High stakes in presidential election

I am writing this piece after an exhaustive interview done by the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation’s (SLBC’s) English service on its Coffee Break programme.

The last question put to me by anchor person Noordin was, “Whom would I choose if I were a Sri Lankan?”

A very tricky question. After a pause, I said if I were to choose between a civilian incumbent President and his rival, who has just shed the uniform a day after retiring from the armed forces, I would any day prefer the civilian.

I have nothing against Gen. (Retd.) Fonseka. But given the history of countries in the neighborhood, especially Pakistan which has had spells of military rule, the temptation of an army man to legitimize his rule through undemocratic means will be hard to resist, notwithstanding Gen Fonseka’s pious promise that he would shed all extraordinary powers of the executive President once he is voted to power.

This is what makes the coming presidential election unique. In the field is President Mahinda Rajapaksa, with 40 years of political experience and Gen Fonseka who entered politics hardly 40 days ago.

Gen Fonseka has promised to “restore democracy”, meaning that President Rajapaksa’s four-year rule was marked by undemocratic acts. He has also promised to abolish executive presidency. President Rajapaksa, on the other hand, has made a more realistic promise to make the executive president more accountable to Parliament. He has also said he has advanced the elections, not to cash in on the victory over the LTTE, but to make the Tamils, who boycotted the last election in November 2005, a chance to vote so he could be the President of all Sri Lankans.

He has promised to devolve powers under the 13th amendment to the Constitution to provinces, including the northern and eastern provincial councils. To give greater representation to people of all regions, he has promised to create a Senate, like the Indian House of the People or the US Senate where the problems of the provinces could be articulated.

Let us take the executive presidency. There is a fallacious belief that an executive President is all-powerful. It is not so. His power is proportionate to the strength his party has in Parliament. After the introduction of proportional representation system, neither of the two main Sinhala parties, the UNP and the SLFP, had been able to get two-thirds majority to push through constitutional reforms. In fact, successive administrations had only bare majority.

Unofficially, Sri Lanka is going through the process of coalition politics which has already arrived in India with the SLFP and the UNP representing two ends of the political spectrum and smaller parties aligning with one or the other.

To get over the hurdle, Mr Rajapaksa plans to change the electoral system, not wholesale but partially by making a proportion of seats to be filled through the first-past- the-post system. To do that, he will have to amend the Constitution for which he needs the cooperation of the UNP. He has realised that the flip side of the proportional representation system is that it guarantees a place in Parliament for smaller parties in proportion to the votes they poll. This is important in a country where the minorities are just recovering from a prolonged war and are yet to get over the feeling of alienation.

A third issue concerns the Tamils. Mr Rajapaksa’s statement that in the post-LTTE Sri Lanka, there will be no majority or minority communities but all will be Sri Lankans is well-intentioned. But he is a bit ahead of his times. He has to give time for the wounds of war to heal before forging a national identity, like in India where also border States like Tamil Nadu and the north-east nurture grievances of domination by the Hindi belt and discrimination. One vital difference is that when India is threatened by external aggression or a terrorist attack like what happened in Mumbai on Nov 26, 2008, we all stand as one people.

To forge a Sri Lankan identity, rulers have to be more accommodative towards Tamils who were pushed to support the LTTE’s separate Eelam struggle all these years but whose grievances still remain unaddressed though the President has solved one aspect of the problem by ending the insurgency.

The President has won the war. To win peace, he should not gloat over the victory. It may go down well with the Sinhala south, but not with the Tamils who nurture hurt pride. The President realizes that and does not talk about war, but about peace and development. On the other hand, Gen Fonseka claims credit for crushing the LTTE.

On the other hand, UNP leader Ranil Wickermesinghe has told GTV, telecast in Europe, that Gen Fonseka only followed Government order to finish the war within a specified timeframe. Being a shrewd politician, Ranil realises that Gen Fonseka cannot get Tamil vote if he claim credit for the defeat of the LTTE. So he blames it on Mr Rajapaksa.

The Tamil National Alliance, proxy of the LTTE, has chosen to throw its lot with Gen Fonseka, more to get even with President Rajapaksa than out of any hope that a man, dependent on parties with politically divergent views like the UNP and the JVP, can do justice to the Tamils.

This is a short-sighted strategy. As Mr Jolly Somasundaram, former civil servant of Sri Lanka, has said in an insightful article in The Island, boycotting the election will be suicidal for the Tamils. Rather, they should follow the strategy of Ceylon Workers Congress president S Thondaman who felt that he could better the lives of the plantation Tamils not through politics of confrontation, but through working with the Government of the day. Mr Thondaman never stood for any Presidential election, unlike Mr Sivajilingam. Whose vote is he going to split and to what purpose?

Since the TNA was the voice of the Tigers, it is presumed that the grouping will have the same level of acceptance as it enjoyed during Prabhakaran’s days. This is again an illusion. The TNA, which owes its 22 seats in Parliament to the LTTE, can no longer expect that kind of support extended to it by the Tamil people in the post-Prabhakaran era. And for the fist time, anti-LTTE parties like the EPDP and PLOTE have joined the fray in support of the President, hoping that now that the people have been freed from fear, they will vote freely.

The TNA denies that it has any secret understanding with Gen Fonseka about the remerge of the east with the north. Assuming what TNA leader Sampanthan is true, the Tamils will have to face the reality of two provinces and not talk about a homeland of merged north and east now that they do not have the military might to force their will. In any case, the TNA cannot have forgotten that it was the JVP petition in the Supreme Court which led to the annulment of the temporary merger of the east with the north. Surely, the JVP will not allow its gains to be frittered away even if Mr Rajapaksa wins.

It is said that with the Sinhala vote even divided, the Tamil vote may prove decisive. That is an untested presumption. Since the war, the vote share of the UNP and the JVP have gone down as the victories scored by the UPFA in eight provincial elections show. Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe laments that but for the boycott by the Tamils, he would have won the last presidential election. If that be so, why did he stay away from the contest this time and left it to a soldier. now that the LTTE was no longer around to call the shots. This is the first presidential election which the UNP is not contesting and it shows a defeatist mentality.

Results of the provincial polls show that the UPFA has got 60 per cent. To win the presidential race, the opposition candidate has to poll more than 50 per cent vote, hence their bid to woo the minorities.

Gone are the days when Tamils voted en bloc under LTTE diktat. This time, the Tamil vote may go three-way, with those voting supporting one or the other candidate and a sizable section opting not to vote at all. Abstention will hurt the opposition as much as a vote against it. Out of the five lakh Tamils in the Jaffna peninsula, only 50 per cent may vote and not all may root for Gen Fonseka. In the Vanni region, the three lakh people who bore the brunt of the war may not vote at all. Even if they do, Mr Rajapaksa may not get adequate support from them, despite PLOTE having limited base in some parts of Vavunia and Mannar, because the Tamils in this region are yet to get over the trauma of displacement and internment in transit camps in Vavunia. But then, Vavunia south has sizable Sinhala population whose vote the President can count on.

The UPFA has already shown its strength in the east by winning the provincial election held in the midst of the war and getting a Tamil, Pillaiyan, appointed Chief Minister. The eastern Tamils, who traditionally provided the fighting cadre for the Tigers, have always lived amid Sinhalese and their vote may be split.

The President’s comment about forging a Sri Lankan identity has caused unease not only among Tamils, but also Tamil-speaking Muslims. The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress is now with Gen Fonseka, but what clout it still has among the Muslims remains to be seen, in the context of its inability to win many seats in the recently held provincial elections in the east.

The Mahinda camp says the UPFA has proved its strength in the Sinhala south by winning provincial elections and it need not talk about the war victory any more to get votes. In fact, the Sinhalese have taken the war victory as a given and are more concerned about the rising prices, all-pervasive corruption and Art 17 providing for appointment of independent commissions, including a bribery corruption.

Another issue is human rights violation during the last phase of the war. It is forgotten that President Rajapaksa has an enviable record as a human rights lawyer during the JVP rebellion of 1987-89 when the UNP regime let loose a reign of terror. During the height of the war, he resisted western pressure to censure Sri Lanka in the UN Human Rights Commission with the help of China, Russia and India. Now that a UN representative has authenticated Channel 4 videotapes showing soldiers killing unarmed men, presumably combatants, stripped naked, he should hold an impartial investigation once he comes to power. Such a course will enhance his image.

Untimately, the issue before the Sri Lankan people is how they should safeguard the democracy. Will they take a chance with a general with ill-concealed ambition or a civilian President with a record of championing human rights?

- Asian Tribune -