By Harim Peiris

(Published in “The Island” on the 19th August 2024)

With nominations for the September 21 presidential elections now completed, a survey of the political landscape provides an interesting picture. A record 39 candidates are in the fray but most of them would be also rans. In this year’s election, there are three main candidates with a couple of other interesting side shows. In the last presidential election of 2019, the three main candidates polled 97% between them while the balance 32 candidates shared 3% of the vote between them.

For any government to win reelection to office, it needs to retain the support of the social forces which propelled it into power in the first place. Post the aragalaya protest movement and the fleeing away of Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2022, its successor was a coalition between Ranil Wickremesinghe and the Rajapaksa’s SLPP, specifically the SLPP’s parliamentary majority. It is a successor administration that is only now going before the people seeking a mandate, constitutionally not having needed to do so in 2022. However it is doing so after the ruling coalition broke apart. The political marriage of convenience between Ranil Wickremesinghe and the Rajapaksas is now officially over.

As nominations closed, the Rajapaksas and the SLPP have nominated their own candidate. The original plan was for a stop gap standard bearer, or as a night watchman in cricketing terms, to carry the SLPP flag during this election and business tycoon and SLPP MP Dhammika Perera was chosen. However, that was not to be. Accordingly the scion of the Rajapaksa political dynasty, Hambanthota District parliamentarian and former Thomian rugby captain Namal Rajapaksa, steps out of his father’s shadow in a national coming out party this presidential election. The country would be able to get a good look at the next generation Rajapaksa being groomed to take over leadership of the family’s political fortunes. However post 2022, once senses a public weariness with and a rejection of the Rajapaksa politics and if public polling and opinion surveys are to be relied on, the young Rajapaksa should garner in the high single digits of the popular vote; an interesting side show to the real contest. President Ranil Wickremesinghe, on the other hand, without his SLPP coalition partner is now an independent candidate trying to cobble up a coalition of the willing without a real grassroots network. A broken ruling coalition is seeking election in its two constituent parts.

Sri Lanka has always had a basic two party system or a contestation for power between two major political groupings whatever names or forms they may take or adopt, with a strong leftist component, as a third distinct political entity. For the early part of post independent history these two forces were the UNP and the SLFP, with the left being represented by the LSSP and the CP. With elections being switched over to a proportional representation system, parties became more like alliances. The 2015 election, which brought an SLFP/UNP coalition under President Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe, demonstrated that the political space created by the two major parties coming together resulted not in a one party state but in the capture of the opposition space by the Rajapaksas who lost the 2015 election through their new party the SLPP that  swept to power in 2019.

Leading the opposition to the Rajapaksas and the ruling Wickremesinghe Administration is the SJB of opposition leader Sajith Premadasa. Having formed a broader umbrella of a Samagi Jana Sandanaya or alliance, the SJB seems the broadest based alliance seeking to come into government office through the election of Sajith Premadasa as president. The SJB according to its public pronouncements has crafted a largely centrist position on most issues, capturing the middle ground between the business as usual of President Ranil Wickremesinghe and the system change of the JVP/NPP.

The political left now dominated by the JVP is led by its most effective standard bearer ever in post independent Sri Lanka, MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The JVP and its leader saw a surge in support in the aftermath of the aragalaya as the ethos of the system change caught currency and received public support. But two years on and as the voting public takes a good hard look at whether they prefer a system change or deep reforms, the balance seems to moving more towards the formal opposition of the SJB rather than the political left represented by the JVP/NPP. To complicate matters for the JVP/NPP, the founder and head of a leading media conglomerate, Dilith Jayaweera, is contesting as the candidate of the Sri Lanka Communist Party backed by a group of the more majoritarian ethnic nationalist MPs.

This is a further splintering of the political forces that came together in backing the SLPP in 2019 and, with the political discrediting of the Rajapaksas in 2019, the ethnic nationalism that was a mainstay of their politics is also largely discredited. Dilith Jayaweera will likely contest Namal Rajapaksa to be a significant also ran but in the low single digits. The real presidential election contest is between the incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe, the opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and the leftist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The sovereign people of Sri Lanka will decide on September 21 as to who should shape our common destiny and steward the journey for the next five years.

By Harim Peiris

(Published in “The Island” on the 7th August 2024)

A few weeks ago, Sri Lankans were not certain if there would be a presidential election in 2024, with an alleged lack of clarity regarding the term of the president and a government drama, of a bill to amend the president’s term. However, the independent Election Commission was very clear and firm and now we do have a presidential election gazetted  and scheduled to be held on 21^st September and Sri Lankans are afforded their first real chance to decide their own future or at least elect the leaders who would fashion and form that future, after the momentous and calamitous events of two years ago, the bankrupting of our nation, the collapse of our currency, hyper-inflation and the impoverishment of a whole swathe of our society.

Sri Lankan politics, has in the past always been a rather regular two-party affair. This time around, for the very first time, there is a real three-cornered race. The three main contenders provide three very different and distinct alternative ways forward to the Sri Lankan people, and it may be useful to clarify the choices they present us with, so we can all make an informed and reasoned choice, as a sovereign and free people.

Trailing in third place according to all public opinion polls and surveys is President Ranil Wickramasinghe, who has headed a government lacking a popular mandate, with the support of the Rajapakse’s SLPP parliamentary group, since his predecessor fled in July 2022. His main argument and selling proposition to the country, is that his is a safe pair of experienced hands which should be entrusted, the next half decade of national economic management and to consolidate the slow recovery from bankruptcy. Ending the petrol queues, controlling inflation and managing the economic disaster are presented as his singular achievements and the rationale for entrusting him with a popular mandate for five more years at least. President Wickramasinghe has articulated that there is really no need for anything more than a return to the status quo ante. To go back to the path we were so nicely on, until the third Rajapakse (Gotabaya’s) term messed it up. If we get back to the status quo ante, it will serve Sri Lankans and Sri Lanka’s future very well. Accordingly there have been no action in two years, to hold provincial council elections or divest loss making state enterprises. Just raise taxes and reduce the returns on the EPF to cover up governance failures. It is very much business as it usually was.

On a more concerning note though, has been his Administration’s crack down on civil liberties and democratic space, including the Online (Censorship) Bill, a draconian Counter Terrorism Bill no better than its predecessor PTA and of late, even more worrying a confrontational and adversarial approach to the apex judiciary, the  honorable Supreme Court, where his Administration has been receiving a string of defeats from a suspension of his controversial appointment of IGP, to a suspension of a wind power plant in Mannar, to an equally controversial award of Sri Lanka’s online visa system to a foreign company  via an unsolicited proposal. The rule of law, requires a government to be subject to constitutional constraints on executive decisions, with checks and balances on the Executive in particular. The Bar Association of Sri Lanka in particular was scathing in its comments on the Wickramasinghe Administration’s potentially contemptuous response to an interim relief decision in the IGP case. In terms of real-politic, the decision by the Rajapakse led SLPP to field its own candidate and not support President Wickramasinghe, would likely significantly weaken his media savvy but politically light weight, non-party independent presidential election campaign, from the top two opposition party contenders.

The surprising surge in public support from late last year for the perennially third placed JVP led NPP, with a parliamentary group of three and its leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake, is in all likelihood based on two factors. The first was real political support for a system change, as articulated in the “aragalaya” protest movement and the general belief especially among younger voters that the JVP offered the best chance for a real change from business as usual in national governance. The second reason was that with the public’s political repudiation of the Rajapakses and their SLPP, the attraction was for the exact opposite of what the Rajapakses stood for and represented. The NPP / JVP was seen to best represent what was the anti-thesis of the political establishment’s “business as usual”. However most analysts agree with what the opinion polls and surveys reveal, that the NPP / JVP has peaked in its support and is losing some of its appeal as election day nears and voters focus on not just a clear articulation of the problems faced but also the proposed solutions. The JVP with no experience whatsoever in governance, is high on ideologically driven rhetoric and much lower and lighter on concrete and practical solutions. The exact nature of the change they might bring is also quite unclear. Equally troubling has been their bloody past in two failed insurrections, with little remorse expressed for the political violence they unleased on a democratic society

Stradling these two opposite extremes of Wickramasinghe’s business as usual and the JVP’s system change, has been SJB and Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa, who in a quiet but nonetheless energetic manner has been proposing, real even radical reforms of the Sri Lankan State, to bring about the governance and political reforms we so desperately need to heal of our past traumas and man made disasters, to jointly face and fashion a shared future and  a common destiny. Having perhaps the most impressive front bench in the likes of Eran Wickramaratne, Harsha De Silva and Kabir Hashim together with seasoned veterans such as Ranjith Maddumabandara and Tissa Attanayake, the SJB and Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa provides a middle path of real reforms. Though he may not quite articulate it that way, Sajith Premadasa is quite close to the third way popularized by political scientist Anthony Giddens.  The Third Way, also known as Modernized Social Democracy, is a predominantly centrist political position that attempts to reconcile centre-right and center-left politics by synthesizing a combination of economically liberal and social democratic economic policies along with center-left social policies. The economic ruin caused by the third Rajapakse term impoverished more than half our nation’s people, who are yet to recover. Sajith Premadasa, his front bench and the SJB understand this and are, at least in theory, committed to addressing it through a social democratic policy framework and real reforms of the Sri Lankan state to bring about more accountable governance which minimizes corruption.

The Sri Lankan people have a clear, three choices in the presidential election ahead. By September 22^nd late morning we shall know the decision of the sovereign people of Sri Lanka. As an ancient Archbishop of Canterbury Walter Reynolds stated in 1327, “Vox populi, vox Dei”, the voice of the people, is the voice of God.

(The writer previously served as Presidential Spokesperson and Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The views expressed are his own).