In the end, Mahinda Rajapaksa of the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), who presented himself as the Sinhala warrior king, lost the parliamentary election, frustrating his attempt to return to the political centre stage, this time as Prime Minister, after having lost the presidential election in January. The victors were President Maithripala Sirisena and his Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe of the United National Party (UNP).
However, Mr Rajapaksa put up a good fight, polling big in the Sinhala south, winning his own seat in Kurunegala by a landslide. The UPFA won 42.3 per cent of votes but fell short of the UNP’s numbers, bolstered by the support of Tamil and Muslim minorities. In fact, the Tamil National Alliance swept the northern district.
If the Tamils had hoped to exercise greater leverage over the new Wickremesinghe government they might be disappointed because the expectation is that it will be able to attract a sufficient number of UPFA members, many of them expelled by President Sirisena for divided loyalties before the vote. In the hallowed subcontinental political culture, many will side with the party in power.
Apart from minorities’ support for President Sirisena, what really led to Mr Rajapaksa’s setback was the fact that the venality of his administration was too painful and recent to be forgotten by many Sinhalese. It is no secret that political opponents kept disappearing in the infamous white vans, often never to be seen again. And during his long stint as President, Mr Rajapaksa ran the country as a family enterprise, which often emerged as the deep state. And the suspected murder of Wasim Thajudeen, Sri Lanka’s most famous rugby player, highlighted by his opponents before the vote contributed to reviving memories of the bad old days.
Mr Rajapaksa’s tilt towards China was less of a factor in his failure to fulfil his ambition because it was determined by circumstances rather than ideological leanings. Although many Sri Lankans, apart from the outside world including India, welcomed Mr Rajapaksa’s setback, there was a general feeling among thinking islanders that there should be a better balance in relations with China on the one hand and India and the West on the other.
Mr Rajapaksa’s showing and his beating the drum of Sinhala nationalism mean that Mr Wickremesinghe, who returns as Prime Minister, and President Sirisena will have to walk warily in approaching Tamils’ grievances. There is above all the issue of national reconciliation after the end of the long bloody civil war, with many ancillary issues such as repossession of land taken over for military use tied with it. President Sirisena’s relations with India cooled in recent times because of the feeling in New Delhi that progress towards addressing Tamils’ problems was slow.
There are other broader issues in relation to India — the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) and a bridge linking the two countries — long under discussion. In the case of CEPA, there is understandable anxiety in the Sri Lankan business community on being swamped by Indian products. On his part, Mr Wickremesinghe has made no secret of his desire for close business and economic ties with India.
The continuity of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe team has many positives for the future of Sri Lanka even assuming that the process of Sinhala-Tamil reconciliation will be slow and painful. During his terms, Mr Rajapaksa had sought close relations with China almost as an act of defiance against the West and, up to a point, India. The present and future dispensation has no such complexes and seeks to deal with the world in what it considers to be in its national interest.
What is not fully recognised in India is that the manner in which Sri Lankan troops won the war against Tamil Tigers in its last stages was a searing experience for the Tamil victims of the carnage and for Sri Lankans themselves. While Mr Rajapaksa glorifies in his troops’ victory, as was inevitable, there is a reluctance on the part of most Sri Lankans to reopen that page of history, as demanded by the international community, the West in particular. Atrocities were admittedly committed on a somewhat large scale, but the consensus on the island is to move on, rather than dwell on the past.
There are other pluses stemming from the parliamentary election: the sanctity and acceptance of the electoral process, dramatically highlighted by Mr Rajapaksa himself, revealing to the AFP news agency even before the results were announced that he had lost in his bid to become Prime Minister. This is a remarkable phenomenon considering the conduct of the Rajapaksa regime and the extra-constitutional methods it had adopted in dealing with domestic opposition.
Sri Lankan Tamils are naturally anxious to open a new chapter in living with the Sinhala majority and are seeking to return to the days before the Tigers took over. But they will need to be patient in giving the renewed mandate for the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe team more time to find ways to meet legitimate Tamil grievances so as not to give an opportunity to Mr Rajapaksa to paint it in unpatriotic colours.
India has lived with the Sri Lankan Tamil problem for long and has learned the hard way the perils of intervening militarily even at Colombo’s invitation. As a small island nation at the tip of India, some complexes are inevitable, but, given the outcome of the parliamentary election, there is a measure of optimism in New Delhi of greater understanding between the two countries.
Mr Rajapaksa is now a member of the new Parliament on the Opposition benches and although he has lost this round, he will seek to highlight the government’s missteps as and when they occur, to keep his longer term hopes alive. For all his faults and inclination to place family above the country, he remains a shrewd political operator and the government will be watching him closely. The country’s democratic future may yet reveal surprises.
