as Sri Lanka People’s Freedom Alliance, wherein the SLPP is the main political party, has a total of 145 seats in parliament, forming a nearly two-thirds majority needed to pass constitutional amendments in the national legislative body.

The first step in fulfilling the President’s long-standing stance would be to repeal the 19th Constitutional Amendment. The amendment was brought in to undo the changes done by the 18th Amendment of 2010. The latter was promulgated when Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected as the country’s President a second time after putting an end to the 26-year-long dreaded civil war. With the sole objective of centralising power under him and consolidating his control over the administration, the amendment removed the two-year term bar on running for presidency and made President the sole authority in appointing members of independent commissions (like the Election Commission), Chief Justice and judges of the Supreme Court, amongst others.

The electoral laws were also not spared under this amendment as it disabled the Election Commission from holding public and private media accountable for its election coverage, and restricted its role to merely conducting elections. It allowed the President to visit parliament once in three months and also enabled him to enjoy all privileges, except for the voting right that a Member of Parliament enjoys. However, the journey from parliamentary democracy to a presidential one was short-lived as Mahinda Rajapaksa was ousted in 2015, paving the way for the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Re-instating the Constitutional Council, it made the Council’s advice binding on the President regarding appointments to the independent commissions, de-politicising their nature. Additionally, the President was barred from re-contesting after the completion of two elected five-year terms.

Who would have thought that the 19th Amendment would meet the same fate as its predecessor? The irony is uncanny — the public that threw the elder Rajapaksa out of power for passing the 18th Amendment, voted the younger Rajapaksa to victory to bring back the same amendment.

In terms of respect for civil liberties and human rights, the regimes of the elder and younger brothers are two sides of the same coin. While the former regime witnessed discrimination against the Tamil minority and rise of Sinhalese nationalism, the latter has been in the news for its undeterred Islamophobia and unregulated arrests of human rights activists and lawyers. One thing is for certain — that the centralisation of authority under the Rajapaksa brothers, and the weakened checks and balances on their power that are bound to follow the much-anticipated constitutional reforms, will come down heavily on voices of dissent.

Though Sri Lanka and its immediate neighbour India are following similar patterns of a majoritarian government, the relationship between the two countries is of suspicion. The memories of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second-term proximity to China at the cost of India still haunt the latter. It may be recalled that in 2015, he had publicly attributed his defeat to the Indian intelligence agencies. The author met him at his residence in November 2019. When asked whether he still expects any ‘foreign’ interference, he replied with a wink that “hope it won’t happen again”.

Let’s hope the exchange of Twitter greetings between PM Modi and Mahinda Rajapaksa would be a good start for cordial relations.