Sri Lanka in 2020 Return to Rajapaksa Regnum

Home , Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Rajapaksa family

NIRA WICKRAMASINGHE

ABSTRACT Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/as/article-pdf/61/1/211/455604/as.2021.61.1.211.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother Prime Minister Mahinda Raja- paksa set in motion a process aimed at consolidating their family’s control of the executive, cabinet, and legislature. The global coronavirus pandemic gave them an opportunity to further militarize the administration of the country. The ruling party, the Sri Lanka People’s Front, won a two-thirds majority in the parliamentary elections, which allowed them to enact decisive constitutional change and overturn crucial legislation that curbed the power of the executive. The government’s ability to withstand the economic crisis and control the pandemic will be key to their complete blunting of any opposition forces. KEYWORDS: COVID-19, parliamentary elections, Rajapaksa, militariza- tion, 20th Amendment

CONSOLIDATION OF THE RAJAPAKSAS: THE FIRST MONTHS

Three days after being elected president in November 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed as his prime minister his younger brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, him- self a former president (2005–2015) and the leader of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (People’s Front). The return of the Rajapaksa family to the helm gave many observers a sense of deja´ vu. The Rajapaksas presented themselves as bringing security and order to a country that had witnessed a traumatic security lapse a few months earlier under the government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe. Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s win- ning campaign promised law and order in contrast with the inaction and ineptitude of the Sirisena–Wickremasinghe combine, which had, in the view

NIRA WICKRAMASINGHE is Professor and Chair of Modern South Asian Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Email: .

Asian Survey,Vol.61,Number1, pp. 211–216.ISSN0004-4687, electronic ISSN 1533-838X. © 2021 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, https://www.ucpress.edu/journals/reprints-permissions. DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.1525/AS.2021.61.1.211.

211 212 ASIAN SURVEY 61:1 of the electorate, allowed the Easter Sunday 2019 bomb attacks by an Islamist group, killing 277 people and wounding over 400. The year 2020 started with the president’s promise to protect the impar- tiality of institutions already giving way to nepotistic tendencies. Members of the military were afforded center stage in new appointments. The civilian police and the registration of nongovernmental organizations came under the control of the Ministry of Defense. With Chamal Rajapaksa, the president’s Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/as/article-pdf/61/1/211/455604/as.2021.61.1.211.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 eldest brother and a national list member of parliament, installed as state minister of internal security, home affairs, and disaster management, it was clear that the military and members of the Rajapaksa family were to be the main partners in governance of the new regime. The ﬁrst few months of power signaled a hardening of the government’s position vis-a`-vis minorities, with a ministerial order in January that the national anthem would be sung only in Sinhalese, the language of the majority, and no longer in Tamil. This was followed a month later by the government’s withdrawal from its commitment to resolution 30/1 of the UN Human Rights Council, which the previous government had co- sponsored. This resolution prescribed institutional steps for reconciliation, accountability, and human rights in the country. The government said it would pursue domestic accountability mechanisms instead. While the famil- iar occurrence under the previous Rajapaksa regime of disappearances of dissenters is not yet apparent, as early as January and February, Amnesty International had documented cases of intimidation, surveillance, and harass- ment of human rights organizations, media outlets, and journalists.

COVID-19

The global pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) began to affect Sri Lanka in March 2020. By early November, 12,783 confirmed cases had been reported in the country, with 30 deaths. Since March 14, shortly after the first local patient was confirmed, Sri Lanka has taken strong measures to manage and mitigate the crisis. Begin- ning on March 20, the country moved into a police-managed lockdown with severe restrictions on civilian movements and zero tolerance of social gather- ings. The new regulations caused major disruption of lives and livelihoods. Thanks to the country’s legacy of early, decades-long investment in its health system, hospitals had not been overrun as 2020 drew to a close. Yet unofficial WICKRAMASINGHE / SRI LANKA IN 2020 213 sources suggest that people with possible COVID symptoms have not come in for testing for fear of being sent together with their close contacts to quarantine camps run by the military. There is also possibly an underreporting of deaths and community trans- mission, as well as a very low rate of testing. In early October, after the government reported a two-month period without any community transmis- sion, a new outbreak surfaced around a garment factory in the free trade zone Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/as/article-pdf/61/1/211/455604/as.2021.61.1.211.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 outside Colombo. Authorities introduced drastic measures to contain the spread, which in November involved more than 3,000 clear cases. The pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of apparel workers, whose work is often casualized and who are not sufficiently protected from exploitation by factory owners and suppliers. Once again, the military is shouldering the responsibility for the national response—from overseeing quarantine centers to contact trac- ing—while the police manage localized curfews, responding to reports of violations and arresting suspected violators. The army commander runs the coronavirus task force, amid complaints that people with symptoms are being criminalized rather than treated as patients. The pandemic has created the space for a normalization of the military presence in the civilian sphere.

ANTI-MUSLIM SENTIMENT

In the months after the 2019 Easter bombings, Muslims in Sri Lanka faced waves of violence at the hands of xenophobic groups. With the pandemic, Islamopho- bic views persistently spread by the media and politicians in the wake of the bombings intensiﬁed, casting blame on Muslims, who form nearly 10% of the population, for the spread of the virus. Muslim religious practices were called out as super-spreader events, and warnings were issued not to buy food items from Muslim vendors. In April 2020, the government made cremations compulsory for coronavirus victims. The measure deprived Muslims of a basic religious right and contributed to the widespread misperception that Muslim religious practices aid the spread of the virus. Given that countries across the world continue burying their coronavirus victims, the Sri Lankan government’s decision to make cremation mandatory for all victims of COVID-19 looks like a blatant act of institutionalized Islamophobia. In July, Hejaaz Hisbullah, a senior lawyer and civil rights activist, was detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act for allegedly having interacted with the Easter bombers and their family. He has yet to appear before a judge (Ruwanpathirana 2020). 214 ASIAN SURVEY 61:1

A FRAGILE ECONOMY

The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the Sri Lankan economy and public ﬁnances by locking down the population, damaging export earnings, and deterring foreign capital. The country’s economy had already contracted after the Easter terror bombings and was forecast to contract by 5.5% in 2020 2020

(Asian Development Bank ). In March Sri Lanka shut its bor- Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/as/article-pdf/61/1/211/455604/as.2021.61.1.211.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 ders for two months, and as of this writing, at the close of 2020, it has still not reopened for tourist traffic. This has had a ripple effect on all indus- tries associated with tourism. Small companies have folded, and larger ones are struggling. The other source of foreign exchange, remittances from overseas workers, was also severely hit when COVID restrictions led to the repatriation of many Sri Lankan laborers from Middle Eastern states. The crisis of migrant workers is ongoing, as thousands have lost their jobs during the pandemic. Sri Lanka continues to struggle with foreign debt and rapidly depleting foreign exchange reserves. The central government’s debt currently stands at around 82% of GDP. Interest payments eat up 42% of government revenue. For the next five years the International Monetary Fund expects that the government will have to borrow a further 2.7–5.2% of GDP annually. So far, the government’s answer has been tax concessions for international investors and the country’s big businesses (such as the apparel industry), a new special goods and services tax, slashing education and health expenditure, and increasing the defense budget. This in turn has generated skepticism about the government’s fiscal probity. The government has sought a loan repayment moratorium from India, China, and the European Union. While China gave US$ 500 million to help Sri Lanka fight COVID-19, it has intimated that asking for such a rescheduling would not be encouraged. The import of nonessential goods has been restricted and outward remittances curtailed. In late September, the Sri Lankan government canceled the Japanese-funded Light Railway Transport project, which would have linked Malabe to Colombo, claiming that it would have limited use and very high costs. This abrupt cancelation could inhibit future private foreign investment. Meanwhile, one of China’s larg- est state-run firms signed a first contract in the country’s planned US$ 13 billion Port City, to be built off the coast of the capital, Colombo, by a subsidiary of China Communications Construction. WICKRAMASINGHE / SRI LANKA IN 2020 215

TIGHTENING THE GRIP AND ELECTIONS

On March 2, six months ahead of schedule, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa called a fresh parliamentary election for April 25 and proclaimed the parliament dissolved. The opposition parties and civil society groups petitioned the high- est court to delay it, in view of the pandemic. The court rejected their petitions.

In the absence of a parliament, the government ruled through executive diktats Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/as/article-pdf/61/1/211/455604/as.2021.61.1.211.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 and presidential task forces (the task forces related to COVID, poverty allevi- ation, and educational and cultural affairs, inter alia). Elections were held on August 5, and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, led by the Rajapaksas, won a landslide victory, capturing 145 seats in the 225-seat parliament. More than 59% of the electorate and around 80% of Sinhalese Buddhists endorsed a return to Rajapaksa family rule. With seven other legislators who voted with the government parliamentary group, the government comfortably surpasses the two-thirds majority required for constitutional amendments. The voters reduced the United National Party, the oldest party in the country, from 106 seats to just one. This was not surprising given the split between a faction that backed former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, a seasoned but charmless politician, and one led by the more popular but less savvy Sajith Premadasa, the son of a former president. As elections approached, the party saw the defection of Premadasa and younger leaders, who ran under another symbol and secured 54 seats. The leftist coalition, the National People’s Party, led by the Janata Vimukti Peramuna (People’s Liberation Front), was similarly rejected by the voters, securing only three seats in spite of its appeal to non-sectarian ideals. The Cabinet was sworn in at the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, one of the most sacred spaces for Sinhala Buddhists. The new government has three Rajapaksa brothers and two of their sons in ministerial positions. In October another son was sworn in as Mahinda Rajapaksa’s chief of staff. The president retains the Ministry of Defense, and his brother Mahinda runs three ministries: Finance, Cultural Affairs, and Urban Development.

THE 20TH AMENDMENT

The 20th Amendment to the Constitution Bill was passed on October 22, with a two-thirds majority, after a two-day debate. In the 225-member house, 156 legislators voted in favor, including eight opposition members. It will subordinate the prime minister and the Cabinet to the president, weaken the parliament’s autonomy from the executive, remove all checks and balances on 216 ASIAN SURVEY 61:1 the executive, and render independent oversight and accountability frame- works ineffective. Key constraints remain, however, such as term limits and a ﬁve-year term. Parliament is disempowered and can be dissolved at will after the ﬁrst year of its term. The bill reverses key aspects of the 19th Amendment, which was enacted by the previous governing coalition to clip the powers of the president and prune the scope of presidential discretion regarding key appointments, entrusting that role to a Constitutional Council that had civil Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/as/article-pdf/61/1/211/455604/as.2021.61.1.211.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 society representation (Welikala 2020).

CONCLUSION

With the political opposition in disarray, civil society criticism muted, and the government in control of the information environment, the dominant narrative of a strong government dealing effectively with a global crisis pre- vails. In the public mind, law and constitutionality have become less impor- tant than the perception of decisive executive action.The view that presidential authoritarianism is a price worth paying for national security and economic development seems to be a fait acquis.

REFERENCES Asian Development Bank. 2020. Economic Indicators for Sri Lanka. Accessed October 18, 2020 (https://www.adb.org/countries/sri-lanka/ economy). Ruwanpathirana, Thyagi. 2020. “On Hejaaz Hisbullan: The Latest Victim of Sri Lanka’s Draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act.” Amnesty International, July 15 (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/07/ sri-lanka-on-hejaaz-hizbullah-and-the-prevention-of-terrorism-act/). Welikala, Asanga. 2020. “The Return of Sri Lanka’s Imperial Presidency: The Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution Bill.” Constitution Net, September 8 (http://constitutionnet.org/news/return-sri-lankas-imperial- presidency-twentieth-amendment-constitution-bill).