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).

By Harim Peiris

(Published in “The Island” on the 14th May 2024)

Sri Lanka’s Election Commission announced, late last week, the conducting of a presidential election, between 17 September and the 16 October 2024, in accordance with the Constitution and the relevant statute, The announcement comes as no surprise since the term of office of former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, being served out as President by his second Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe ends on 17 November. The next President needs to be elected at least one month before the end of the term, giving the newly elected President a maximum of one month in which to transition to office.

The Presidential Poll has become a genuine three-way race for the first time in our history, with Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) being a surprising but genuine contender for the nation’s top job, along with incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe and the Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa. While political party or alliance names and symbols are constantly changing with every election cycle, the political forces they represent are largely the same from our recent political history.

Firstly, the JVP, or its newly minted NPP alliance, would be essentially Sri Lanka’s old leftist tradition, previously represented by parties such as the LSSP and the CP and now dominated by the JVP/NPP. The fact that the JVP, or its leader, is a credible presidential contestant has to do with the fact that the floating voter constituency deserting the Rajapaksas have initially looked to the JVP as the radical alternative to Rajapaksa populism rather than the more traditional and conservative Opposition SJB. But for the JVP / NPP public support seems to have peaked. Moreover, a close look at its political messaging seems to indicate attractive rhetoric which empathizes with popular pain but which is thin on policy specifics and especially on solutions.

For the SJB and Opposition leader Premadasa, the 2024 presidential poll is still theirs to lose. They face a Rajapaksa administration which self-imploded and a reconfigured successor Wickremesinghe administration which has merely gone back to the status quo ante as its policy framework. The SJB and Premadasa need to articulate a radical reformist agenda which captures the heart and essence of the political ethos of the “Aragalaya”. The Wickremesinghe administration’s heavy handed crackdown on the Aragalaya did not make its anti-incumbent and reformist politics go away. It merely created a two-year, caretaker administration of Ranil Wickremesinghe, until the real popularly elected presidency would come into office by / before end 2024. Much like the electorate waited patiently from 1975-77, when Ms. Bandaranaike postponed elections, to boot out the SLFP in 1977. The SJB and Premadasa need to articulate a clear, radical and reformist agenda as its vision for the future. As one foreign analyst of Sri Lankan affairs stated, “it is difficult for the SJB to be consistently on message, since it is not clear what its message is?”. This may be rather unkind, but there is a popular perception of a lack of clarity of what the SJB stands for, which is broadly articulated as reforms with social justice.

The hype and buzz in the popular press is about incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe, hoping and claiming that his technocratic stewardship of the bankrupt economy from mid-2022 to date would prompt a grateful nation to entrust the next five years also to a Wickremesinghe presidency, albeit this time with a popular mandate. Seems a tough ask from a real politick standpoint. Here is a President from a political party, the UNP, which couldn’t elect a single MP from any district at the last general election, including Mr. Wickremesinghe from Colombo and was fortunate to get a single national list seat, to enable him to re-enter Parliament. His administration governs with the parliamentary support of the Rajapaksa SLPP, which long lost its mandate in 2022 and whose public support is likely in the single digits.

The game changer for Wickremesinghe is supposed to be his stewardship of the national economy from its nadir in 2022 and, indeed, we do now have fuel in the petrol stations, no queues, low interest rates and manageable inflation, as the President pointed out to Parliament recently. However, this superficial analysis belies some basic realities. The Wickremesinghe Administration’s economic policy programme has been no more than a return to the status quo ante, or what existed before the madness and mismanagement of the third Rajapaksa term. There has been absolutely no attempt at governance reforms. On the contrary from the human immunoglobulin scandal to the e-visa fiasco and numerous unsolicited proposals to government, mismanagement has been more the norm. There has also been a regrettable backsliding on democratic freedoms from the Online (censorship) Bill to the Administration’s choice of IGP. The Administration is now locked in stalemate with the Election Commission on its citizens committees at DS level and with the Constitutional Council over the appointments to the superior courts. Hardly the kind of thing we want for the next five years. Further the economic “stabilization” has occurred after a collapse of the currency and a decimation of the life-savings and purchasing power of the vast majority of the country’s populace. According to UN and other independent estimates about 60 percent of the country’s populace have seen real incomes errored, living standards drastically fall and growing malnutrition among vulnerable sections of over half the population. There is unlikely to be much gratitude for the reconfigured SLPP administration, nor its single seat UNP face.

The Wickremesinghe administration is a UNP and SLPP combine and neither of these political parties likely have much public support in the country at the moment. The Rajapaksa support for Wickremesinghe will only have currency and value if the voters have given up on the ethos of the Aragalaya and desire for a fourth Rajapaksa term by proxy, which is highly unlikely. But we will know for certain before the year end.

(The writer previously served as Presidential Spokesman and Advisor / Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

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.

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)