Did the minorities 'fix' Mahinda Rajapaksa?

A double-quick analysis of the Lankan election results would show that the relatively narrow victory margin of challenger Maithripala Sirisena was made up by the three minority communities of Tamils, Muslims and Christians, says N Sathiya Moorthy.

At the end of the day, the ethnic minorities in Sri Lanka seem to have ‘fixed’ the electoral fate of President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the January 8 polls that he had called nearly two years before time. This also means the quiet ‘giant-killer’ and one-time party and ministerial aide, Maithripala Sirisena, has his job cut out: resolve the Tamil ethnic issue and address the more recent concerns of the nation’s Muslims and Christians who, who like the Tamils before them, had felt so very completely alienated from the outgoing regime.

A double-quick analysis of the election results would show that the relatively narrow victory margin -- 1.3 percentage points over the 50-per cent mandatory cut-off, as against the near-eight per cent for incumbent Rajapaksa in the post-war 2010 polls -- was made up by the three minority communities.

Smaller parties like the centre-right Jathika Hela Uramaya, which walked out of the Rajapaksa government at the last minute, like president-elect Sirisena, and the centre-left Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, apart from ex-army chief Sarath Fonseka’s Democratic Party, and of course the mainline Opposition United National Party too have a share in Sirisena’s victory.

That being the case, President-elect Sirisena will have to address the minorities’ concerns internally, and be seen as doing so, before the hot iron turns cold. He and his party and coalition will be faced with parliamentary polls before long, if they have to ‘stabilise’ the current victory and move forward.

Though no great works can be expected, he will have to be seen taking the first and right step forward. At the same time, he cannot be seen as overly shifting towards the minorities, particularly Tamils and Muslims, as his nomination as the ‘common Opposition candidate’ owed in his expected ability to split President Rajapaksa’s ‘Sinhala-Buddhist’ majority/majoritarian vote -- and not in his capacity at alliance-building or wooing the minority voters, per se.

Promises to keep

As the incoming president after 10 eventful years of Rajapaksa, Sirisena would have to busy himself with ministry-making involving coalition partners, with UNP’s Ranil Wickremesinghe being made prime minister, as a part of the pre-poll commitment to the party and the people. Together, they will also have to fast-track the promised abolition of the executive presidency within the first 100 days.

Given the post-Independence history of Sri Lanka, most, if not all, post-poll negotiations would be personality-centric and issue-centric. In the case of the Tamils, it would be concepts-centric than anything else. These are the issues that the new president and his coalition partners would have to negotiate among themselves first, and with the whole nation, in due course.

Whether such a negotiation with the nation’s populace would take the shape of a constitutionally-mandated referendum on the abolition of the executive presidency -- or, is it going to be a watered-down presidential scheme, and if so how much and how far -- is another corollary flowing from the earlier question.

The new government cannot escape a referendum on certain constitutional amendments, but they could escape another parliamentary election forthwith. If so, how and how far would remain another question for the new government and its shared leadership to decide -- and unanimously, so.

China, not a pushover

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has since congratulated Sirisena. So has US Secretary of State John Kerry who only a day earlier had cautioned Rajapaksa on the need to ensure free and fair poll.  India has always worked with governments that people in other nations -- starting with the neighbourhood -- elect, hence it would not have problems of adjustments and re-adjustments in working with the new government in Colombo.

However, for anyone in India or the US to expect that the purported high-intensity Chinese presence in Sri Lanka would vanish the day after would be over-simplifying the issues and equations. Under different regimes, Sri Lanka has had a comfortable relationship with China. When the erstwhile UNP regime of the late J R Jayewardene was around in the ’eighties, China was a non-issue in Sri Lanka’s domestic and regional policy. The erstwhile Soviet Union had taken that place.

Though as prime minister (2004-05) under then rival SLFP President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, UNP’s Ranil Wickremesinghe had addressed foreign policy issues, the ongoing ‘ethnic war’ and the LTTE’s domination of the nation’s political and security dialogue and course demanded a different set of priorities. The nation having addressed those issues and concerns, will have to now take stock afresh after the exit of the Rajapaksa dispensation, to be able to re-orient its foreign and security policy priorities.

UNHRC staring in the face

An immediate foreign policy concern of the incoming government will involve a balancing of conflicting domestic concerns flowing from ‘accountability issues’ of the conclusive ‘Eelam war IV’. The outgoing government had gone into a ‘denial mode’ of a different kind.

One, the Rajapaksa government held that the nation’s armed forces and/or the political leadership committed no ‘war crimes’.

Two, only a domestic probe, and not an international probe, deriving from a US resolution at the UNHRC, could find out facts and hold individuals and/or ‘accountable’. 

The Geneva-based UNHRC is set to receive the maiden report of what could be termed the ‘in absentia’ international investigations into ‘accountability issues’. The new, West-friendly dispensation -- or, is it wholly? -- would have to be given adequate time, to come up with its position on a variety of related issues.

The main issue will be, should the international probe continue on the lines that it is now on -- and if so, would Sri Lanka allow the UNHRC probe team to visit the country and record statements from the Tamil ‘war victims’ in the North and the East.

‘Collective’ leadership

The new leadership will also have to address economic issues and deal with political issues. Having defeated the otherwise well-entrenched President Rajapaksa on the ‘anti-incumbency’ factor, in turn deriving from ‘good governance’ issues, the new, ‘collective’ leadership should decide on how to proceed with the scores of corruption issues that they had flagged over the past 10 years against the Rajapaksa family but without having to produce a shred of evidence.

They will also need to enforce law and order and media freedom which, they had claimed, had been compromised through the 10 years of Rajapaksa’s presidency. Given the long and unambiguous way the nation had addressed these concerns through much of the post-Independence era, the new government may have to think differently -- and also want to think differently, and also know how to go about it in the first place.

The litmus-test for this and the rest would flow from the ‘cohabitation experiment’ that the new partners in government would re-launch after the failed experience of President Chandrika and Prime Minister Ranil a decade ago. Now they have a new and lesser-known entity in President Sirisena.

Considering that they have together promised a ‘national government’, they will have to decide if the CBK-Sirisena combine aims at taking over their SLFP identity from President Rajapaksa’s leadership, or would they want to include the outgoing ruling combine, or whatever would remain of it in the coming days and weeks, in such a dispensation.

Image: Outgoing Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa. Photograph: Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters.

N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and political analyst, is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation. Email: sathiyam54@gmail.com.