Democracy in Sri Lanka Will Soon Confront Its

Second Moment of Truth

In happier times: Maithripala Sirisena (R) and Mahinda Rajapaksa, pictured here at
a 2013 event in Colombo

BY JAYADEVA UYANGODA ON 27/07/2015

With fresh parliamentary elections scheduled for

August 17, Sri Lankas politics has once again entered a phase of some
uncertainty. The fate of the silent revolution of January 8, 2015, which saw

the autocratic regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa being replaced, is in the

balance. If Rajapaksa returns to power as Prime Minister with a
parliamentary majority, Sri Lankas democratic reform process will certainly
be rolled back. However, Sri Lankas public mood and electoral arithmetic
do not seem to favour a Rajapaksa return. Not as yet.
The circumstances under which next months parliamentary election will
take place are somewhat unusual. Although President Maithripala Sirisena
won the presidential election in January this year with the backing of a lose
opposition alliance called New Democratic Front (NDF), the government he
appointed did not have a parliamentary majority. In fact, the majority of
MPs over 135 of the 225-member legislature belonged to the United
Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA), centred on the Sri Lanka Freedom Party
(SLFP). Both entities bitterly opposed Sirisena at the presidential election.
The United National Party (UNP), the main opposition party of the NDF
coalition which backed Sirisenas successful presidential bid, had only 47
MPs, supplemented with the support about a dozen of MPs from small
coalition partners. This led to the formation of a minority government led by
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe, leader of the UNP.
Uneasy cohabitation
Although crossovers from the UPFA to the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe
government were expected to boost its parliamentary strength, only a few
MPs made the switch. Even those who crossed over to the government from
the SLFP did so to accept ministerial positions. Several of them had tainted
records of being close allies of Rajapaksa. Some also had the dubious
honour of indirectly contributing to Rajapaksas defeat. Ironically, the
government of good governance had to resort to a little bit of political
corruption to ensure its own survival.
Against this backdrop, a tense and uneasy cohabitation between the NDF
government and the opposition UPFA in parliament ensured the survival of
the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe government for six months. When the
minority government was formed in January, the plan was to dissolve

parliament in mid-April, after the completion of its 100 Day-Programme.

This ambitious programme envisaged an extensive package of
constitutional, electoral and governance reforms, coupled with
investigations into corruption and abuse of power, alleged to have occurred
during the Rajapaksa rule.

While the NDF government was busy with clearing

these roadblocks, the Rajapaksa camp executed two plans
to come back to power.

With no parliamentary majority at its disposal, and facing the increasing risk
of being voted out in parliament, the reform agenda of SirisenaWickremasinghe government faced a deadlock. To ensure that at least
some alteration was made to the presidential system of government,
Sirisena and Wickremasinghe had to make unanticipated compromises with
the opposition UPFA, giving up the initial idea of abolishing the presidential
system. Eventually, the 19th Amendment was passed in parliament, but it
did not abolish the presidential system, but only reduced the excessive
powers of the president. Given the precarious balance of power in
parliament, this limited reform measure was something, rather than
nothing, to show the people that the government has fulfilled one of its key
election promises, at least partially. However, the 20th Amendment, which
sought to change the electoral system by replacing the existing
proportional representation (PR) system with a version of the German
mixed system, failed to materialise, due to opposition and sabotage by the
UPFA. Small and ethnic minority parties within the coalition also opposed it,
since they perceived the proposed electoral reforms primarily favored the
two major parties.
While the NDF government was busy with clearing these roadblocks,
the Rajapaksa camp executed two plans to come back to power. Plan A was
to defeat the government in parliament through a no-confidence motion

against the Prime Minister. Plan B was to defeat the government at the
parliamentary election, in case Sirisena and Wickremasinghe dissolved
parliament to avert the UPFAs option of a no-confidence motion. While the
parliamentary leaders of the Rajapaksa camp were collecting signatures for
the non-confidence motion against Prime Minister Wickremasinghe,
President Sirisena dissolved parliament, calling for elections on August 17.
President in his labyrinth
Sirisena has not had an easy time in his first six months as president due to
the unusual challenges he has had to face. He became the presidential
candidate of the UNP-led opposition coalition in November last year, almost
out of the blue. By that time, he was the general secretary of the SLFP of
which Rajapaksa was the leader. Although there were rumours for many
months that he was unhappy with Rajapaksa over his not being offered the
job of Prime Minister, deserting the party and leader to become the
opposition challenger was an act of revolt as well. While it exploded the
myth of Rajapaksas iron grip over the SLFP and the UPFA coalition, it reenergized and galvanized an otherwise weak opposition. Thus, Sirisena
emerged as the individual who became an unconscious tool of history to
shift the political balance of forces away from Rajapaksa. The partial regime
change that occurred peacefully this January was something unthinkable
before Sirisena abandoned Rajapaksa.
Thus, Sirisenas presidential term and Wickremasinghes prime ministerial
term began in January with a great deal of public hope for turning Sri
Lankas politics away from the illiberal, authoritarian, and personalized style
of governance which Sirisenas predecessor practiced. Both began their
new government knowing very little about how the reality of politics could
soon slow down and eventually undermine their reform agenda. The 100day programme turned out to be too big a project to complete within just
three months, with no parliamentary majority. The much awaited corruption
investigations into politicians and officials of the previous regime produced
no tangible outcomes, except newspaper headlines and passionate denials,
for six months. The new governments claims to providing corruption-free,

clean governance came to be severely tarnished by the story of a massive

financial scandal surrounding the auction of central bank bonds, with
allegations of irregularities, insider manipulation, conflict of interest and
personal profiteering by UNP politicians and officials. The NDF governments
lack of clear economic strategy became quite obvious when the new
finance minister presented the first interim budget within two weeks in
power. It appeared that being out of power for two decades had actually
taken its toll quite harshly on Sri Lankas grand old party, the UNP.
Benefits, and burdens, of regime change

Joined at the hip: President Maithripala Sirisena, seen here with Prime
Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe. Former president Chandrika Kumaratunga is
in the middle.
The positive achievements of the regime change are quite significant, but
paradoxically they remain mostly invisible and intangible. Key among them

include making the state less and less repressive, removing the use of fear,
terror, intimidation and corruption as instruments of governance, turning
the regime behaviour moderate and less leader-centric, dismantling the
political culture of the personality cult, demilitarisation of politics and public
space, the re-opening of the space for critique and dissent, and the removal
of the fear among ethnic and religious minorities of organised violence.
These indeed are no mean achievements gained within a space of days and
weeks of the regime change. All these are negative achievements in the
sense that they are outcome of the government refraining from doing
certain things. But they constituted a fundamental alteration of the pattern
of regime behaviour evolved during the past so many years.
Meanwhile, the past two to three months also indicated that a rift between
President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremasinghe had developed.
There are a few reasons for this. First, Sirisenas acceptance of the SLFPs
and UPFAs leadership soon after he became the President became a
burden on him, although he may have thought that the leadership of the
party and the UPFA coalition would enable him to secure firm control over
the SLFP and thus isolate Rajapaksa politically. That did not happen.
Instead, Rajapaksa loyalists within the SLFP and the UPFA launched a
campaign to bring Rajapaksa back to active politics. They exerted
tremendous pressure on Sirisena to accommodate and accept Rajapaksa as
the SLFPs prime ministerial candidate at the parliamentary election. This
posed a major dilemma to Sirisena. Although he was the leader of the SLFP
and UPFA, he had no control over them and therefore could not ignore the
pressure from the Rajapaksa camp. At the same time, Sirisena was elected
President by essentially non-SLFP, non-UPFA voters. Torn between two
loyalties, Sirisena began to show vacillation and indecision, ultimately
allowing Rajapaksa to be given the SLFP-UPFA nomination as a
parliamentary candidate.
Second, as it was rumoured in Colombo, Sirisena was quite apprehensive of
Wickremasinghes strategy of splitting the SLFP into two camps, one led by
Sirisena and the other by Rajapaksa in the run up to the parliamentary
election. As Sirisena himself admitted in a recent public statement,

protecting the SLFP and leading it to electoral victory under his leadership
became his responsibility as the leader of the party. That ran totally counter
to the electoral mandate he received in January. As many critics pointed
out, Sirisenas mandate was not to protect the SLFP, but to protect
democracy and good governance in Sri Lanka. Yet, as the SLFPs new
leader, Sirisena could not ignore his role of establishing his leadership over
the party by unifying it. Not unexpectedly, Sirisena lost his battle with
Rajapaksa in securing control of the SLFP. Now Sirisena has only a few
loyalists in the party; the rest are backing Rajapaksa in his bid to become
the Prime Minister. Caught between two contradictory loyalties, President
Sirisena has opted to be neutral during the parliamentary election.
Difficult to call
The electoral battle lines are now drawn between two main axes, the UNPled United National Front for Good Governance (UNFGG), and the SLFP-led
UPFA. The UNFGG is a new coalition formation, put together for the
parliamentary election to confront Rajapaksa at the parliamentary polls. It
consists of the UNP, Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), Jathika Hela
Urumaya (JHU), some SLFPers who were earlier with President Sirisena, as
well as breakaway groups from the Left parties. The UNFGG has the
advantage of securing most of the Tamil and Muslim votes as well, except in
the North and some parts of the East where the Tamil National Alliance is
contesting. The UPFA, in contrast, will primarily depend on the SinhaleseBuddhist votes. Ethnic and religious minorities view the SLFP and UPFA
under Rajapaksas leadership as aggressively majoritarian.
The outcome of the parliamentary election is not easy to predict. There is
no discernible wave in favour any of the two main contending coalitions.
Given the configuration of forces at present, the UNFGG might emerge as
the entity with the highest number of seats, yet without a clear majority in
the 225-mmember legislature. The UPFA is likely to emerge strong, but not
in a position to form a post-election majority coalition. The Janatha Vimukthi
Peramuna (JVP) and Tamil National Alliance (TNA) are likely to share about
30 seats between themselves, and they are not likely to back Rajapaksas

UPFA in forming a post-election coalition government. They are committed

to preventing Rajapaksa from forming the next government.
Jayadeva Uyangoda is a political scientist in Sri Lanka
Featured Image of Presidential Secretariat in Colombo: Kesara
Rathnayake, CC 2.0
Posted by Thavam