2024 Presidential election marked the moment when Sri Lanka took the transformative step from an immature democracy to a mature one.
by Tisaranee Gunasekara
The Election Commission continues to rock. This week, it halted, for the duration of parliamentary polls, an order by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to increase fertiliser and fuel subsidies to farmers and fishermen.
The same way it stopped a multitude of giveaways by Ranil Wickremesinghe during Presidential elections. The conduct of the Election Commission indicates that, given right laws, institutions, guidance, and time, Lankan state is still salvageable; even improvable.
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| The investiture of the new president was a simple affair. Like that of Maithripala Sirisena who had a simple, inexpensive, and a far more accessible investiture. |
The 2024 Presidential election campaign was the freest and the fairest, probably ever. Election laws were implemented with a stringency and an even-handedness that was manifestly un-Sri Lankan. The Election Commission led the way, and the police followed, unimpeded by the dead hand of Deshabandu Thennakoon (Praise be to Supreme Court!).
Pramitha Bandara Thennakoon, State Minister of Defence, was stopped from house-to house campaigning en masse, in his Dambulla stronghold by the Dambulla police. The stunned expression on the minister’s face spoke volumes, starting with the unprecedented nature of the police intervention, a display of fidelity to fair-play beyond his experience, and ours.
Election Commission officials intervened to prevent then president Ranil Wickremesinghe from treating his young supporters to lunch during an election meeting. The president was present when the officials descended on the Youth Centre in Maharagama, took the food into custody, and handed the feast over to the police.
Had Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s 20th Amendment been in place, the Election Commission would not have been able to act with such independence. That amendment turned independent commissions into presidential appendages. Fortunately for Lankan democracy, Ranil Wickremesinghe made the commissions independent again, with the 21st Amendment, just as he introduced that Sri Lankan first, a campaign finance law.
The proverbially grey bureaucrats staffing the Election Commission made full use of its constitutionally-guaranteed independence, implementing election laws to the letter without fear or favour.
The aftermath of the 2024 Presidential election was the most peaceful, ever. No fire-crackers, let alone gunshots or arson. An absence made possible by the NPP/JVP walking the talk. Given that public wrath at the political class played a decisive role in this election, a few incidents of over-the-top rejoicing might have been expected. But there were none. The election outcome amounted to a political upheaval, yet the country remained as calm as a goldfish bowl.
Hopefully the NPP/JVP’s excellent conduct in victory will be emulated by future victors, and become entrenched in our political culture, a great new tradition. (Equally hopefully, their appointment of the highly suitable Harini Amarasuriya as Prime Minister will encourage other parties to open doors to suitable women, including at the highest levels)
The Election Commission set another excellent precedent by inviting the runner up of the contest to speak at the concluding ceremony of the electoral process. Sajith Premadasa rose to the occasion making a short and cogent speech, two adjectives generally unusable vis-à-vis his perorations. Had Ranil Wickremesinghe the courage to attend the event personally, instead of sending an agent, the tone of the moment would have been pitch-perfect. He made up for that absence by delivering a thoughtful address to the nation.
Taken together, 2024 Presidential election marked the moment when Sri Lanka took the transformative step from an immature democracy to a mature one.
Democracy is a work-in-progress. Democratic improvements do not happen in a flash, as with the waving of a magic wand. They are long processes, often with many vicissitudes. The truly independent Election Commission we have today took two decades and more in the evolving. The 17th Amendment of 2001 established a constitutional council and independent commissions. Though unimplemented, it implanted an idea, a hope, a vision that would endure. Mahinda Rajapaksa turned the commissions into presidential appendages with the 18th Amendment. The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration reversed that regression with the 19th Amendment and, more to the point, made the commissions functional. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in true Rajapaksa fashion, re-imposed presidential control over the commissions with the 20th Amendment. Ranil Wickremesinghe reinstated independent commissions.
A switchback road leading to the far summit of the steep hill called democracy. We may slip, often because of the unmindful choices we ourselves make, but the upward movement must continue in the future, as it does today.
The good, the bad, and the potentially ugly
“People who love me will definitely love Namal,” Mahinda Rajapaksa said during a television interview days before the 2024 Presidential election.
Fortunately for Lankan democracy, and despite a valiant campaign by Namal Rajapaksa, ‘love-me-love-my-son’ Lankans turned out to be rather few in number; 342,781 voters, 2.6% of the electorate. The Rajapaksa magic is gone, hopefully forever.
“If people were patient a little more, the economic crisis would have been resolved,” Basil Rajapaksa told a TV channel in December 2022. The electorate knew better. The Rajapaksas inherited a functioning economy and took the stuffing out of it, forcing Lankan people into the direst of straits. By the time Gotabaya Rajapaksa was driven out, 14 people had died in queues.
A reasoned discussion about how we reached the nadir of bankruptcy was conspicuously absent during the Presidential election season. The Rajapaksa reticence was understandable, natural. Unfortunately, the issue was a near non-issue for the three main candidates as well. Ranil Wickremesinghe evaded the subject because a majority of Gotabaya-enablers were backing him. Sajith Premadasa and Anura Kumara Dissanayake evaded the issue because they didn’t want Ranil Wickremesinghe to gain any kudos for stopping the country’s freefall and pulling it up a few inches.
(Incidentally, Ranil Wickremesinghe might have performed better, had he not surrounded himself with onetime Rajapaksa stooges, and contested as the UNP’s candidate. Victory was never going to be his, but he could have avoided the drubbing he got).
The people remembered, and acted on their memory. The Rajapaksa vote-base is no more, at least for the moment.
When the IMF bailout package was signed, Sunil Handunnetti (a possible finance minister in the future NPP government) called it “the worst and the most vicious of recent IMF agreements.” During the campaign, the NPP/JVP toned down its opposition, a process of accommodation to the reality which ended in a promise not to abrogate the agreement. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has stuck to this centrist position, so far.
Hopefully, the new administration will be equally cautious when it comes to another past promise, fiddling with direct taxes. Again, according to Handunnetti, the NPP plans to increase the tax-free threshold to Rs. 200,000 per month and bring down the top rate to 24%. Increasing the threshold to what it was during Mangala Samaraweera years, Rs. 150,000, makes sense; reducing the top rate so drastically doesn’t – until one recalls that according to IHP polling, close to 40% of wealthiest one-third of Lankans were backing the NPP. Perhaps there’s a less financially ruinous way to square this particular circle. If the new Government actually reduces corruption and wastage, how could its well-heeled supporters object to being taxed at 36% since they will know that their tax rupees are being used for the betterment of the country rather than the enrichment of a despised political class?
The investiture of the new president was a simple affair. Like that of Maithripala Sirisena who had a simple, inexpensive, and a far more accessible investiture. President Sirisena in his inaugural speech, promised to abolish the Executive Presidency. The promise was broken, to the country’s and his misfortune.
The NPP/JVP too has promised to abolish the Executive Presidency. Yet, post-election, there’s not much talk about that promise. Has the presidency already addled the minds of the new rulers? Like with JRR Tolkien’s Gollum, is the presidency already their ‘Precious’? (In Tolkien’s The Lord of the Ring, Gollum, who has become a creature of the one-ring calls it, Precious).
The vehicle show is probably the biggest talk in town since the new administration began. The criminal waste of public funds in the leanest of times (why a Porsche, for heaven’s sake?) proves how presidency constitutes a permanent door of immeasurable elasticity to power-abuse and corruption. The (latest tale) of a president using public funds to reward his loyalists (at a time of unprecedented public suffering) proves, again, why the presidency must go, not just for the sake of democracy, but also for the sake of financial/economic health.
The NPP/JVP, which has made much use of the vehicle issue, is yet to make that particular point. Is the new regime the Frodo of the Lankan version of Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring, who resisted the lure of the ring and destroyed it? Or is he Gollum, who killed, suffered, and died to keep his ‘Precious’?
The North, the South, and a lesson from Gaza
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake was hailed for opening two roads by the President’s House. (Maithripala Sirisena too did something similar, in his halcyon first weeks).
Former parliamentarian Angajan Ramanathan has asked the President to mete similar treatment to the North by opening the many closed roads in Jaffna. The presidential response to that request is yet to come. May not come, given Dissanayake’s dependence on monks and retired military.
In one respect at least, Anura Kumara Dissanayake bears a striking resemblance to Gotabaya Rajapaksa (and Ranil Wickremesinghe): appointing (and keeping) a politically loyal ‘war-hero’ as defence secretary. Can such a president move beyond the myth of Final Eelam War = Humanitarian operation with zero-civilian casualties? Will he even try?
15 years after the war ended, the North remains highly militarised. In 2022, 14 out of Lanka’s 21 army divisions were stationed in the North. The situation cannot be all that different now. Why saturate North with the military? Why treat Tamils so differently, still? Because they are Tamil and by that yardstick will always be suspect?
Dissanayake fared rather badly in the North and the East compared to the rest of the country. Obviously, the people there regard his lyrical profession of brotherhood with a dose of doubt. His obvious dependence on monks and retired military, his lack of commitment to devolution might seem insignificant to southern progressives hooked on combatting corruption and waste (that too must be done). But to Tamils and Muslims of those two provinces, how can those presences and absences not seem worrying?
Will President Dissanayake and his party be able to move beyond the restrictions imposed by their lingering primordial loyalties and appeal to non-Sinhala Lankans on a platform of genuine equality?
In the absence of such an approach, the über-militarisation of the North will not end, and the Lankan military-import complex will continue to consume scarce resources which could have been used to fulfil real needs of all Lankans.
At the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza, Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg of Jews for Peace interrupted a Biden-donors’ meeting in Minneapolis, shouting, “Mr. President if you care about Jewish people then, as a rabbi, I need you to call for a ceasefire now.” The 1,000+ donors hissed and booed. She was removed.
As of September 2024, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s barbaric offensive. By August 2024, the war had cost Israel over $ 67.3 billion. Israel’s insane expansion of the war into Lebanon would send both financial and human costs up, steeply.
Sinhala inability to accept the Lankanness of Tamils and Muslims was the main causative factor of the failure to realise the great potential the country had at independence. This inability continues, going by our unwillingness to reduce military costs or to de-militarise the North and parts of the East. This was the Scylla and Charybdis between which Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration and the Wickremesinghe presidency were caught – and came to grief. Can Anura Kumara Dissanayake administration fare better? Can it overcome prejudices deeply ingrained in society and within its own ranks, and break out of the ethno-religious vicious cycle which has caused Sri Lanka so much harm?
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