By Harim Peiris

(Published in the Daily News of 28th Dec 2016)

The soft launch of a new political party nominal headed by former Minister G.L. Peiris, but substantively the Rajapakse political vehicle, styled the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) has created a new buzz in political circles about the Rajapakse comeback project. A project that really began, in the small hours of the morning of 9^th January last year, when it became apparent that the people had rejected Mahinda Rajapakse for an unprecedented third term. The first proposed comeback, an alleged coup by deploying the Gajaba regiment, to nullify the election results, has had a formal complaint to the CID by Minister Mangala Samaraweera and the strange mid night meetings at Temple Trees by the judicial usurper Mohan Peiris and the then Attorney General, military commanders etc. had all the makings of midnight plotting of anti-constitutional measures as alleged by Minister Samaraweera in his formal complaint.

However, the possible return of the Rajapakse face several fundamental political obstacles, that the Rajapakse political project has failed to address. The first obstacles in a Rajapakse return is that the fundamental political dynamics that formed the foundation of Rajapakse defeat, still holds true. What the Rajapaksa’s faced in 2015, is what they face today, which is that with regards the political elites or key leaders, it is pretty much Rajapakse verses the rest. Rajapakse allies being the miniscule non SLFP parties of the UPFA, the same coalition which lost in 2015. In fact, since the defeat of 2015, Rajapakse has further lost control of the SLFP party machinery, a necessary vehicle for political mobilization, hence the SLPP.

Further neither Rajapakse nor his allies can begin to accept the failures of their governance and hence offer a real alternative vision to the National Unity Government, for the future. Most political projects after defeat, do look inward somewhat and seek a political course correction, not so the Rajapakses’. They and their allies continue to insist, if by implication that it was the voters who made a mistake in 2015 and the voter will change their mind, very quickly. Further the Rajapakse message seems to be geared to and not extending beyond a section of the Sinhala Buddhist majority in the country, a political base and message two narrow to bring the project back to power. If the Rajapakse political comeback project is to succeed, two key changes need to take place, there must be an honest assessment of the failures of their governance, in all areas including economic, foreign, public sector management and social reconciliation policies and consequently seek to design a policy message and political outreach that is more pluralistic, tolerant and democratic.

Now, the factor that excites the die-hard minority of Rajapakse supporters in the political establishment is the constitutional making process that is currently ongoing through the Parliament as a constitutional assembly. The Rajapakse political calculation is that the potential divisiveness of constitutional reform and its consequential political and social change would permit the divisive identity politics and its attendant fear and hate mongering, which is Rajapaksa’s greatest political asset but also his greatest political liability.

With the presentation to Parliament of the interim reports of the six sub committees of the Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly and its scheduled debate in the House on 9^th and 10^th of January 2016, the opponents of the constitutional reform are slowly waking up to the fact, that there is a consensus building up in Parliament regarding the contours of a new basic law for Sri Lanka, a new social compact between the governed and the government. Almost four decades since the 1978 constitution was adopted for Sri Lanka, the empirical evidence we have is that our current constitutional arrangement and its overbearing executive presidency, reduced democratic space and centralized political power, consequently leading to poor public governance, weakened democratic institutions, led to armed conflicts in both the South and the North and reduced individual freedoms and human rights. The vast majority of the near forty-year period since 1978 to the present, Sri Lanka has been governed under emergency rule, which says it all about our failures as a polity.

The end of the war in 2009, removed armed conflict from the political equation and hence opens up a historic window of opportunity to address the democracy deficiency we have in Sri Lanka and effect state reform through a new constitution which ensures that the Sri Lankan State becomes more tolerant and pluralistic accommodating the full diversity of her society. There are opponents of such reform among the more extremist elements in both the North and the Southern polity. In the North, the opposition to the current approach of consultations, compromise and consensus, seems to be led by the Tamil Peoples Forum (TPF), led by a collection of defeated politicians, whose common feature seems to be their inability to be elected to Parliament by the Tamil people but having the patronage of Northern Chief Minister Justice CV Wigneswaren, whose endorsement of them nonetheless at the last general election failed to sway the voter, the Tamil Congress led political alliance of nay-sayers, collecting a paltry five thousand votes in the Jaffna District, even less than the SLFP’s modest support of seventeen thousand.

In the South, the opponents of state reform and a return to the past, has a more formidable champion in Mahinda Rajapakse, but the reality is that the more extreme politics ruled in Sri Lanka, until the recent past and are now relegated to the peripheries. The Tamil political leadership moved from Prabakaran and Pottu Amman to Sambanthan and Sumanthiran in 2009 and political leadership in the Southern polity moved from Mahinda and Gotabaya to Sirisena and Wickramasinghe. The political center has never been as dominant in Sri Lankan politics, in the recent past, as it is at present. Political change will always have its detractors, but the detractors having lost the last elections are on the periphery, providing a possible path and a foreseeable future for a new Sri Lanka.

Open government for sustaining democracy

By Harim Peiris

(Reporting from the Open Government Partnership Summit, Paris)

“There is urgency. Democracy is a common good, precious and fragile. It is threated by terrorism, by abstention, by disputes of all kinds and by the rise of populism. It is also threatened with indifference, by citizens who sometimes feel that nothing changes and that they can do nothing to make a difference”.  So, said; President Francois Hollande, Chairman of the Open Government Partnership, welcoming delegates to the 4^th Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit, in Paris.

Making a statement at the Summit, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera stated that;       “Sri Lanka accepted the invitation to join OGP with enthusiasm because the values of OGP reflect the policies of our government and the OGP National Action Plan approved by our Cabinet of Ministers echoes the commitments the government made to our people and the OGP has proven to be a source of inspiration and strength to Sri Lanka”.

Sri Lanka was invited to join, the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in October 2015, the first South Asian Country to be so invited and a joins a group of seventy member nations in one of the most recent but fastest growing multi-lateral groupings committed to fostering open and transparent government, or good governance. A young international organization, much championed by the outgoing American Obama Administration, it remains to be seen how much the new incoming Trump Administration prioritizes the Open Government Partnership.

The main political message of the Paris summit was an interesting one, that democracy is threatened in various ways, including by terrorism, a populism which subsumes democracy, voter apathy and indifference among other reasons. This also corresponds however with rapid technological change, which is transmitting information in real time, thereby increasing the desire of society to be more engaged and to be listened to, to be given a real chance to build their societies.

Democracy is certainly not a narrow concept limited to the periodic conducting of reasonably free and fair polls. It requires transparent governance, public debate and consultation and rejecting or minimizing corruption and fraud. The Open Government Partnership (OGP) seeks to promote those values, the core OGP values of open and transparent governance, participatory and inclusive policy making through protecting and safeguarding civic space, eliminating bribery and corruption, improved delivery of public services, especially through the use of information technology in general and social media in particular.

Within the OGP network, Sri Lanka is somewhat of a blue-eyed poster boy and the reason is not hard to come by. The international community is well aware that President Maithripala Sirisena last year defeated an entrenched and populist predecessor, who was somewhat the anti-thesis of what the OGP values are about. Regarding the previous Rajapakse presidential administration, there were allegations of widespread corruption, human rights abuses and shrinking civic space. The political message of the current Sirisena / Wickramasinghe Administration was good governance, reconciliation and sustainable economic growth.  The political message of good governance was countered with a more developmental argument, massive infrastructure projects amid shrinking civic space and minimal tolerance for real dissent. The previous Rajapakse regime which relied heavily on China not only for investment but also for political support was seemingly inspired by the Chinese Communist Party model of liberalizing the economy while being rather less liberal on political and human rights.

However, the OGP summit was also useful in its pragmatism. People cannot eat, good governance and ultimately, good economics is always good politics. As Minister Mangala Samaraweera also said at the OGP Summit; “if reconciliation and democratization is to succeed, it is imperative that Sri Lanka’s economy must succeed. The fruits of rapid economic development must be experienced by all sections of our society. The peace dividend must be felt in terms of economic prosperity and rapid rural and national development”.

Through OGP initiatives, there is a growing trend in some parts of the world to make access to government even more easier, moving from web sites to smart phone apps. Driven by private sector service providers, who place every type of service from booking a doctor, to  buying a movie ticket to checking in for a flight on mobile phone apps, there is an increasing trend for smart government initiatives, which makes government information and services available to the public through phone apps.

Sri Lanka is a country with more phone connections, than people, showing mobile phone penetration is essentially at saturation levels, increasingly most of these with internet access, with Sri Lanka thereby having successfully bridged the digital divide. It is incredible to think that twenty years ago, Sri Lanka Telecom was a monopoly, had a waiting list of over two hundred thousand for a phone connection, which was also considered a political favor. Interesting it was Mangala Samaraweera, as the then Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, which saw through the SLT partial privatization and opening up the telecoms market. Two decades later, Sri Lanka has the best telecoms infrastructure in South Asia. This high internet and phone penetration can and must be used to make government more convenient and accessible to the sovereign (voting) public of Sri Lanka. The youth vote and social media activists were strong supporters of President Maithripala Sirisena. Moving from e-government to phone app government, as some countries in the OGP network are doing, is smart politics in good governance.

(The writer is Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The views expressed are personal)

An attempted Rajapakse return and a new constitution

By Harim Peiris

(Published in the Daily News of 28^th Dec 2016)

The soft launch of a new political party nominal headed by former Minister G.L. Peiris, but substantively the Rajapakse political vehicle, styled the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) has created a new buzz in political circles about the Rajapakse comeback project. A project that really began, in the small hours of the morning of 9^th January last year, when it became apparent that the people had rejected Mahinda Rajapakse for an unprecedented third term. The first proposed comeback, an alleged coup by deploying the Gajaba regiment, to nullify the election results, has had a formal complaint to the CID by Minister Mangala Samaraweera and the strange mid night meetings at Temple Trees by the judicial usurper Mohan Peiris and the then Attorney General, military commanders etc. had all the makings of midnight plotting of anti-constitutional measures as alleged by Minister Samaraweera in his formal complaint.

However, the possible return of the Rajapakse face several fundamental political obstacles, that the Rajapakse political project has failed to address. The first obstacles in a Rajapakse return is that the fundamental political dynamics that formed the foundation of Rajapakse defeat, still holds true. What the Rajapaksa’s faced in 2015, is what they face today, which is that with regards the political elites or key leaders, it is pretty much Rajapakse verses the rest. Rajapakse allies being the miniscule non SLFP parties of the UPFA, the same coalition which lost in 2015. In fact, since the defeat of 2015, Rajapakse has further lost control of the SLFP party machinery, a necessary vehicle for political mobilization, hence the SLPP.

Further neither Rajapakse nor his allies can begin to accept the failures of their governance and hence offer a real alternative vision to the National Unity Government, for the future. Most political projects after defeat, do look inward somewhat and seek a political course correction, not so the Rajapakses’. They and their allies continue to insist, if by implication that it was the voters who made a mistake in 2015 and the voter will change their mind, very quickly. Further the Rajapakse message seems to be geared to and not extending beyond a section of the Sinhala Buddhist majority in the country, a political base and message two narrow to bring the project back to power. If the Rajapakse political comeback project is to succeed, two key changes need to take place, there must be an honest assessment of the failures of their governance, in all areas including economic, foreign, public sector management and social reconciliation policies and consequently seek to design a policy message and political outreach that is more pluralistic, tolerant and democratic.

Now, the factor that excites the die-hard minority of Rajapakse supporters in the political establishment is the constitutional making process that is currently ongoing through the Parliament as a constitutional assembly. The Rajapakse political calculation is that the potential divisiveness of constitutional reform and its consequential political and social change would permit the divisive identity politics and its attendant fear and hate mongering, which is Rajapaksa’s greatest political asset but also his greatest political liability.

With the presentation to Parliament of the interim reports of the six sub committees of the Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly and its scheduled debate in the House on 9^thand 10^th of January 2016, the opponents of the constitutional reform are slowly waking up to the fact, that there is a consensus building up in Parliament regarding the contours of a new basic law for Sri Lanka, a new social compact between the governed and the government. Almost four decades since the 1978 constitution was adopted for Sri Lanka, the empirical evidence we have is that our current constitutional arrangement and its overbearing executive presidency, reduced democratic space and centralized political power, consequently leading to poor public governance, weakened democratic institutions, led to armed conflicts in both the South and the North and reduced individual freedoms and human rights. The vast majority of the near forty-year period since 1978 to the present, Sri Lanka has been governed under emergency rule, which says it all about our failures as a polity.

The end of the war in 2009, removed armed conflict from the political equation and hence opens up a historic window of opportunity to address the democracy deficiency we have in Sri Lanka and effect state reform through a new constitution which ensures that the Sri Lankan State becomes more tolerant and pluralistic accommodating the full diversity of her society. There are opponents of such reform among the more extremist elements in both the North and the Southern polity. In the North, the opposition to the current approach of consultations, compromise and consensus, seems to be led by the Tamil Peoples Forum (TPF), led by a collection of defeated politicians, whose common feature seems to be their inability to be elected to Parliament by the Tamil people but having the patronage of Northern Chief Minister Justice CV Wigneswaren, whose endorsement of them nonetheless at the last general election failed to sway the voter, the Tamil Congress led political alliance of nay-sayers, collecting a paltry five thousand votes in the Jaffna District, even less than the SLFP’s modest support of seventeen thousand.

In the South, the opponents of state reform and a return to the past, has a more formidable champion in Mahinda Rajapakse, but the reality is that the more extreme politics ruled in Sri Lanka, until the recent past and are now relegated to the peripheries. The Tamil political leadership moved from Prabakaran and Pottu Amman to Sambanthan and Sumanthiran in 2009 and political leadership in the Southern polity moved from Mahinda and Gotabaya to Sirisena and Wickramasinghe. The political center has never been as dominant in Sri Lankan politics, in the recent past, as it is at present. Political change will always have its detractors, but the detractors having lost the last elections are on the periphery, providing a possible path and a foreseeable future for a new Sri Lanka.

Constitutional reform and devolution of power

By Harim Peiris

(Published in the Island of 24^th Nov 2016)

The current Sri Lankan Parliament sits as a Constitutional Assembly to rework Sri Lanka’s basic law and social contract, in a nation building exercise, which is an opportunity that was created through the ending of our long running civil war. The process adopted by the Constitutional Assembly was to create a steering committee which included all the parties represented in Parliament. The steering committee in turn divided into six sub committees each tasked with a different thematic area to study and report. Earlier this week, all six sub committees submitted their reports to the Constitutional Assembly.

This particular milestone in the constitutional reform process, is an opportune time to reflect on Sri Lanka’s prior attempts at constitutional reform and perhaps its key component, the devolution of power. There is certainly a consensus among Sri Lanka’s ruling class, that the current constitution has some serious flaws which needs to be rectified. These areas have been the executive presidency, the electoral system and devolution of power. While there is little principled or political dissension regarding the first two, the issue of devolution of power gets caught up in the ethnic divide in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankan polity currently has almost thirty years of experience with the system of devolution of powers established by the Thirteenth Amendment to Sri Lanka’s unitary constitution. It was under the Rajapaksa presidency and during the war, that the All-Party Representatives Committee (APRC) and especially its progeny, the APRC Experts Committee worked through much of the glitches which ailed the provincial councils and came up with the plans and amendments which would make provincial level decision making meaningful.

The recent Conference of Provincial Councils and the publication of its proceedings, which brought together a representative cross section of provincial politicians, officials and civil society actors, show a remarkable interest on the part of provincial councillors and the provincial administrations on making devolution meaningful and substantive in Sri Lanka. While at a certain level, this can be dismissed as the usual parochial focus in one’s own interest, the fact that many provincial councillors proceed on to become parliamentarians, demonstrate a close link between the community and provincial administrations.  The key issues which come up in discussions on devolution are around the themes of centre-province relations, fiscal and financial arrangements, public service and administration, legislation and process support.

The deliberations of the provincial councils brought out the two key issues which always arise, that of land and police powers. In all prior political conclaves on devolution including the Mangala Moonesinghe Parliamentary Committee, the Kumaratunga Administration’s devolution proposals of 1994, the constitutional reform proposals of 2000 and the APRC, the general consensus has been that land powers be made representative and devolved fully to the provinces. On the potentially more vexatious issue of police powers, the emerging technical solution has been for both a provincial and national police service, with serious crimes which should be dealt more appropriately at the national level, being done so, whereas the provincial police can deal with all other minor functions, including traffic policing. Such a mechanism would ensure a more citizen-friendly, community based and hence accessible and effective police service throughout the country.

The politics of the devolution debate

The current constitutional reform process has two stated objectives. The first and considerably less controversial objective is to increase the democratic spaces and features of Sri Lankan society. The second objective of the constitutional reform, is to make those communities currently experiencing exclusion and hence alienated the Sri Lankan state, mainly ethnic and religious minorities to be included. This objective is also expressed as dealing with the causes of the decades long conflict, of creating a sense of inclusion in minorities currently feeling excluded from the State and rectifying what constitutional lawyer and LTTE suicide victim, late Dr. Neelen Tiruchelvam so aptly described as the “anomaly of imposing a mono ethnic state on a multi ethnic polity”.

The Sri Lankan political divide in Sri Lanka into three, not two competing ethnic nationalisms, the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim. The end of the armed conflict considerably reduces or eliminates the risk of armed secession from the State and accordingly, the current National Unity Government of the two major parties are generally confident that they have a sufficient consensus among and of the majority community on constitutional reform and devolution.

Political insiders strongly anticipate and indeed expect that this thesis would be tested by the political opposition, the newly formed SLFP offshoot, the SLPP of the Rajapakse wing, though nominally headed by G.L. Peiris (no kinsman I hasten to add), which is likely awaiting the constitutional reform proposals to try and whip up political opposition to the same. But the real decider on devolution is likely to be the rather unpredictable and unwieldy Muslim polity, which solidly backed the Sirisena / Wickramasinghe combine in both January and August last year. The Muslims are a predominant present in Eastern Sri Lanka and the consensus which the TNA needs to craft is not solely what is acceptable to the Sinhala Southern polity but also to the Muslim polity predominating in the East. Such a consensus is not an impossibility and the remarkable exercise of the Parliamentary Constitutional Council has indeed created an inclusive and participatory process. As the sub-committee reports are submitted and considered by the Constitutional Assembly as a whole in the near future. It is hoped for Sri Lanka’s sake and shared future, that a consensus is forthcoming.

The Trump presidency – hastening a multi polar world

By Harim Peiris MBA

 ( published in the Daily News paper on 11.11.2016 )

The world was shocked when Donald Trump, defied all expectations and pulled off a stunning victory in the US presidential election. It was shocking because he was trailing, though by a thin margin in the opinion polls and because conventional wisdom only gave him an outside chance of winning, his support base of a largely Caucasian (white) working class electorate seen as two narrow to carry him to victory. In the all-important calculation of the electoral college, that actually elects the US president, Hilary Clinton was projected to have an almost insurmountable lead. The changing demographics of the USA, with an increasing share of non-white voters and younger voters were making even traditional republican states, become competitive for the democrats. However, election day 2016, was to change all that. The result now history. Many reasons would be adduced for Trump’s victory and Clinton’s defeat, but the numbers from the exit polls show, that despite a campaign that outspent its opponent that Hillary Clinton just could not be the successful political heir and hold on to the winning rainbow coalition, which Barrack Obama built and rode to victory twice before. Every key segment of that coalition, Hispanics, African American, women and youth voters, turned out less and voted slightly less emphatically for Hillary Clinton, which together with the swing of rust belt democrats angered at job losses, in a globalizing economy was enough to create a unique Republican party constituency, which for the second time in recent history would lose the popular vote, but win the electoral college convincingly and hence result in the Donald Trump Administration of the next four years and also  consequently bequeathed the world with an entirely unchartered US international agenda.

The Republican party whitewash of the 2016 election was complete. The Republicans were widely expected to or at least considered quite likely to lose control of the US Senate, where a third of the seats were up for grabs. As it was, the Republicans retained control of Congress, both in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, providing President Donald Trump with no real Democratic Party challenge to his relatively radical agenda of change for America. Together with the ability to fill the US Supreme Court seat made vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the Trump presidency promises to mold US society in a manner which will likely be near permanent for decades.

However, this article will seek to examine what the Trump presidency would have for the world. The initial world reactions, in terms of the reaction of global financial markets was a near free fall, with the Dow Jones Futures down about 500 points. However, this was more likely an over hysterical reaction to the unexpected rather than a considered evaluation or response to the president elect’s policies, which are after all not entirely known in any great detail and not applicable until he takes office in January next year. President elect Trump though, on the campaign trail did give clear indications about his views on global affairs and his Administration’s policies on several foreign policy or international fronts are likely to be a radical departure from his predecessor’s and also defy conventional wisdom, as he indeed did throughout his campaign.

Syria, ISIS and the Middle East

Nothing has dominated the world during the past year as has the situation in Syria. As that country comes apart in a bloody and brutal civil war, it has challenged American and foreign policy makers in the West, to cope with the flood of Syrian refugees and to deal with Russia in stabilizing the situation in Syria. Donald Trump has been quite critical of the current US policy of challenging the regime of President Assad, through support for the non-ISIS, rebel alliance battling his regime. He declared that Hillary Clinton’s policies in Syria would start world war three. Accordingly, he is likely to reduce or eliminate support for the anti-Assad, rebel alliance and thereby over time concede influence in Syria to Russia. Reading between the lines, the Trump formula for dealing with ISIS seems to be, significantly enhanced aerial bombardments of ISIS targets in the Middle East and enhanced domestic vigilance against terror attacks on US soil.

Global Trade

Global trade has not really been growing in dollar terms during the past few years. However, the US has a significant impact on the global economic landscape by virtue of being the world’s largest economy and most importantly the global economy’s biggest consumer. As the single largest global customer of goods and services, the US is in a strong position to dictate on international trade. Protectionism or various barriers to trade with the US, would lead to an end to the era of developing countries, including Sri Lanka, having economies growing through exporting to the United States. Rather like the make in India policy practiced in the sub-continent, companies wishing to sell in the US, may increasingly be compelled to manufacture in the US. The economic theory of comparative advantage and global competitiveness has been voted out at the US ballot box.

International Security

The international security arrangements in place since the end of the second world war, would also come under a fresh look and renewed scrutiny by the Trump presidency. Candidate Trump on the campaign trail, took umbrage at the financing arrangements of NATO, declaring that the practice of the US picking up much of the tab for the security of the Western world and the established order, was out of place an anachronism of the aftermath of the second world war. A scale back of US defense commitments, troop and naval deployments, in Europe and East Asia, in both Japan and South Korea are likely. US foreign policy interests will be defined more narrowly and domestically, the Munroe doctrine would be contracted significantly rather than expanded gradually, as occurred in the decades since the second world war.

The rise of China, economically and politically, definitely as a regional power and as a fledgling global power, has predicated the evolution of a multi polar world, from the unipolar world in existence since the end of the cold war and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The advent of the Trump presidency and its likely foreign policy trajectory would in all probability hasten the reality of a multi polar world.

(The writer is Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The views expressed are personal)