REPORT: 2017 WAS A PERIOD OF

DISILLUSIONMENT AMIDST SOME

PROGRESS IN SRI LANKA

2017 was a decisive year for Sri Lanka, showing what progress had – and hadn’t –
been made in the past few years.

15/07/2018

In January 2015, a new government was elected with a massive intervention on

the part of the people. For 10 years, their premiere, Mahinda Rajapaksa, ran an
authoritarian regime. During this regime, one of the most visible signs of its
authoritarian behaviour was the use of overt forms of violence on the people. The
Ministry of Defense, which was the most powerful ministry during this time, was
run by Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was the president’s younger brother.
The basic internal control mechanism in the country came under the control this
ministry. The Defense Secretary developed ways to control all activities of the
armed forces and the police. In this way, he became the most powerful man
within the state apparatus.

Some of the more remarkable events of the time were the arrests of journalists
and, on two occasions in particular, the most gruesome forms of cruelty being
perpetrated on two of the most well-known journalists in the country. In one
instance, Lasantha Wickrematunge, the editor of the Sunday Times, was pursued,
surrounded and shot in his car in broad daylight by a number of persons on
motorcycles. Investigations into his murder are still ongoing. In the other
instance, a journalist who was returning home after a meeting with the Ministry
of Defense was abducted and taken into a large vehicle, and inside the vehicle
were people that appeared to be military officers, and they had weapons. His legs
were broken, and he was thrown onto the street and left for dead. However, due
to the intervention of some three-wheeler drivers who were around, he was
taken to the hospital and survived. The death threats started immediately, saying
that he would not survive again. Soon, some international journalists’ associations
came to intervene and took him away from Sri Lanka.

Besides these tragic and traumatizing events, there were other well-known cases
of people engaged in journalism being targeted, and one such person was a
cartoonist. He was abducted and taken to an unknown place, and what happened
thereafter is yet unknown. There were two years of campaigning by his wife in
particular, and some investigations have been done, but all that got entangled in
an extremely backwards legal system that does not allow for speedy
investigations or speedy trials. Allowing or creating delays in the judicial system
can help any repressive ruler sabotage attempts by people to find justice. This
remains a major obstacle to finding solutions to the kind of impunity that prevails
in the country.
Besides this, there were many journalists who had to flee the country for fear of
assassination.
Newspapers were heavily censored during this time. Several times, newspaper
offices were attacked by mobs led by those who supported the government. Press
equipment was often targeted and damaged during those attacks.

Under these violent circumstances, trade unionism suffered greatly. The

government’s attempts to raise the prices of essential goods while keeping wages
down created constant tensions, but every time workers engaged in peaceful and
legitimate protests, the security forces cracked down. More sophisticated forms
of attacks were also developed; for example, when a group of people from a
remote village in Negambo organized themselves to come to the town to join a
protest, a sniper killed one of them in the village itself. This violence was meant to
intimidate those in every part of society who were considering participating in
protests, and thereby to prevent mass participation in protests. In one of the
three tradezone workers’ protests, the security forces entered the factories while
people were working, and one young boy was shot dead inside. When the family
and others wanted to organize a massive funeral for the young boy, it was
stopped by the use of the courts.

This kind of violence was perpetrated in almost every area of life, but it was not
the only terrible feature of this government. In fact, while the external drama of
violence was going on, massive sums of money were being appropriated by
people who were close to the leaders of the regime and taken into their banks in
other countries. In fact, it could be said that, in the history of Sri Lanka, this was
the time when the largest sums of money were taken away from the country due
to corruption and then deposited in other countries to be used by mainly the
family of the president.

In order to do all this, the government entered into forms of borrowing that were
unorthodox and unprecedented. Money was borrowed at very high interest rates
even from international banks, and this added to the highly indebted situation of
the country as seen by the World Bank and many other agencies throughout the
world. The country’s economy suffered internally in a manner that it will take a
long time to recover from even if there were more favorable circumstances within
which it could recover. However, such a time has not yet arrived.

It was against such a background that the January 8 2015 elections took place,
and the massive change of voters’ attitudes was mainly due to their disapproval
of the economic situation created by the government, particularly the theft of
national resources in order to enrich individuals, which received increasing
attention and became one of the main motivations for people to vote against the
very powerful government of Mahinda Rajapaksa. He himself did not think that
such outcome was possible when he called for elections prematurely with the
view to strengthening his hand so that he could be president for his whole
lifetime. However, even without a strong leadership from the opposition, people
themselves gathered and demonstrated their will to have a change of
government. Thus, January 2015 provided an opportunity for a considerable
change from the kind of state collapse that had taken place in Sri Lanka.

The coalition that came together to form the government promised many goals to
be achieved as a matter of priority. Among these were, first of all, a change of the
constitution, so that the provisions that are anti-democratic would be removed
and the constitution would be rearranged to reflect the democratic nature of the
governance. There was also agreement that some form of just solution should be
found to the minority issue and there was openness on the part of the coalition
partners at the beginning that this needs to be done. Above all, the demand was
for quick prosecutions against those who have stolen national resources and
income for their own personal gain. Anti-corruption became the slogan and the
main demand was that, as soon as possible, the investigations into the corruption
should happen and that trials should begin. Certain legislative changes were made
in order to give greater powers to the anti-corruption agencies in order to be able
to engage in these kinds of investigations, which had involved the theft of massive
amounts of money.

The investigations did happen with some speed, but then political maneuvering
started in order to delay the prosecutions as much as possible. The common
understanding was that this was done with the connivance of the president and
some other politicians who were secretly more in agreement with the leaders of
the former regime and, therefore, that they were preventing the possibility of
investigations and prosecutions into the corruption. Thus, the first disillusionment
of the people began over the issue of the failed prosecutions. This dissatisfaction
was to grow with time and the main reason was for it was incapacity of the state
to enforce the basic rule of law – or its unwillingness to do so. The real problem
was not merely the absence of consensus among the coalition partners. The real
problem was that, over a period of forty years, the Sri Lankan state had suffered
very serious collapse. The country became independent only in 1948 and the
beginning of a free and sovereign state began only at that point. The leaders at
that time did not concentrate on consolidating the state apparatus in a way that
they could meet the challenges of the future. All government institutions suffered
very serious neglect. This was compounded by the machinations over the 1978
Constitution. Over the years, the policing system became one of the worst
institutions in the country, demonstrating a lack of any kind of discipline and very
prone to taking bribes. It also allowed and assisted politicians to do what they
wanted. This link between the politicians and the police was known as
politicization. Direct commands were no longer coming from the higher up police
officers to the lower ranks; rather, the commands were coming directly from the
politicians. Therefore, the basic organizational structure of the policing system
suffered and fell apart.

This was worsened by the insurgencies that took place thereafter, where the
police were given powers of abduction in place of arrest. They detained people
outside known places of detention and did not keep records. They engaged in
torture, killings of persons and disposals of their bodies. This killing and disposal
of bodies was known as the enforced disappearances. Sri Lanka became one of
the well-known places for having a very high number of enforced disappearances,
not only in the region but also in the world. This happened many times in the
different kinds of conflicts that developed in the country. The law enforcement
nature of the policing and security forces begin to lose its grip and, in their place,
a public security mentality grew, with public security habits, including the security
use of violence, which became the norm within the country. It was this that
needed considerable change if the dream of January 2015 were to be realized.
However, no deliberate attempt was made to improve the policing system
despite the fact that a number of civil society organizations, including the Asian
Legal Resource Center based in Hong Kong, made demands in writing to the
Minister of Finance requesting him to the grant the necessary resources for
proper police reforms. This issue has not even been touched upon and it remains
one of the major causes of why Sri Lanka is unable, despite of some political
change, to achieve any kind of positive results towards democratic norms.
Similarly, institutions like the Attorney General’s Department and the judiciary
also suffered a great deal because of all the successive governments that
discouraged the independence of the judiciary and tried to subordinate them to a
secondary position, under the executive and the legislature. There was a long
history of such undermining and it has had its impact on the judicial officials
themselves, and also on the public. In the eyes of the public, the prestige that was
once enjoyed by the judiciary is not there any more, and this had an enormous
impact on any kind of change that the new government could have attempted in
order to undo the traditions that came from repressive regimes. However, neither
the leadership of the new regime nor any section of government focused on the
reform of the judicial sector. In fact, they preferred a backwards and dilapidated
judicial system, because it allows far greater room for corruption and the misuse
of power. These were the lost opportunities in 2017 and mass unrest was growing
throughout the country.

2017, thus, was a period of disillusionment for those who had a lot of faith in the
possibility of some change in Sri Lanka. The rising accusations of corruption
against the new government itself created a kind of attitude that, whether they
be in the opposition or in the government, they are all the same. This attitude
favored the former regime, which was hated for its record of corruption.

What still kept some faith among those supporting the government was the fear
of return of the Rajapaksas again. The regime’s use of violence is still very much in
the memory of people and the fear that that kind of situation might once again
return is still a politically important factor. The government could have mobilized
this more effectively, but internal conflicts from within the two major parties of
the coalition government began to occupy the central political space. The two
parties, the SLP and the UNP, were seen to be working towards strengthening
their own base for the coming election and, for that purpose, they had begun to
undermine each other. This included public statements by the president against
the UNP and the statement by UNP leaders regarding the president himself as
having some sort of secret pact with the Rajapaksas. All this damaged the
expectations of unity necessary for the difficult tasks that the government had to
undetake if it was to win the respect back from the people.

In the midst of all this, the price of almost everything was rising daily. The Rupee
was performing badly as against the dollar and there was a dramatic downfall of
the value of money. The essential commodities were rising in price, and the
complaint that it is no longer possible to make ends meet began to be heard
almost everywhere. Added to this, in the areas where people depend on
agriculture, once again there were many forms of crisis which also brought the
value of their goods down and their prices up on what they had to buy.

Additionally, the student organizations developed forms of highly organized

protests, particularly relating to private universities, but the student unrest was
often utilized by various political parties for their own purposes.

This was the situation that the country was faced with by the end of 2017. The
same situation has continued and this has had a profound effect in the political
attitudes of the people. The predominant attitude is to be indifferent to all
political parties, as none of them can be trusted to make any positive change in
the situation faced by the country.

The consensus that all political parties are without credibility is the most common
political attitude that prevails in almost every part of Sri Lanka. However, this
attitude itself does not in any way contribute to bringing about anything positive
in terms of a solution to the existing problems.

Causes for this situation of political indifference

Seeking the meaning of this indifference is an interesting exercise and could lead
to many insights into the kind of political culture that had been introduced to Sri
Lanka by the time the colonial powers were leaving Sri Lanka. It is that kind of
culture that continues to prevail even now.

When a colonial power rules a country, the people being ruled are called the
subjects of the Crown, which exists elsewhere. Within the colony, people become
subjects of the British Crown. The people of Sri Lanka were not part of a state
themselves; they were merely subjects of another state. The other state may
provide various means by which to administer society and to provide for various
things, but such attempts do not constitute being a state created by and for the
people.

That was the problem that Sri Lanka was faced with in 1948 and it should have
been the duty of the leaders of the time to, above all, concentrate on
consolidating and creating a state apparatus that was strong enough to sustain
the governments that were to come. This aspect was totally neglected by the
leaders of the time, and this neglect remains a feature even up to now.

It is very common in Sri Lanka for people to talk about the government, and about
changing the government. They are forever in the cycle of changing governments
but nobody has given thought to the fact that, while the governments change, the
state apparatus needs to remain strong if a state is going to be viable. The
absence of a functioning state apparatus means that fewer resources, or no
resources, are spent on the development of the state. The policing system
became ever more degenerate and has lost even the limited prestige it had during
colonial and early post-colonial times.

A policing system that is capable of providing internal security to the people is an

essential factor in the stability of any society. It is the sense of security that
people need in order to engage in their own affairs and move around freely, and
thereby engage in all kinds of productive and creative purposes. When the
policing system is weak, then the people fall back to what Thomas Hobbes called
man’s natural state. Hobbes stated that, in his natural state, man would engage in
fights with each other, mainly for property reasons. The very idea of building a
state, which he referred to as Leviathan, was very essential if the people were to
be controlled and stability was to be brought into society. Ideas of what the
strong state is change over time, adding in other concepts such as those relating
to individual freedom, and the purpose of the state developed through such
writers as Rousseau and other revolutionary thinkers. But the essential
foundation was a state strong enough to defend and protect its own people,
which was essential if any form of governance is to take place in a society in a
manner that will bring benefits to the people. Thus, it is on the foundation of the
state apparatus that a government can function. This includes the policing
system, the civil service, the judicial system, the various forms of administrative
systems whereby money is controlled and transactions are administrated over by
way of a system of banks and other means, and there has to be a huge elaborate
system by which every aspect of society, every aspect of trade and commerce and
every aspect of relationship with foreign governments, are all ordered according
to a system of civilized laws. That is the system necessary for various
governments to function upon as they come and go. The role of a government is
limited. No government can take over all the functions that belong to the state.
State functions are there to protect the state as a whole; all that the government
can do is to administer within that framework, and, of course, they can try to
improve it without damaging the overall structure of the state.

It is this area in which Sri Lanka failed miserably, along with many other
developing countries. They jumped from a colonial status to a status of having
governments without really having highly developed structures. The core of the
problem in Sri Lanka is in this absence of a strong state structure. The problem
with this is that there is nobody that will come forward to correct this situation
and to build this structure. Every government that is elected is preoccupied with
its own affairs for a short period and it does not want to divert its attention to
long term goals, such as consolidating the state apparatus. This could only happen
if the people who lead the government had a far wider vision and were not led by
a kind of a narrow idea of somehow surviving and also, unfortunately, as it
happens to be, benefiting themselves from the government that they are a part
of.

The people themselves are mostly unaware that these problems are in the state
apparatus itself. Their life has been conditioned by having elections over and over
again, with new governments coming in. And this preoccupation with those in
government focuses people’s their conversation on government affairs, talking
about what is a good government and what is a bad government. However, in
their assessment of good and bad governments, they do not refer to the nature of
the state apparatus, which is the very foundation on which the state has to
operate. This was not properly conveyed during colonial times, and has also not
been communicated to the public during the post-independence era.

There is a huge vacuum created by this ignorance about the need for a
functioning state as the foundation on which social stability is created, and the
need for governments to function within this apparatus in order to create a stable
situation that is beneficial for everyone in society. It is this grave problem that
needs to be addressed somehow. There needs to be an educational process
through which the people, as well as those who govern, are brought to an
understanding of the crux of the problem which affects their social stability.

(from SRI LANKA: A Gratuitous Relationship for the Promotion of Human Rights –
AHRC and Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Report for 201)

Posted by Thavam