By
keeping key ministries within the family President Gotabaya Rajapaksa may have
ensured a tight grip over the administration, but challenges remain on other
fronts
By Col R Hariharan |World News| Global Trends | India Legal |
January 26, 2020
With the swearing in of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Eelam war hero
and controversial former defence secretary, as the president of Sri Lanka, the
Rajapaksas are back in power at a critical time in the country.
Only five years back, the people of Sri Lanka had thwarted then
president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s bid for a third term in office. His authoritarian
style coupled with allegations of corruption and misuse of office clouded his
success in ending the Tamil Tigers’ separatist insurgency. However, the last five-year
rule of President Maithripala Sirisena and prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
fell far short of people’s expectations in delivering good governance which
they had promised, with their endless squabbles virtually paralysing government
functioning in the island nation.
Perhaps the main reason why most of the Sinhalas voted for
Gotabaya was the Easter Sunday massacre of 259 people by ISIS-inspired and
home-grown Jihadi terrorists last April. It created a huge scare among the
people who are yet to fully recover from the after-effects of fighting Tamil
separatist insurgency for nearly three decades. The terrorist attack created a
ripple effect. It exposed huge gaps in the national security fabric. People
were shocked to learn that the government failed to act upon receiving
information on the impending terrorist attack, two weeks in advance. Further
inquiry into the attack revealed that both Sirisena and Wickremesinghe failed
to nip jihadi terrorism in the bud when the first indications of Islamist extremist
activity were brought to their attention.
Public opinion thus swung in favour of electing Gotabaya as he
was seen as a strong man who will revamp the national security structure to
make it more effective. Gotabaya’s winning chances further improved as the
terrorist attack became a rallying call for conservative Buddhists to defend
the land they consider the last bastion of Theravada Buddhism. In their
previous tenure, the Rajapaksas had pampered Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and
soft-pedalled on fringe elements spouting anti-Muslim hate rhetoric and
attacking Muslims. Their votes were naturally his.
One of the first actions that Gotabaya—who completed two months
in office on January 17, 2020—took was to instal his brother, Mahinda, as the
interim prime minister even as he placed another brother, Chamal, as the
minister of agriculture. The three brothers, between them, control the
ministries of defence, public security, finance, economy and policy
development, Buddhasasana and cultural and religious affairs, urban
development, water supply and residential facilities.
President Gotabaya has acknowledged that the Sinhala majority
vote “allowed me to win the presidency”. He will thus come under pressure from
the Sinhala majority to deliver upon his pre-election promises. For that, he
will need his party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) to win an absolute
majority in the parliamentary polls to be held in March 2020.
In an interview,
Gotabaya said that the 19th amendment that curbed the powers of the president
was “a failure and if we get 2/3 majority in parliament we will drop it from
the constitution”. So in the near term, Gotabaya’s actions will be aimed at
securing an absolute majority in the parliamentary elections.
Soon after
Gotabaya came to power, there were disturbing trends reminiscent of the past
Rajapaksa authoritarian rule, with some smacking of vindictiveness. A Special
Presidential Commission (SPC) was appointed to probe those responsible for
falsely implicating people in murders or related investigations. State
investigative agencies like the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the
Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID) had been investigating a number
of cases involving the Rajapaksas.
Even before the SPC probe started, Chief Inspector Nishantha de
Silva, head of the organised crimes division of the CID, fled with his family
to Switzerland to seek asylum. He was handling high-profile cases involving
members of the Rajapaksa family which included important ones like the killing of
Lasantha Wickrematunga, the editor of The
Sunday Leader. After the police officer fled, there was a nasty
backlash when a Sri Lankan woman staffer of the Swiss embassy alleged that she
was abducted, questioned and tortured by unknown persons. In the police
investigations that followed, the woman was arrested for making false
allegations.
The arrest of two
former ministers, Dr Ranjitha Senaratne and Champika Ranawaka, of the Sirisena
government, who were at the forefront of the campaign to defeat Mahinda Rajapaksa
in the 2015 presidential elections, appears to be another example of
vindictiveness. While Ranawaka was arrested in a case of accident of 2016
vintage, Senaratne was arrested in connection with a news conference he held
two days before the presidential elections in which he produced two persons who
claimed to be drivers of white vans that carried out abductions during the
Rajapaksa rule. Though both leaders have been released on bail, the action
sends a strong message to the opposition that the Rajapaksas will neither
forget nor forgive.
Administratively,
Gotabaya has shown that he is the master of his own actions. He has introduced
steep tax cuts in income tax which he had promised during campaigning. He
ordered the removal of portraits of all politicians, including the president
and ministers, from the walls of ministerial offices. He drastically pruned
defence personnel assigned on presidential and ministerial security duties.
The number of
security vehicles accompanying VIP convoys was also slashed and authorities
were directed not to hold up traffic on roads unnecessarily when VIP convoys
moved. Newly inducted ministers were advised to assume their duties immediately
after they were sworn in. Ministers have been advised not to take their spouses
when they go abroad on official duties. All these have reinforced his popular
image as a man of action.
Unlike his
brother, Mahinda, Gotabaya has appointed qualified and experienced persons to
head state institutions, instead of political people. Dr PB Jayasundara, an
economist, was appointed secretary for revamping the country’s sinking economy.
The president has chosen Dr DWD Lakshman, an economist not tainted by the
infamous bond scam, as the governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.
Similarly, Gotabaya appointed Prince Sarojini Manmatharajah Charles, a senior
Tamil civil servant with vast experience, as the governor of the Northern
Province. During the conflict in 2009, Charles was in charge of the refugee
camps in Vavuniya, housing about 2,90,000 people from the war-torn districts.
The president
presented the “Vision for Progress” policy statement when he addressed the
parliament for the first time on January 3. Read with his earlier statements,
the key elements of the policy include national security concerns, particularly
relating to jihadi terrorism, tax cuts and incentives for small and medium
enterprises, skill-building, reducing inflation and beefing up economy and
actions to “curb corruption and prosecuting the corrupt”. He had also proposed other
structural changes to revamp the economy and strengthen security apparatus,
including the intelligence set-up.
There is a sense
of déjà vu among civil society and minorities who fear that the country could
see the return of authoritarianism. P Sampanthan, leader of the Tamil National
Alliance, has said the president’s statement that development would be
prioritised in resolving the ethnic conflict, would not fulfil the
long-standing desire of the Tamils to develop within a united Sri Lanka on
their own terms. They are also dismayed at Gotabaya’s assertion that there was
“no problem of missing persons to be resolved” except those who fell on the
battlefields. This statement neutralises what little progress was made in 2017,
when the government created the Office of the Missing Persons to expeditiously
deal with cases of missing persons and enforced disappearance.
The Tamils are
shocked at the announcement that the national anthem would be sung only in
Sinhala and not in Tamil at the Independence Day celebrations in the country.
The fringe elements among the Buddhist clergy had welcomed the move. After a
lot of public outcry over the issue, the prime minister clarified that no
decision had been taken on the issue.
On the
international front, the president’s priority appears to be to improve
relations with India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in particular, perhaps to
use India to improve his bargaining position with China. He responded
positively to Modi’s invitation to visit New Delhi. The invitation was extended
soon after he became president. For India, the visit was strategically
significant as the Rajapaksas were seen as close to China. Gotabaya needs
India’s support to improve national security, combat Islamist terrorism and
enable economic recovery. Though Modi had raised the issue of the full
implementation of the 13th Amendment giving limited autonomy to Tamils,
Gotabaya later said the 13th Amendment could not be implemented “against the
wishes and feelings of the majority community”.
China had been
watching with concern after Gotabaya during his visit to India termed the
agreement with China on the Hambantota Port as a “mistake” and called for it to
be negotiated. However, Gotabaya felt the fallout of the statement after
returning home. He later told foreign correspondents in Colombo that there was
no need to renegotiate the Hambantota agreement but the security aspects needed
to be looked into.
Though the
Chinese reacted quickly with a statement reminding that the agreement could not
be renegotiated, the president is expected to take up the issue of redrafting
some clauses of the agreement when he visits Beijing shortly.
Overall, Gotabaya
has, by keeping control of key ministries within the dynasty, ensured a tight
grip over the country.
—The writer served as the head of
intelligence of the IPKF in Sri Lanka. He is associated with the Chennai Centre
for China Studies, South Asia Analysis Group and the International Law and
Strategic Analysis
