Election Results

Mahinda Rajapakse won the Presidential election convincingly, polling 58% of the total valid vote, while his main contender, Sarath Fonseka, could muster only 40%. That was one election result.

I prefer being sober to even the rosiest and most agreeable intoxications". (Aldous Huxley (Texts and Pretexts)

There were others: the editor of the para-JVP paper, Lanka has been arrested; a Swiss reporter was deported for asking sharp questions at a post-victory press conference; Gen. Fonseka’s office was raided by a 200 strong STF contingent, searching for ‘army deserters’ and ‘illegal weapons’; having found neither one or the other, the raiders arrested 15 members of Gen. Fonseka’s staff, all of them duly retired army men; the office of the website Lanka e news was sealed; government leaders announced their determination to obtain a two thirds majority at the parliamentary election, and effect a constitutional change; the state TV began airing old and new songs hailing President Rajapakse as the King of Sri Lanka; soon, private TV stations fell in line… A Rajapakse Sri Lanka is being born.

The victors rejoice, the vanquished gripe about game changing malpractices and wild rumours circulate: such has been the Sri Lankan norm for post-election behaviour. In the aftermath of the Presidential election, these standard responses were overtaken by unprecedented developments verging on the surreal. A few hours after voting ended, hundreds of armed soldiers and policemen surrounded the hotel in which the main contender, together with his family and political colleagues, was temporarily residing.

This ‘siege’ continued for almost twenty four hours, with different government and military ‘spokesmen’ spewing out different explanations for this act which made downtown Colombo look like the capital city of a Latin American autocracy.

The ‘siege’ was mounted ostensibly to arrest hundreds of armed army deserters (the numbers varied from 200 to 400) Gen. Fonseka was supposedly keeping in the hotel (with the intention of ‘mounting a coup’ or/and ‘assassinating President Rajapakse’). The ‘siege’ ended without any of the deserters supposedly skulking inside the Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel being apprehended.

Instead, members of Gen. Fonseka’s official security detail (granted to him by the military, in accordance with the orders of the Election Commissioner) were arrested the moment they came out of the hotel to report to their original unit; these serving soldiers in uniform were made to kneel on the road, handcuffed and taken away by the military police. Their unjust and unlawful fate symbolised the rapidity with which the rule of the law is being supplanted by the law of the rulers in Rajapakse Sri Lanka.

The mournful visage and the portentous utterances of the Election Commissioner, at the ceremony to announce the final result, were omens of the times ahead. It is another Lankan tradition for all presidential contenders to gather at the Election Commissioner’s office for the announcement of the final results. The victor was there, as were other contenders, but not the man who obtained the support of 40% of Lankan citizens. Candidate Fonseka was holed up in a hotel, surrounded by hundreds of troops, with various government spokesmen making contradictory statements about what was being done and why. The ceremony, intentionally or unintentionally, came to symbolise the fate of those who dare to take on the Rajapakses.

Dangerous Delusions

The true significance of Gen. Fonseka’s candidacy was its capacity to mount a credible challenge to Mahinda Rajapakse at the Presidential election. Had Ranil Wickremesinghe contested, the incumbent would have won a far more crushing victory, as the abysmal performance of the UNP at the 2008/9 provincial council elections demonstrates. The regime was compelled to make so many key concessions to the people of the South and the North, from price reductions and wage increases to removing travel restrictions and partially opening the Northern internment camps, because it felt challenged by the Fonseka candidacy. Given the state of the country and of the UNP, the Fonseka candidacy was arguably the best available option.

The election campaign was both unfree and unfair, with Candidate Rajapakse abusing state resources at will, as even the Election Commissioner admitted in his final, mournful, announcement. The election, though, was peaceful. There would have been malpractices; the Election Commissioner himself stated that in three districts politicians and their goons entered the counting centres illegally and intimidated the officers. But these malpractices would have been game enhancers rather than game changers. In other words, whatever malpractices there were would have served to pad the majority of the winner and not turn the loser into the winner and vice versa.

In the seven provinces outside of the North and the East, Candidate Rajapakse obtained 842,429 votes more than the UPFA did at the 2008/9 PC polls. A segment of this increase would have been due to malpractices. But far more pertinent to the final outcome was the joint opposition’s manifest failure to obtain for its candidate even the entirety of votes the UNP got at the 2005 Presidential election. The unexpectedly wide margin of President Rajapakse’s victory was therefore a function of the opposition’s incapacity to persuade UNPers and Northern Tamils to vote for Gen. Fonseka in sufficient numbers. Repeated defeats, continued disorganisation and the deadweight of Ranil Wickremesinghe leadership have created what could well turn out to be a terminal crisis in the UNP. The minorities too are disillusioned by the manifest incapacities of their leaders to influence developments.

This is particularly so in the case of Northern Tamils who would have been further discouraged by the explosions which happened most opportunely and ominously on the morning of the Election Day. Still, despite the insalubrious political conditions in the North and the East, a large segment of Tamils (and Muslims) did vote against the incumbent President. The fact that most of the Tamils who voted did so not for the ‘independent’ Tamil candidate but for the former Army Commander (who, when ensconced in power, told them that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala country and they should therefore desist from making unreasonable demands) demonstrates their antipathy towards the Rajapakse regime and their eagerness to join with the rest of the country to effect a democratic regime change.

So the bald truth is that Mahinda Rajapakse won the Presidential election not because of rigging but because a majority of the Sinhala people, intoxicated by war-euphoria, opted for a leader who had kept and promised to keep Tamils in ‘their place’. Sarath Fonseka lost because he and the other opposition leaders failed to persuade UNP voters and Tamils to vote, in sufficient numbers. (A digression: at a personal level I am delighted that Candidate Rajapakse’s received his lowest percentage of vote outside of the North and the East in Ranasinghe Premadasa’s constituency of Colombo Central – a paltry 22.54%). The opposition need to face its failure and try to understand the reasons for it, instead of hiding behind comforting delusions of massive, game changing, rigging, if it is really serious about impeding the further march of the Rajapakse Juggernaut. Instead of becoming obsessed with fantasies of gargantuan malpractices, the opposition needs focus on the parliamentary election and the absolutely vital, and possible, task of preventing the Rajapakses from winning a two thirds majority.

Stymieing the Dynastic Project

Though it will not be possible to defeat the government at the parliamentary election, it is entirely possible to prevent the UPFA from winning a two thirds majority or even coming close to that level. President Rajapakse is more popular than the UPFA; the UNP, as a party, is more popular than its leader. Denying the Rajapakses a two thirds majority is thus a realistic goal, a goal towards which all opposition parties, irrespective of their different agendas, can commit themselves wholeheartedly. In fact this is a goal that can be shared by the more enlightened sections within the UPFA, especially those SLFPers who do not want to serve the Rajapakses, father, brother and son, for the rest of their political lives (they will become nothing more than politically bonded labourers in a Rajapakse Sri Lanka).

If the UPFA wins a two thirds majority, a Rajapakse constitution would become a reality. This was confirmed by Minister Champika Ranawaka at the post-victory press conference of the UPFA. A Rajapakse constitution will be less democratic than the existing constitution both in terms of basic rights and devolution of power. The Rajapakses will drop the 17th Amendment in its entirety and enshrine within the constitution many a repressive measure in the name of national security. Since the President is on record dismissing the 13th Amendment as a ‘mere slogan’, the new constitution is unlikely to contain any provisions granting provincial level devolution. Instead there would be district level administrative decentralisation (President Rajapakse’s preferred model) at the most. A Rajapakse constitution will thus usher in an era with less rights and freedoms, not only for the anti-Rajapakse minorities but also for the pro-Rajapakse majority.

But the raison d’être of a Rajapakse constitution will be to ensure the longevity of Rajapakse rule, to set up a Rajapakse dynasty with either a brother or a son succeeding the incumbent, someday. Removing the impediment to the Rajapakse project, represented by Presidential term limits, will thus be the paramount aim of a new Constitution. Once that impediment is removed, a Rajapakse future will descend on Sri Lanka. Democracy will be its first casualty.

It is important to bear in mind that what is at stake today is not the fate of this or that political party or leader but the fate of the democratic system. That is why the opposition needs to put the discontents of the Presidential election behind and look ahead to the parliamentary election – because that is the last chance to stop the Rajapakse Juggernaut.

Labouring to prevent a two thirds win by the UPFA at the parliamentary election is the responsibility of any who do not want to see the establishment of Dynastic Rule behind a democratic façade. The opposition therefore should not waste time licking its wounds or engaging in acrimonious and pointless debates about who lost the Presidential election. Pointing fingers and indulging in delusions are unaffordable luxuries, given the imminence of the parliamentary election. It may not be all that difficult for the UPFA to reach from 58% to 66% (or close; the gap can be bridged with defections), especially if the opposition continues to be in disarray, obsessed with the lost presidential election. That is why the opposition needs to put the searing memories of the Presidential election behind them and seize their final chance of impeding the Rajapakse Juggernaut.

- Asian Tribune -