A half year after Maithripala Sirisena’s
stunning defeat of President Mahinda Rajapaksa raised hopes for
democratic renaissance, the complexities of partisan politics, and
Rajapaksa himself, have returned to centre stage. Sirisena’s initial
months with a minority government led by the United National Party (UNP)
have opened important political space: robust debate and criticism have
replaced the fear under Rajapaksa, and important governance reforms
have been made, but much remains undone. By initial steps on
reconciliation, the government set a more accommodating tone on the
legacy of the civil war and the ethnic conflict that drove it. But
divisions within government and Sirisena’s failure to take control of
his Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) prevented deeper reform and allowed
Rajapaksa and his supporters to mount a comeback. With Sirisena opposing
Rajapaksa’s return, the 17 August parliamentary elections will test the
continued appeal of the ex-president’s hardline Sinhala nationalism and
give a chance for the fresh start that lasting solutions to the
country’s social divisions require.
Before running out of steam in June,
Sirisena’s first six months saw notable achievements. Most important was
parliament’s April passage of the nineteenth amendment to the
constitution. Largely fulfilling the central pledge of the joint
opposition campaign, it considerably reduced presidential powers and
established independent oversight commissions. Though the original draft
was watered down, the amendment is a welcome move away from
authoritarianism and could assist in re-establishing the badly-damaged
rule of law. As promised in their election manifesto, Sirisena and his
UNP partners also launched scores of investigations into alleged major
fraud and abuse of power by officials of the former government. While
the unprecedented scale of the anti-corruption drive raised public
expectations, the lack of indictments thus far has fed rumours of
backroom deals and growing doubts that the institutional and political
obstacles to effective prosecutions can ever be overcome.
The bright hopes of the government’s
initial months were increasingly tarnished by unclear, ad hoc policies,
frequently contradictory policy statements and missed deadlines for
pledged reforms. As parliamentary elections, originally promised for
June, were postponed, the coalition that elected Sirisena began to
fragment. While the UNP and smaller parties urged him to dissolve
parliament and hold elections after passage of the nineteenth amendment,
he spent months trying and failing to win over the SLFP, whose nominal
leadership he assumed after winning the presidency, following a decade
of Rajapaksa at its helm.
The SLFP, which has a large majority in
parliament, resented Sirisena’s unprecedented experiment with a
“national government” dominated by its arch-rival UNP. Many SLFP
parliamentarians remain loyal to Rajapaksa; others see the ex-president
as the party’s best chance to retain its majority in the next
parliament, given his popularity among Sinhala voters. After months of
resisting Rajapaksa’s selection as the prime ministerial candidate of
the SLFP-led United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), lack of support in
the party forced Sirisena to yield in early July.
Sirisena has since made it clear he opposes
Rajapaksa’s candidacy and will not appoint him prime minister, even if
the UPFA wins an unlikely majority. The ex-president’s opponents within
the SLFP, along with smaller parties, have joined a new version of the
UNP-led coalition that brought Sirisena victory in January, now
re-energised by the threat of a Rajapaksa comeback. With the UPFA
arguing the UNP threatens national security and supports Tamil
separatism, the election will test the strength of Rajapaksa’s brand of
Sinhala nationalism, as well as the depth of public concern over
corruption and abuses of power. Even if he cannot become prime minister,
Rajapaksa’s leadership of a large Sinhala nationalist bloc in
parliament could make it harder for a UNP-led government’s to act as
promised on reconciliation and accountability.
The Sirisena-UNP government set a new, less
Sinhala triumphalist tone on ethnic issues and took some steps for
reconciliation: releasing a number of Tamil political prisoners and
limited amounts of military-occupied land in Tamil areas, while reducing
the presence, though not size, of the military and its involvement in
governing the north and east. Despite growing frustration among many
Tamils, larger moves have been put off until after elections, as has
action on alleged war crimes by both the military and the defeated Tamil
Tigers. The government promises a credible domestic inquiry that meets
international standards, but doubts about its willingness and ability to
tackle institutionalised impunity and prosecute war crimes are
widespread and well founded. Successful prosecutions require significant
legal and institutional reforms and management of resistance from
military leaders and nationalist parties.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner of
Human Rights (OHCHR) is due to deliver its long-awaited war crimes
report to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) before it meets in
September. At that session, the newly-elected government should commit
to the legal reforms needed to effectively prosecute serious human
rights violations suffered by all ethnic communities, including war
crimes; to pursue prosecutions with adequate witness protection and
international involvement; and to consult widely with victims, survivors
and community groups on its longer-term program of transitional
justice, including a possible truth commission. To be effective, these
processes will require consistent international scrutiny and
participation, including OHCHR assistance to investigations and
continued monitoring and reporting to the HRC.
The parliamentary elections offer voters
the chance to renew the mandate for change they gave Sirisena and the
UNP in January. A strong showing by the Rajapaksa-led UPFA, however,
would complicate the president’s plans to form a broad-based “national”
government between the UNP, smaller parties and the reformist wing of
the SLFP and place obstacles to further progress on much-needed
governance reforms and reconciliation. Sri Lanka’s chance to finally
start on the road to a sustainable resolution of the country’s
decades-long ethnic strife, including a negotiated political settlement,
depends on the outcome.(ICG)
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