A bad week for Rajapaksa

by Feizal Samath

(June 08, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) It has not only been a bad week but a particularly humiliating one for the six-year-old government of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, enjoying his second term in unrivaled power.

Riding high after triumphantly ending a near 30-year-old conflict, Rajapaksa has played his cards wisely, shrewdly and somewhat ruthlessly, wiping out any opposition to his party and using war victory rhetoric to ensure he is firmly in control for another six years.

That is until now when cracks have begun showing in the administration. In recent months, the government has been under pressure from all quarters over the rising cost of living and wage pressure from the public sector and university academics.

That however paled into insignificance after a botched attempt to introduce a pensions scheme for the private sector led to furious protests by workers and resulted in bloody clashes, leaving one dead and many others injured last week.

“It was one bad week for the President, probably his worst in many months,” said a local journalist, who declined to be named. The years of war between the government and Tamil separatist rebels which ended in May 2009 saw the government cracking down on what it called the “unpatriotic” media, and human rights activists and independent journalists and members of the public, fearing repercussions, are still wary of being critical or objective and often speak only if they are not named.

Now consider the events of the past fortnight. It began with India asking Sri Lanka to speed up the devolution of power particularly in areas where minority Tamils live. Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris, during a visit to India, was told by New Delhi that early devolution of power was essential to the North, which has always been a contentious issue and the cause of ethnic conflict. Peiris was unable to turn the conversation to Sri Lanka’s favor.

Rajapaksa was furious and last week sent his younger brother, Basil, the country’s Economic Development Minister, as a special emissary to discuss these issues with the Indian administration hoping that the powerful neighbor would go easy on its “demand” for more powers to the Tamils. The ploy did not work and Basil returned empty-handed, according to newspaper reports.

India, because of the cultural ties and the close relations Tamils in Southern India have with Tamils in Northern Sri Lanka with both regions separated by just the 18-km-wide Palk Strait, has been pushing for more powers for the Tamils in exchange for any economic or military support for Rajapaksa and his government.

If this episode was trying for Rajapaksa, the events that unfolded on May 30 when police clashed with hundreds of protestors outside a key investment zone and fired into the crowd, injuring many, was simply a nightmare for a president who was until then firmly ensconced in power with nary a worry in sight.

Two days later, a young worker died in hospital from gunshot wounds, enraging trade unions, workers and the public. The protests came after weeks of opposition to a Pensions Bill by the Government for private sector workers.

While workers and trade unions have long campaigned for a pension scheme for those outside the public sector, akin to the pension scheme for public sector workers, the proposal introduced by the Government was a hurried move, without any discussion.

Some of the contentious issues in the proposed scheme were that it was a mandatory, not voluntary, scheme; workers had to contribute two percent of their monthly earnings while already contributing eight percent to another state-controlled provident fund; spouses were not entitled to a pension; and the cash-strapped government would use the funds for state expenditures, among other controversial issues.

AS a verbal argument ensued between the government and trade unions (with employers also joining in unhappy that they too had to contribute two percent monthly to the workers pension scheme), thousands of workers from the investment zone adjoining the Colombo International Airport at Katunayake, about 30 km north of Colombo, took to the streets in a week-long protest against the scheme which ended with the death of the young worker.

The unfortunate death turned the tide against the government. Amidst a lot of muddling over the pensions scheme, Rajapaksa withdrew the plan – for the first time backing down from public pressure.

Apart from that, the government in the same week faced embarrassing questions at the UN Human Rights meeting in Geneva where a video clip was shown in which government soldiers are seen brutalizing rebels in extrajudicial killings. A top government delegation sent to defend allegations against war crimes during the last stages of the war came under intense pressure from delegates from many countries.

Colombo has been under severe stress over allegations of war crimes by Western nations coupled with a recent UN panel decreeing that civilians had been killed and urging that an independent investigation be launched. Rajapaksa has vehemently denied the accusations and has found new friends in China, Pakistan, Iran and Libya as the US, UK and their friends demanded accountability from his administration.

To add to the government’s woes, a much-touted international conference organized by Sri Lanka’s military chiefs to tell the world how to battle guerrillas or terrorists based on the country’s success fighting Tamil rebels, drew few Western participants after international human rights groups urged a boycott over the alleged war crimes issues.

In another missile at the Rajapaksa administration, exiled Sri Lanka journalists – who fled abroad from persecution – criticized the appointment of Judge Shirani Bandaranaike as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the country’s highest judicial power, saying with her husband serving as a government-nominated head of a state bank, her independence was under question. The independence of the judiciary has also been questioned in the past owing to alleged “favoritism” in the appointment of judges.

All in all, it was probably one of the worst weeks for Rajapaksa with the weeks to come brewing more troubled for the beleaguered head of state.

The author is a senior political analyst based in Colombo