Yahapalanaya in 2017: To be or not

to be?

Friday, 13 January 2017

The Yahapalanaya Government faces existential
questions as it steps into its third year in office

Every year on 8 January, a quiet gathering takes place at

a grave inside the Borella cemetery. Words are spoken softly
about a life lived in glorious irreverence, a man remembered for
his courage and capacity to inspire. Flower tributes are paid at his
tombstone inside the tree-lined cemetery; memory sketches are
drawn of an irrepressible spirit, ringing laughter and sheer cheek.
For eight years, since his murder in 2009, this early morning vigil
at the grave of The Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha
Wickrematunge has become something of a ritual of the faithful.
Strangers who never knew the man also turn up, reflecting a
wider understanding about how his death had profoundly
impacted freedom; how fear and oppression had taken over a
nation.
Mahinda Rajapaksas astrologers in their wisdom picked 8 January
2015 for the election that was supposed to usher in the former
Presidents unprecedented third term in office. As usual, the date
centred on the magic number eight, the number that has
determined election days in the last three presidential contests
because it was Rajapaksas lucky number.
It was a coincidence that Rajapaksas critics and dissidents seized
upon early into the election cycle. The opposition coalition fielding
Maithripala Sirisena, weak, impoverished and muscled out at
every turn by the incumbent election machinery, had been gifted
an unbelievable trump card. Opposition campaign advertisements
featured heart-stirring music and lyrics that spoke of repression
and revolution and visuals of Lasantha Wickrematunges bruised

and bloody body, lying on a hospital stretcher.

The message to anti-Rajapaksa forces mobilising across the
country was clear on the anniversary of Lasanthas death, cast a
vote against the brutal regime that presided over his killing.
Poetic justice
As that fateful election day dawned in Sri Lanka, the graveside
vigil unfolded as usual. Organisers say 2015 saw a slightly bigger
crowd. Perhaps the ritual took on a particular significance or
poignancy as the country faced one of its most decisive elections
that day. For a country that was staring down the barrel of
authoritarianism for the foreseeable future, there was an
inescapable poetic justice, and potential for catharsis and
vindication in the coinciding of the two dates.
Since 2015, two anniversaries have been commemorated on 8
January. This year, Yahapalanaya the administration that
defeated the Rajapaksa politics of nepotism, corruption and
brutality turned two on the eighth anniversary of Lasanthas
death. Each year, on the anniversary of its victory, the
Government has flown down speakers to address audiences at the
BMICH in Colombo to speak of hope and transformation in the
post-January 8 era. During the commemoration this year,
President Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
highlighted progress made since they took office and chorused
assurances about the Governments stability.
On the same day, a small crowd gathers at the graveside of the
slain Editor. This year the grasses growing over Lasanthas grave
were disturbed. In 2016, forensic specialists exhumed his body,
hoping a fresh post-mortem exam would help to nab his killers.
That was three months ago. Since then, the only suspect in the
murder, a military intelligence operative called Premananda
Udalagama has been released on bail.

The release followed a scathing attack on law enforcement by

President Sirisena, who claimed intelligence officials most of
them remanded over attacks on journalists were in remand for
months without being tried. Sirisenas speech was widely
criticised as being a huge betrayal of his mandate to stamp out
corruption and end impunity for crimes committed against
journalists and dissidents during Rajapaksas tenure. The cases
have seen no movement since.
Broken promises
It is reasonable to assume that when politicians use victims of
past abuses in their election propaganda, the their moral
obligation to bring their killers and attackers to justice is greater.
But two years since this Government was swept to power, partly
on the strength of a collective clamour for justice and
accountability, Lasantha Wickrematunges killers are still free.
As the Government steps into its third year in office, most of its
other pledges have also fallen by the wayside. Broadly speaking,
beating rampant corruption in the political system, delivering on a
political solution to the ethnic conflict and constitutional reform
including the abolishment of the presidency were the three issues
at the heart of President Sirisenas mandate. Each of these
pledges attracted different segments of society, creating a broad
social coalition that brought about the fall of the Rajapaksa
regime.
In only two years, the Government has broken faith with all these
constituencies, reneging on pledges to stamp out corrupt
governance and deliver on genuine post-war healing that must
include an honest reflection of the past. The Governments
democratic reform agenda peaked with the passage of the 19th
Amendment, only three months into its term and seems like a
lifetime ago. Since then, moves to strengthen parliamentary
oversight mechanisms and the enactment of Right to Information
legislation have been the only bright lights on an otherwise bleak

horizon of meaningful systemic reform.

In sum, if it was still possible to believe in transformation at the
end of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administrations first year in
office, the second year may be better remembered for how the
Government took a sledgehammer to hopes for political system
overhaul and prospects for a permanent peace.
Corruption
Two years into its term, corruption scandals, cronyism and a lack
of transparency in its dealings plague the good governance
administration. The worst of these, involving a Treasury bond
scam at the Central Bank when it was led by Governor Arjuna
Mahendran has cast a long shadow, undermining the
Governments claims about a zero-tolerance approach to
corruption.
The February 2015 bond scandal has gone two years without
credible investigation by the Government. Only Dr Indrajit
Coomaraswamy who succeeded Mahendran as Governor of the
Central Bank, has attempted to hold the beneficiaries of the
allegedly manipulated bond transaction to account thus far. By all
accounts, these attempts to check Perpetual Treasuries have
angered senior members of the Government with alleged ties to
the company and its controversial Director Arjun Aloysius, putting
the new Governor of the Central Bank directly in their line of fire,
both privately and in public.
Attempts to hold members of the previous regime to account for
corruption have become farcical, with endless rounds of arrests
and releases and round-robin visits to the Financial Crimes
Investigation Division (FCID) in Fort by members of the Rajapaksa
administration. Politicians and officials still loyal to President
Rajapaksa get thrown in jail on for on fraud and theft charges only
to be released on bail a few weeks later, when they emerge from
Welikada playing conquering heroes.

With all the resources thrown at the investigating bodies, donorfunded capacity building and training programmes to bolster the
investigation of financial crimes, not a single case has been built
that will hold up in a court of law. The more solid cases, involving
the former Governor of the Central Bank, Rajapaksas former
Chief of Staff and a certain monitoring MP of dubious repute have
seen no movement at all, amid speculation that each of these
individuals has won immunity by building solid relationships with
members of the current Government.
With many of the ministers who served in the former Presidents
cabinet also holding office in the Sirisena administration,
interference into past corruption cases is also on the rise
according to authoritative sources. Police investigators typically
set aside the complaint halfway through investigation, until the
heat dies down, the sources reveal.
There is also growing suspicion of the UNP colluding to protect the
former President, whose entire family is facing corruption
investigations. The alleged moves have angered President
Sirisena, who reads the strange alliance as an attempt to keep
Rajapaksa in play as a political factor, in an effort to prolong
divisions in the SLFP, giving the UNP an electoral advantage by
default.
The return of BBS
In its second year, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration
also set about alienating ethnic and religious minority
communities that backed the opposition movement pledging an
end to racism and foster reconciliation in January 2015. Early into
his term, President Sirisena claimed that he had an obligation to
resolve the issues of the Tamil people, who had voted for him en
mass at the presidential election. He also denounced extremist
groups and distanced himself from the monk-led movements
sowing fear and hate between communities, in response to the

faith the Muslim community had placed in him in the electoral

contest. These were progressive positions taken by the new
Government, that had representatives of the Tamil and Muslim
communities claiming that even if nothing else was achieved by
the Sirisena administration, freedom from fear had been worth
their vote against Rajapaksa in 2015.
But more recently, the new Government principally Justice
Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe is offering the group immunity
and the movement is flexing its muscles again with a series of
rallies and eerily familiar anti-minority rhetoric. President Sirisena
has also contributed to this resurgence, by meeting with the
controversial BBS General Secretary Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara
Thero together with other Buddhist monks.
The Government is also actively working to anger the Tamils, a
community that has borne the brunt of the war and embarrass
moderate sections of the Tamil polity by going back on its
transitional justice commitments.
CTF controversy
President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe have
distanced themselves from a report by a Task Force it appointed
to obtain the peoples views about how transitional justice
mechanisms should be structured. Having received 7,306
submissions during the consultative process, the Consultations
Task Force (CTF) on Reconciliation Mechanisms delivered its report
to the Government on 3 January 2017.
Among other things the report recommended a hybrid special
court, comprising international participation at all levels, but
including the caveat that this foreign involvement may be phased
out once the court had won the trust of victims and built
competence locally to deal with complex international crimes.
Outside of this most controversial section, the CTFs 500-page
report reflects the views of Sri Lankans from every district in the

island, regarding disappearances, immediate needs, socioeconomic concerns and psychosocial healing. It is the first broad
public survey conducted since the end of the war, or perhaps
ever, about measures the Government should adopt to ensure
meaningful peace-building.
The response from the Government to a report it commissioned
as a vital part of the process to design transitional justice
structures it has committed to at the UN in Geneva, beggars
belief. Several members of the Government, including the Justice
Minister, who constantly finds himself on the wrong side of the
reform agenda lately, denounced the report, saying it was
compiled by NGO representatives and reiterating that foreign
judges are completely off the table. Yet the NGO representatives
on the Task Force which was entirely civil society led were
appointed by the Prime Minister of the Government Rajapakse
serves.
The outbursts lay bare rampant dysfunction within the
Government and seriously erode confidence in the
administrations commitment to deal credibly with the legacy of a
long and brutal civil war.
All this leaves thousands of war-affected Tamil people still
grappling with rebuilding lives torn apart by conflict, still on an
endless quest for justice, high and dry. Human rights activists and
groups working with war-affected communities are beginning to
resign themselves to the fact that this attempt at dealing with the
past through meaningful transitional justice processes is drawing
to a close. This has been a trend in many countries recovering
from conflict and turmoil, where transitional justice is achieved in
incremental waves, whenever the political moment presents
itself, sometimes over decades. Over the next few years, several
activists are likely to focus on preserving their work including
the CTF report for posterity, hoping that when Sri Lankas next

best moment for reckoning with an ugly past comes along,

groundwork is available to build on.
Constitution in question
Initially the Governments stated commitment to drafting a new
constitution allowed countries pressing for justice for crimes
committed during the war in Sri Lanka to back down temporarily.
The Tamil National Alliance also prioritised the constitutionmaking process, focusing less on war crimes accountability while
drafting was underway to give the process its best possible
chance at success.
Disregarding all this, members of the Government, particularly
the SLFP, are growing increasingly vocal in opposition to a new
constitution and power sharing arrangements that go beyond the
13th Amendment.
This week, the SLFP which has agitated against the executive
presidency since it was established in 1978, claimed it was not in
favour of abolishing the presidency, and insisted it would field
President Sirisena as its presidential candidate in 2020. The SLFP
Central Committee decreed that a referendum on a new
constitution was also off the table. Without a referendum, the
Government could only enact constitutional amendments using its
two thirds majority in Parliament and would fail to deliver on
fundamental reforms that would expand power sharing
arrangements with the periphery that must be approved by
people at a referendum and a pre-requisite of any long-term
political solution to the ethnic conflict.
According to SLFP Ministers, President Sirisena had not uttered a
word at the Central Committee meeting while the resolutions
were being passed. Even UNP Ministers are profoundly wary of
going before the people at a referendum, preferring not to turn
the constitutional reform process into an electoral contest.

So early in 2017, the year that was supposed to see the

realization of major Government pledges, including a new
constitution and abolition of the presidency is looking more
doubtful than ever. President Sirisena, it was loudly proclaimed on
the campaign trail, would be the last executive president of Sri
Lanka. In November 2015, standing before Sobitha Theros
funeral pyre, President Sirisena vowed to fulfil his ultimate wish
and abolish the presidency. Sirisena loyalists like Rajitha
Senaratne have insisted that the President remains committed to
abolition, despite SLFP claims. But the presidency has a long
history of proving too alluring to resist, and Sirisena is no less
vulnerable to its charms.
There is a reason that the failures of this Government bring such
deep disappointment and disillusionment. The 2015 presidential
election is celebrated as a transformative moment in the psyche
of the electorate and the history of politics in this country. When it
campaigned to win office, the opposition relied on something
more than just ordinary election slogans; slogans that went
beyond rice from the moon. For the first time the opposition
campaigned on an idea; an idea that lit the public imagination
because it centred on repairing a system that had been broken for
generations.
The old way
But two years later, spectres from the past continue to haunt the
system. True reformists are in a minority. The old guard still wields
control, and it only knows to govern in the old, broken way.
A broad peoples coalition, united only in some shared values,
gave the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe combine a phenomenal,
against-all-odds victory in 2015. Soon after the election, the time
was ripe to expand that coalition. The mood in the country had
altered, from triumphalist and fearful, to hopeful and conciliatory.
Had the Government exploited that democratic space to pursue
truly transformative policy with regard to peace-building and

systemic reform early in its tenure, Sri Lankas democratic

landscape would look very different today. If it had moved faster
to check corruption in its ranks and championed reconciliation
and justice, the future would look a lot less bleak and fraught with
less political risk than it does today.
Today, the Government runs scared of a referendum, not because
it fears people will reject a new constitution, but because it has
ceded too much ground on other issues including corruption and
bad economic management. Its multiple failures have created a
political space that is ripe for exploitation.
A nationalist mobilization is underway, only two years after the
politics of hate, fear and ethno-religious supremacy was defeated.
And a former President is waiting in the wings to reap the benefits
of that resurgence.
That prospect is truly terrifying.
So while the future may look bleak, the reformist constituencies
that hitched their wagon to Yahapalanaya has no choice but to
stay engaged with this Government, to find ways to keep
influencing policy and pressing for reform before the window
closes forever. 8 January was a peoples triumph; and only
continued public engagement in governance and reform can keep
the transformative power of that victory alive.
As for the Government, with three years left in its term, 2017 can
be one of two things. It can be a year to attempt course
correction, strive to restore public confidence and summon the
courage and moral fortitude to champion unpopular causes that
will lead Sri Lanka into an age of lasting peace and prosperity. Or
the Yahapalanaya Government can allow the rot to set in, as it
hurtles along this path towards self-destruction, setting itself up
for monumental defeat in 2020.
Posted by Thavam