by Teresita Schaffer and Sean Farrell, South Asia Monitor, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC, May 2, 2004
https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/legacy_files/files/media/csis/pubs/sam70.pdf
Amb. Teresita Schaffer
Sri Lanka: Election Shakes Up Political Landscape
Sri Lanka’s parliamentary election, held April 2, is likely to
usher in a new phase of polarization and introspection in the
country’s deeply divided politics. The new government will
be preoccupied for the next few months with a constitutional
change to insure the political future of President Chandrika
Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. Although Kumaratunga has
asked Norway to resume facilitating peace negotiations,
meaningful progress will be extremely hard to achieve. The
future of the island depends on maintaining the cease-fire,
which probably soon will come under pressure.
Setback for mainstream political parties: The election results
were a stunning rebuke to Sri Lanka’s two major parties. The
center-right coalition led by the United National Party (UNP)
fell from 114, a narrow majority in the 225-seat parliament, to
82, with losses all over the country. Observers blame this defeat
on the UNP’s failure to explain its economic and peace policies
to the public, aggravated by the fact that in both areas, the UNP
was counting on a full five-year term to produce results that
could sell at the polls. Outgoing Prime Minister Ranil
Wickremasinghe’s preference for backroom politics over public
campaigning compounded the problem.
The opposing coalition, the United People’s Freedom Alliance
(UPFA), headed by President Kumaratunga, came back with
105 seats, a strong plurality but short of a majority. Within this
total, however, Kumaratunga’s party, the left-of-center Sri
Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), dropped by over ten seats to 57.
The difference was more than made up by the dramatic gain of
the Janata Vimukti Peramuna (JVP), translated as the People’s
Liberation Front, with which Kumaratunga had allied herself in
a desperate bid for election victory. The JVP achieved
prominence as a revolutionary movement with a Marxist and
strongly nationalist ideology, which led an armed insurrection in
1970 and sparked a second civil war in southern Sri Lanka in
the late 1980s. Its current leaders say they have given up armed
struggle in favor of elective politics. The JVP accounts for 39
members of the UFPA parliamentary delegation, more than
double their previous strength. Kumaratunga thus presides over
a parliamentary delegation nearly half of whose members reject
the economic and peace policies she followed in her earlier
term. Coming only 14 years after the suppression of its last
insurrection, the JVP’s presence in Parliament on this scale
represents a political earthquake.
Three additional parliamentary groups will be equally hard to
work into any kind of national consensus. The Tamil National
Alliance, with 22 members, is a coalition of Tamil parties that
had opposed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) until
recently, but which now explicitly accepts it as the principal
authority for Sri Lanka’s Tamils. The entire delegation
expressed its fealty to (and fear of) the LTTE in a well
publicized meeting with LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran
soon after the election. At the other extreme, the Jatika Hela
Urumaya (JHU, or National Sinhala Movement) elected nine
Buddhist monks from the extreme nationalist wing of the clergy.
Finally, a small contingent from the Sri Lanka Muslim
Conference (SLMC) that would normally find its place in
coalition politics without too much difficulty will, under present
circumstances, be one more element in a highly polarized
parliament.
Underlying trends: Under Sri Lanka’s complicated election
law, proportional representation determines how many seats
each parliamentary delegation has, but “preference votes”
determine which candidates get elected. The JVP drew large
numbers of “preference votes” from all over southern Sri Lanka.
Its original supporters were drawn from the lower middle
classes, especially from the unemployed. In the most recent
election, it expanded its appeal to this group and attracted votes
from university students, those disillusioned with the corruption
and bickering in mainstream political parties, and those who felt
left out of the government’s market-based economic policies.
And this was no fluke: in a provincial council election held
April 24, all the JVP candidates who ran were elected, swelling
an already strong showing for the UPFA.
Uncertain control for the government: Kumaratunga was
quick to appoint a new government headed by veteran SLFP
member Mahinda Rajapakse. Almost immediately, however, she
suffered a stinging defeat when the UNP candidate was elected
speaker of parliament. At the same time, the JVP challenged her
allocation of ministries within the ruling coalition. In the end,
this dispute was resolved, but in a way that may put the JVP in a
position to make inroads on Kumaratunga’s traditional rural
vote bank. Both incidents underlined the problem Kumaratunga
has in turning her parliamentary plurality into a working
majority.
Kumaratunga’s priority—securing her political future:
Kumaratunga’s second and final term as president will end in
2005 or 2006 (the date is disputed within Sri Lanka). To remain
in power beyond that point, she wants to abolish the executive
presidency and restore a parliamentary system, and the election
results have convinced her that her control of parliament would
be stronger if proportional representation were abolished or
attenuated. As soon as the election returns were in,
representatives of her party began looking for ways to bring
about the necessary constitutional changes.
These changes are not acceptable to any of the other parties in
Parliament. The UNP opposes the effort to perpetuate
Kumaratunga’s rule, and the minority parties—including those
integrated into the UNP contingent—see the directly elected
presidency and the proportional representation system as
essential ways of making their voice heard. Kumaratunga cannot
muster the required two-thirds vote in Parliament to amend the
constitution, and the defeat of her candidate for speaker rules
out the device of converting Parliament into a constituent
assembly. She is still considering calling for a referendum, a
procedure that would not fulfill the constitutional requirements
for passing an amendment but that she believes would give
political legitimacy to the change. Constitutional change is
likely to be at the top of Kumaratunga’s priorities for the next
several months. It will deepen the already profound polarization
of the political system.
Strong push for economic populism: 2003 was a good year for
Sri Lanka’s urban business sector, but five straight quarters of
economic growth and the longest lasting cease-fire in the history
of the ethnic conflict did not translate into jobs and
opportunities for Sri Lankans quickly enough. The UPFA,
seizing on the issues of inflation and unemployment, pledged to
control food prices, stop the sale of assets to overseas
companies, raise government salaries by 70 percent, and provide
up to 25,000 government jobs for unemployed graduates within
three months. The JVP and many members of Kumaratunga’s
own party will press hard to keep these promises, but the result
is likely to be accelerating inflation and loss of export markets.
The revised agricultural policies that could eventually extend
the benefits of prosperity to Sri Lanka’s rural population do not
have the same short-term political appeal.
Can the peace process survive? Even more central to Sri
Lanka’s future is the peace process. Kumaratunga was the
person who first made peace a signature issue, but in the past
two years it has been a centerpiece of the UNP government’s
policy. Kumaratunga used her first televised speech after the
election to appeal for peace, and on April 24, she formally asked
the Norwegian government to resume facilitating talks with the
LTTE.
The Norwegians have agreed. However, the peace process
already faced difficulty because of the widely divergent goals of
the government and the LTTE in negotiating an Interim Self
Governing Authority for the north and east of the country, and
because direct negotiations had effectively been suspended in
April 2003. The peace process now faces three major new
problems. First, Kumaratunga does not have a solid majority
behind her on peace issues. The JVP opposes all the concepts
being discussed in the negotiations: federalism, devolution of
power, and an interim governing authority for Tamil-held areas.
The UNP was not willing to make common cause with her when
it controlled Parliament and the government, and will be even
more reluctant to do so now. In addition, the JHU will be a
vocal opponent of any concessions to the LTTE.
Second, the LTTE is even more suspicious of Kumaratunga than
it is of the outgoing government and will almost certainly take
an even harder line than before on its requirements for an
interim authority and on its desires for changes in Sri Lankan
Army security arrangements in the north and east.
Third, Kumaratunga has called for a more prominent and public
role for India in the negotiations. India clearly will need to be
satisfied with any agreement Sri Lanka might reach with the
LTTE in order for a settlement to be viable, and both
Kumaratunga’s previous government and the outgoing UNP
government were careful to consult India closely during their
negotiations. However, it is not clear that India wants a direct
role in discussions with the LTTE, or that the LTTE would
accept it. India’s past involvement in Sri Lanka is still
controversial in India, and the mistrust between India and the
LTTE is legendary. Crafting a role for India that respects its
legitimate interests without making India itself the focus of
controversy will not be easy.
As a result, the effort to find a basis for renewed talks is likely
to be slow and uncertain, and Kumaratunga’s preoccupation
with constitutional change and her relations with the JVP will
make it even more so.
In the short term, the cease-fire provides both political and
economic benefits to the government. It is popular with the
Tamil people in the north and east of Sri Lanka, although for
people in Jaffna, the cease-fire appears much more fragile than
it does for residents of southern Sri Lanka. The cease-fire has
also given the LTTE an opportunity to improve its international
standing.
An extended period without real progress, however, will put
pressure on the cease-fire. The LTTE will be looking for
tangible movement toward self-government, and will probably
grow even more disenchanted with the carefully crafted
formulas it agreed to in December 2002. It will try to “create
facts”—to put in place unilaterally important elements of their
ambitious proposals for an Interim Self-Governing Authority,
and to challenge the Sri Lankan Army’s arrangements at the
controversial High Security Zones in the north and east. It may
challenge directly aspects of the cease-fire agreement in the
process. The shaky foundations of the new Sri Lankan
government will make it harder to deal with these challenges.
Trouble ahead: Sri Lanka’s domestic political trends are likely
to put its economics and peace policy achievements at risk, and
to usher in a period of increasingly polarized and introspective
politics. For the United States, this is bad news: the principal
U.S. interests in Sri Lanka have been economic progress and
resolving one of the world’s most stubborn conflicts. U.S.
influence in Sri Lanka will be lower than it has been, largely
because of the new government’s uncertain power base.
Paradoxically, U.S. influence over the LTTE could be enhanced,
provided the LTTE decides that its increased international
respectability is an important asset. Close consultations with
India will be key to any effort to keep the peace process in play.
Originally posted May 16, 2004