By Harim Peiris

(Published in “The Island” on the 20th March 2024)

The publishing of ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s memoirs, almost predictably titled, The Conspiracy to oust me from the presidency , provides an opportunity to re-evaluate those tumultuous events that did led to the fleeing abroad of the former president in 2022 and his resignation, including the political discourse that arose from the Aragalaya. The political discourse of the Aragalaya is relevant, as we come to the constitutionally mandated presidential election year of 2024. If the ouster of Gotabaya Rajapaksa was not a widely popular move and was a conspiracy, foreign or otherwise, then the evidence would be obvious at the polls, where the Rajapaksaa’s SLPP candidate should be able to romp home.

This has been the case in two other Asian countries with similar socio-religious backgrounds as ours, Thailand and Myanmar. Whenever the popularly elected governments of the red shirt political movement of Thakshin Shinawatra and his clan are ousted through street protests, they win the next free election. Similarly in Myanmar, when the Burmese military dared to face the public in a free election, they were wiped out at the polls and the National League for Democracy (NLD) of Aung San Sui Kyi emerged victorious.

If the ousting of Gotabaya Rajapaksa was a conspiracy in 2022, then the vindication should occur at the 2024 polls, presidential and parliamentary. However, all indications of published opinion surveys, indicate a near complete repudiation at the polls for the Rajapaksas’. The SLPP is unlikely to run their own candidate at the presidential elections (after all, there is no legal bar for Gotabaya to contest again and seek vindication at the polls), and they are also likely to fare quite poorly at an ensuing general election as well. This is not a conspiracy but the political reality after bankrupting the country.

The Ranil Wickremesinghe administration and the business and political elites who support it would argue the primacy of the economic recovery efforts. But this has already occurred. It was also not rocket science, just plain common sense of basically importing, fuel, with some help from India and renegotiating with our creditors, including getting China to the table. But rebuilding our nation and her political economy requires deeper reforms. Even in the very throes of the economic collapse, the Aragalaya was arguing for a “system change”, deep and fundamental reforms to the Sri Lankan state, including our identity-based politics and culture of poor governance.

While the Wickremesinghe Administration has taken the emergency measures to stabilise the economy, it is seemingly unwilling, unable and even in denial of the need for any reforms of the Sri Lankan state, public governance or economic management. The long-term solution is seen as increased foreign remittances from tourism and little else and business as usual. But the pain in society is deep and real and the election results of 2024 would reveal that.

The need for system change has been brought into stark focus by the vote of no confidence on the speaker of Parliament brought by the Opposition. A move catalysed by the leader of the Opposition, Sajith Premadasa. As this article is being penned, the debate in that august assembly has been scheduled but not yet begun. Given the government’s comfortable majority in parliament, the outcome of the vote is in little doubt. But from a public governance standpoint, it is interesting to note what the Opposition alleges in their no confidence motion, certainly seem prima-facie self-evident and have not really been refuted with any credibility.

The first and most serious allegation in the no-confidence motion against the Speaker is the process of passing and certifying the supremely misnamed Online Safety Bill––the government’s tool to crush online dissent.

If the Wickramasinghe Administration’s agenda is ever accused of being neo-liberal, it must surely be strictly limited to its economic policies since there is surely nothing liberal, tolerant or pluralistic on the crackdown on dissent and freedoms being done through the Online Safety Bill, the Counter Terrorism Act and other similar initiatives. The contention of the Opposition’s motion is that the undertakings given to the Supreme Court by the Attorney General, on behalf of the government were not adhered to by the government in the passage of the Bill. The necessary amendments were not incorporated and the division by name, though requested, was not conducted.

If the youth of the Aragalaya in 2022, were demanding system change and reforms, this is unlikely a conspiracy as Gotabaya Rajapaksa alleges, but a rather obvious response to public governance, post war, where far from a peace dividend either economically or socio-politically, we went in the opposite direction to being less prosperous economically and less democratic with fewer liberties, politically.

The appointment of the IGP was the second allegation in the no confidence motion against the speaker. In what is surely a slap in the face for the judiciary, a man found by the Supreme Court to have personally tortured a person in custody, was soon thereafter nominated for IGP. Notwithstanding resistance from the Constitutional Council, appointed through the Speaker’s casting vote. The said process is now a part of the parliamentary no confidence motion. This administration, though a lame duck and lacking a popular mandate, is certainly not averse to audacious acts in governance. The Aragalaya cry for real reform was no conspiracy and the results of the presidential and parliamentary elections due in the not too distant future will likely bear that out.

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By Harim Peiris

(Published in “The Island” on the 13th March 2024)

The year 2024, is an election year in Sri Lanka, with the president’s term of office ending on 17th November 2024 and accordingly the conduct of a presidential election constitutionally mandated upon the Election Commission between September and October, this year. The ousting of former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, through the mass protests of the aragalaya two years ago, has been raised a fresh in the public consciousness through the publications of his memoirs, “The Conspiracy – to oust me from the presidency”, a rather blatant attempt at blaming everyone but the Rajapaksa’s gross mismanagement of the country, for the mass uprising which resulted in the end of his short lived and unlamented administration. The presidential election of 2024, is the first and most decisive of Sri Lankan democracy’s attempt, since 2022 to publicly elect and grant a popular mandate to the office of president of the republic.

The politics of 2024 are being clearly laid out as a three corned race. As incumbent in office, the first contender is President Ranil Wickremesinghe, propped up and kept in power by the rump parliamentary majority of the Rajapaksa’s SLPP, a political formation that lost its popular mandate along with their president in 2022 but continues to control parliament and back the single seat UNP’s president. The official opposition led by the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Sajith Premadasa and his Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) is the obvious alternative to an administration lacking a popular mandate. To his credit Mr. Premadasa has succeeded in preventing a takeover of his party by the UNP, which party he decimated in the general elections of 2020 in the maiden electoral outing of his SJB. By all accounts, the various attempts by President Wickremesinghe and the UNP to dump the SLPP and pivot to the SJB for the presidential poll has now been ended.

However, the JVP says its leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake is the front runner in the 2024 presidential poll. Polling just above 3% of the popular vote in the 2019 presidential election, the JVP was always a distant third and very much an “also ran” in prior elections and Sri Lankan politics in general. Garnering about 4% of the vote in the parliamentary elections of 2020, it secured just three seats. However, as voters repudiate Rajapaksa governance and its associated politics, which brough about national economic collapse, in just two short years, ironically based on a promise of creating splendour and prosperity, the beneficiary of much of the Rajapaksa’s self-implosion seems to have been the JVP, much more so than the main opposition SJB. Some of the dynamics at play are worth examining. We are more than six months away from the presidential election, a near eternity in politics. Much can change in the relatively unchartered terrain of the new three-way race of Sri Lankan politics and the large number of undecided voters, who would be really the deciding factor at the coming election.

The presidential election of November 2019 was all about national security after the coordinated Easter bomb attacks of April 2019. Ironically, we went from national security to national collapse in two years, with no real justice or truth about the perpetrators of the Easter bomb attack, except for a growing belief in the country that these attacks had the sanction and support of the deep state, especially after the UK Channel 4 expose’ alleging the same. However, the aragalaya and the economic collapse changed the political discourse in the country. We went from racial dog whistling and openly anti-minority politics to the politics of social justice. The real and lasting political problem for the Rajapaksa’s and the SLPP is not just that they destroyed the economy, but that their political ideology of majoritarian nationalism was discredited and discarded by the public, along with their governance.

The JVP, rather than the SJB, was the beneficiary of this new post racial, social justice political ethos. Almost overtly racist during their violent second insurrection of 1988/89, through a rejection of even the provincial councils, the JVP over the years more mainstreamed their ethnic policies along communist ideology, which emphasizes socio political class divides over ethnic ones. This didn’t hold much sway in the ethnically polarised Sri Lanka of the past, but the economic collapse of 2022 was much like the Tsunami of 2004, a massive shock to the system, which resulted in swift and significant changes to the popular consciousness and ethos.

The JVP tapped into the mass suffering and pain of the vast majority of the Sri Lankan populace. While our economy has stabilised and recovered, its benefits have been largely to the first and second percentiles or twenty percent of Sri Lanka’s population who earn close to about two thirds of our national income, in an economy with an extremely skewed income distribution. The UNP / SLPP administration has been tone deaf to the pain of the majority, with high malnutrition, huge drops in purchasing power and quality of life from public education and health to rural electrification. Over half a million households had electricity disconnected during the year. We are taking people off the national grid. Not adding new consumers. The JVP, better than the SJB, has tapped into that pain and suffering.

But these are early days in the presidential election race of 2024 and the election is still Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa’s to lose. He much more so, than the old traditional UNP elites, comes from a political tradition and track record of feeling the common man’s pain, of working towards universal housing and social security for all with much more credibility than the JVP. However, one thing is certain, the repudiation of the Rajapaksa political brand in 2024, would be fairly decisive.

(The writer served as Advisor to the President, from 2002-2005)