Power Play

With President Chandrika Kumaratunga's decision to utilise her presidential powers to dissolve Parliament onFebruary 8, 2004, Sri Lanka will face its third general election in less than four years. What is especiallyremarkable is that the President reneged on her previous promises, including a written promise to the Speakerof Parliament, that she would not dissolve Parliament so long as the government continued to enjoy majoritysupport.

To all appearances the present political crisis and general election are a result of power play, and not thepursuit of the best interests of the country. The present government had been in office for a little less thantwo years when the President used her presidential powers to take over the three key Ministries of Defence,Interior and Media. For nearly two years she had stayed on the sidelines and been ignored by the government.On November 4, 2003, she struck, citing national security interests to justify the takeover that brought herback to the centre of the polity. But her actions after the takeover failed to demonstrate anythingfundamentally different from those of the government Ministers she replaced. The government was crippled andits credibility eroded.

If public opinion polls and the views of business and religious leaders and other civil society groups are anyindicator, this is not an election that the people want. Even the left coalition allies of the President,consisting of the Communist Party and the Trotskyite Lanka Sama Samaj Party (LSSP), urged her not to go forelections. With no exception, all of these groups urged the President and her arch rival, Prime Minister RanilWickremesinghe, to work together, if only for a year, to get the country's systems of basic governance inorder. They recognised that, under the Constitution, the President and Prime Minister enjoyed concurrentmandates, both obtained from the people, and also constitutional power that had to be shared for effectivegovernance.

The United National Front (UNF) government headed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe showed repeatedlythat it had the backing of a clear majority in Parliament. But it failed to govern effectively after thePresident's take over of the three Ministries. The political deadlock made governance of the country anext-to-impossible prospect. As a result, strikes in the governmental sector dragged on without a resolution,with new ones in the offing. Extremist attacks on Christian places of worship have been taking place with thepolice unwilling to prevent them and not a single arrest and conviction so far, although more than thirtychurches were attacked last month alone. 

There was much that the President and government could have donetogether. The independent Election Commission, established over two years ago, is still not functioning, dueto the President's refusal to approve the nomination of the Constitutional Council, an independent body thatshe herself was instrumental in appointing. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE's)proposal for an interim self-governing unit for the North East, made on October 31, 2003, has met with noofficial response from the government, which refused to engage in peace talks unless the Defence Ministry wasrestored to it by the President.

In the past week, however, there seemed to be a narrowing of the gap that separated the President and PrimeMinister on the issue of power sharing. The Prime Minister, who had earlier been adamant about getting backthe three ministries taken over by the President, seemed to be relenting under public and internationalpressure. The stock market, which had fallen by about 30 percent since the President's take over on November4, 2003, registered a rise on information that the committee of high officials appointed by the two sides hadreached agreement on the main issues. 

The President's rationale in dissolving Parliament at this juncture isdifficult to understand. Either the President did not believe that the Prime Minister's change of heart wasgenuine, or she was finally pushed to take the decision to dissolve Parliament by members of her party andthose of her new alliance partner, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). Both surmises have some validity.Leaders of government and the Opposition have seldom cooperated with each other, even when the nationalinterest has been threatened. The President and Prime Minister have not been part of those earlier periods ofgovernance when there was such cooperation. But the determining factor would surely have been pressure fromthe JVP.

Whatever the overall result of the general election, the JVP is guaranteed an increase in the number of theirseats in Parliament due to the electoral agreement they have reached with the President's party, the muchlarger Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). But the JVP had one major concern. This was that the general electionsshould come prior to the provincial elections. The provincial elections would have provided both sides with apicture of their real strengths. It would have given the SLFP an opportunity to back out of the alliance ifthe results of the provincial polls were not positive to the new United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA).

Second, the JVP did not wish to become too committed to its partnership with the SLFP. They are mindful thatprevious alliances between left parties and the SLFP have led to the absorption of the small left parties bythe mainstream SLFP. The JVP did not wish their identity as a 'revolutionary party' to be diluted with that ofthe SLFP in any long-term campaign for the people's vote. For the JVP having a general election soon after theformation of the UPFA was the main consideration. They have had their way.

With its new alliance with the JVP, the SLFP can believe that they too will do well at a general election. Thenew alliance would be combining the votes of two parties that contested separately at the last generalelection and together scored more than the ruling party. On the other hand, victory is not guaranteed for theUPFA. They are taking on a government that has two major achievements to its credit during its two years inoffice. The first was bringing an end to the civil war that had developed a momentum of its own, and thatseemed unstoppable, with powerful vested interests at play. The restoration of conditions of relative peace,despite all its shortcomings, is the greatest good that the country enjoys. Except for a few diehardnationalists, no one advocates a return to war to improve the situation in the country.

The second achievement of the government was to resuscitate the collapsing economy and offer hope to thepeople that rapid economic development with international assistance was a real possibility. While theeconomic peace dividend did not reach the majority of Sri Lanka's poor, there still remained the hope that itwould. Economic growth last year exceeded five percent, which was a marked improvement from the year 2001 whenthe government took office, and the growth rate was minus one percent. A handsome sum of USD 4.5 billion hadbeen earmarked by international donors for Sri Lanka over the next three years, conditional only upon progressin the peace process.

It is unlikely that the UPFA, with its vague economic policies that seek to combine the SLFP's acceptance ofopen market principles with the JVP's Marxist philosophy of self-reliance and inward looking development, caninspire popular confidence. This may also account for the strongly expressed desire of people and civic groupsfor the President and Prime Minister to work together for at least a year rather than go to the polls.

It also creates the danger that the new alliance will resort to narrow Sinhalese nationalist rhetoric intrying to convince the voters to elect them. The President and her party used this method with success at thePresidential election of November 1999 and the General Election of December 2000. Already, such a campaignappears to be underway, with SLFP spokespersons saying that the President dissolved Parliament to save thecountry from being divided and becoming a colony of foreign powers.

However, an effort by the UPFA to utilise the apprehensions of people regarding the peace process is likely tobe a double-edged sword. An election campaign that targets the peace process for condemnation, and degeneratesinto racist sloganeering, is certain to alienate the ethnic and religious minorities who account for about 30per cent of the population. Already the new alliance is viewed with suspicion by the Christian minority, withthe JVP in particular suspected of providing support to extremist elements that are attacking and torchingChristian churches. JVP affiliated organisations, such as the National Bhikku Front, have put up expensiveposters throughout the country linking NGOs and Christians to an anti-Buddhist conspiracy that 'threatens theunity of the country'.

The most likely scenario, consequently, is a tightly contested race in which neither the UNF nor the UPFA isable to form a government by itself. Both sides are likely to require parliamentary support from outside theirrespective alliances to form a viable government. The largest party outside of the two main blocs is certainto be the grouping of Tamil parties of the Tamil National Alliance. They are expected to do particularlystrongly in the North East, as they will have the full backing of the LTTE. There is no doubt that, along withthe JVP, the other great gainer out of these elections will be the LTTE. The premature elections thus come asa golden opportunity for the LTTE to gain in legitimacy as an organisation that has the fullest backing of theelected Tamil representative of the North East.

The LTTE's position with respect to the conflict between the President and Prime Minister has been that it isprepared to negotiate with whoever is able to form a stable government. In recent weeks, LTTE politicalleaders have been saying, both publicly and privately, that they are prepared to negotiate with PresidentChandrika Kumaratunga. These statements, made in different forms in London, Kilinochchi and Colombo by topLTTE leaders, constitute a shift in the stance of the LTTE away from a policy of restricting their dealings tothe government alone. After the President's party suffered a defeat at the General Elections of 2001, the LTTEmade no secret of its antipathy to the President, an antipathy that she reciprocated in full measure.

However, it now appears that the LTTE has seen the disadvantages of limiting their negotiations to the governmentheaded by the Prime Minister. Undoubtedly, it was this government that achieved the crucialbreakthrough with them, which led to the signing of the Ceasefire Agreement in February 2002. This was adocument that required great political courage to sign and implement. The entry of LTTE cadres into government-controlled areas and the opening of the A9 Highway to Jaffna were radical affirmations of trust inthe peace process, and of the willingness to take risks for peace.

But two years after the signing of the Ceasefire Agreement, the LTTE has reasons for discontent. The LTTE'sprimary justification for pulling out of the peace talks in April 2003 was the lack of implementation ofpromises made during the six rounds of negotiations that took place between September 2002 and March 2003. TheLTTE has felt acutely frustrated by their inability to gain access to international funding that would makethem benefactors of the Tamil people. The new institutions of governance that were agreed to be set up for theinterim period in the North East have yet to be implemented. The political crisis that pitted the Presidentagainst the government stalled any further possibility of establishing those institutions on the ground. Afterthe general elections, the LTTE is likely to press the new government to deliver on these institutions.

It has been reported that India cautioned the President against going in for a general election at this time.The enhanced legitimacy such elections would confer on the LTTE would make the Indian strategy of containingthe LTTE's international influence, especially on the Indian State of Tamil Nadu, a more difficult one. Theinternational community, which has stopped supporting militant organisations following the war againstterrorism, would feel a greater empathy for an organisation that has performed well at elections, even if theyare not quite free and fair. The fear of the LTTE looms large in the minds of all Tamil politicians who areaware of its policy of assassinating 'traitors' who take a stand different from that of the LTTE and therebyundermine its status as the 'sole representative' of the Tamil people.

In the event of a victory by the UPFA, the peace process with the LTTE is likely to come under increasingstrain. Both the SLFP and JVP have been critics of the Norwegian-facilitated peace process, with the JVPtaking a much stronger negative stand on the issue. Even peace talks with the LTTE are likely to be difficult,as the SLFP and JVP have taken divergent stands on the issue of self-determination for the Tamil people in theNorth East. While the SLFP has accepted the devolution of political power to the regions, the JVP's positionis that only administrative decentralisation is permissible. On the other hand, the LTTE's own proposals foran interim self-governing authority exceed that of a normal federal system, making negotiations between thetwo sides a daunting prospect.

The situation is not much brighter with respect to prospects in the event of a victory for the UNF. Even ifthey score a convincing victory, the UNF will have to contend with the President's entrenched constitutionaland legal powers, backed, to all appearances, by a sympathetic Supreme Court. There will be nothing that theUNF will be able to do to prevent the President from arrogating to herself the right to take over several governmentMinistries, including the critical one of Defence. The Supreme Court has, in fact, ruled that thepowers over defence are inherent in the Presidency. Therefore, a UNF victory will only take the country backto the same place it was at, prior to the dissolution of Parliament.

The best hope for the country is that, after all the fighting is done, and the two sides have battered eachother into stalemate, the two leaders realise that they cannot govern without the support of the other. Thatis, if they live to lead the country. The elections threaten to be violent, and election campaigns offer muchscope for political assassinations. Civil society and the international community will need to do their utmostto ensure that the elections are fair and free of violence.

Jehan Perera isMedia Director, National Peace Council of Sri Lanka Coutesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the SouthAsia Terrorism Portal