{"id":117949,"date":"2014-01-05T00:02:35","date_gmt":"2014-01-04T18:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=117949"},"modified":"2014-01-10T04:11:56","modified_gmt":"2014-01-09T22:41:56","slug":"2014-year-of-elections-in-sri-lanka-and-elsewhere-but-no-major-changes-in-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/2014-year-of-elections-in-sri-lanka-and-elsewhere-but-no-major-changes-in-sight\/","title":{"rendered":"2014: Year Of Elections In Sri Lanka And Elsewhere, But No Major Changes In Sight"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rajan Philips<\/span><\/a> –<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Rajan<\/a>

Rajan Philips<\/p><\/div>\n

2013 has quietly faded away and 2014 is upon us without much of a bang.\u00a0 It always happens that way despite the hype that most of us go through during the heady week between Christmas and New Year.\u00a0 There is much speculation and hype about 2014 being yet another Sri Lankan election year \u2013 with potentially three, four or five elections packed in one year.\u00a0 No one will know for sure until the President lets it be known what election plans he has for his country for this year.\u00a0 The President<\/span><\/a> has reportedly asked the Working Committee of his Party to be election-ready for 2014, without saying whether it will be provincial, parliamentary or presidential election, or all of them.\u00a0 In no country in the world can the head of state, or head of government, decide the way the Sri Lankan President decides as to when and where and what election will be held in any given year. \u00a0I am not exaggerating.<\/p>\n

The <\/b>Wikipedia lists twenty three countries in the world as well as the European Parliament that are scheduled to have elections in 2014.\u00a0 Sri Lanka is not one of them because only in Sri Lanka elections are not scheduled by statute or the constitution.\u00a0 They are left to the whim and fancy, not to mention astrological consultations, of the President.\u00a0 Not having a set schedule is one unique Sri Lankan aspect, the other being the indeterminate \u2018term of office\u2019 of the President and the Parliament\u2019s duration between elections.\u00a0 Almost all the countries in the world have four or five year terms for their presidents and\/or parliaments.\u00a0 Where presidential and parliamentary elections are in place, they are usually held together, unlike in Sri Lanka where they are staggered to maximize the winning conditions of the governing party.\u00a0 Sri Lanka also belongs to a select band of five countries with a six year term, others being Mexico, Philippines, Russia and Venezuela.\u00a0 Only Africa\u2019s Cameroon tops them with a seven year term.<\/p>\n

And thanks to the 18th<\/sup> Amendment<\/span><\/a>, there is no limit on the number of terms a person can seek election to be president in Sri Lanka.\u00a0 So President Rajapaksa has the option of running for a third term as President in the next presidential election that Mr. Rajapaksa could call in 2014 or 2015 even though his second term can go on till November 2016.\u00a0 Ask Professor Peiris and he will vouch that there is not a better example of constitutional democracy in the world than what obtains in Sri Lanka under 18A.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be surprised if the Governor of the Northern Province, Lanka\u2019s new court-martial authority on the constitution, starts pleading for an unlimited term in office for himself in order to enforce the constitution in his own way in Jaffna.<\/p>\n

Periodical elections are a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition of democracy.\u00a0 What happens between elections is as important as holding free and fair elections.\u00a0 Sri Lanka\u2019s presidential system, along with unique individual contributions from successive presidents, none more damaging than those of the current incumbent, has sucked the air of democracy from the halls of government.\u00a0 The present incumbent has gone further and turned the process and purposes of elections on their head.\u00a0 As I have illustrated earlier, the presidential control over the electoral process is unique to Sri Lanka.\u00a0 The purposes of elections have also been frustrated by President Rajapaksa and his government.<\/p>\n

2014 elections elsewhere<\/b><\/p>\n

Elections legitimize governments for set terms in office and hold them accountable for their actions at the end of each term.\u00a0 Elections are supposed to make people believe that they exercise power by electing and defeating their representatives on their platforms (mandates) and performances.\u00a0 In western democracies that supposition of trust has given way to public cynicism about governments and their roles.\u00a0 People, especially the young and the marginalized, feel alienated between elections and keep away from voting when elections are held.\u00a0 People are not pouring onto the streets in protest because their private lives and their local communities are in good shape for the most part.\u00a0 Their frustration is with the dysfunctional state of government process.\u00a0 The worst manifestation of government dysfunction is the constant standoff between the President and the Congress in the US.<\/p>\n

2014 is the year of the US mid-term elections that are canonically held halfway through every presidential term, for the entire House of Representatives, a third of the Senate, and for Governors and Assemblies in a number of States.\u00a0 The midterm Congress (House and the Senate) elections are seen as the mid-term report card on the presidency and the launching pad for the presidential election two years later.\u00a0 While elections did affect the process of government, its direction and its results, they were never used as a means to shut down government and stymie its process.\u00a0 That is until now, and the arrival of the Tea Party as a faction within the Republican Party.\u00a0 Through grassroots organization based on a virulently fundamentalist, exclusionary and acquisitive ideology, and by manipulating the electoral process, Tea Party organizers have got a stranglehold on the Republican Party.\u00a0 This may not augur well for the Republican Party in the 2016 presidential election, but it bodes ill for the process of government in America.\u00a0 The upshot is the silly paradox of a President who could initiate anything outside America but is not able to have a law passed in Washington.<\/p>\n

2014 will also see India holding its 16th<\/sup> national parliamentary election without interruption or subversion since becoming independent in 1947.\u00a0 Without doubt, the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections will be a huge tuning-point election in post-independence India.\u00a0 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh<\/span><\/a> made a surprising announcement on Thursday that he will not be leading the Congress in the elections and recommended Rahul Gandhi<\/span><\/a> as his choice to be his successor.\u00a0 He also bluntly warned that BJP\u2019s Narendra Modi<\/span><\/a> becoming Prime Minister will be \u201cdisastrous\u201d for India.\u00a0 He considered signing India\u2019s nuclear deal with the US as one of his best moments in office, and countered perceptions of him being a \u201cweak\u201d leader by contending that \u201cpresiding over mass massacre of innocent citizens on the streets of Ahmedabad\u201d should not be the test of a strong Prime Minister.\u00a0 The retiring Prime Minister went on to say that he does not believe that India needed that \u201ckind of strength \u2026 least of all in its Prime Minister.\u201d \u00a0It was another attack on Modi\u2019s credentials.\u00a0 In a further attempt to distinguish the Congress from the BJP, Dr. Singh expressed regret for not achieving complete success in implementing pro-minority initiatives and admitted that the \u2018scope for doing more for minorities exists.\u2019<\/p>\n

Indian voters have a strange and complex menu of political choices in the upcoming elections. Besides the moribund Congress and the terrible BJP, the new kid on the block and doing bloody well, albeit in Delhi and other urban conglomerates, is the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP, the Common Man\u2019s Party).\u00a0 Alliances are most likely to be centered on these three parties, but other alliances based on state and regional parties are also possible.\u00a0 The CPM, the bigger of the two Communist Parties, is isolated and time-warped – preoccupied with old debates, while the AAP is stealing the thunder among the youth and the urban poor preoccupied with real time issues.\u00a0 The Indian elections and their implications for Sri Lanka need separate articles for a fuller discussion, but from the standpoint of this article it is sufficient to say that regardless of the outcome the elections in India are not being manipulated in their timing and in their conduct for the partisan advantage of any political party or leader.\u00a0 Quite a contrast to Sri Lanka!<\/p>\n

Besides India, three other Asian countries, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Macau, are also set to have elections in 2014.\u00a0 After years of military rule, dictatorships and orchestrated elections, and despite facing many challenges, Bangladesh and Indonesia seem to have turned the corner in consolidating the practice of periodical elections, while Sri Lanka seems to be turning the corner the wrong way.\u00a0 Inadvertently perhaps, Sri Lanka seems to be aping Macau in more ways than one. \u00a0The former Portuguese colony is one of China\u2019s two Special Administrative Regions (the other being Hong Kong) under its one country-two systems policy.\u00a0 China is responsible for Macau\u2019s defense and foreign affairs, while Macau looks after its legal and monetary systems, the police force, and customs and immigration. \u00a0A densely packed city, with about 600,000 people in 30 square kilometres, Macau is one of the world\u2019s richest cities with the second highest life expectancy.\u00a0 Heavily dependent on gambling and tourism, Macau is also the world\u2019s biggest gambling centre.\u00a0 Its hybrid Chinese-Portuguese culture has spawned a mass of festivities all through the year catering equally to the religious and the decadent.\u00a0 The biggest annual event is of course the Macau Grand Prix.\u00a0 Sounds inspirationally familiar?<\/p>\n

Three, four or five elections in Sri Lanka<\/b><\/p>\n

Although the Rajapaksa government is not taking Sri Lanka along the Macau route politically speaking, the government\u2019s Colombo-centric economic priorities are disconcertingly and inappropriately similar to Macau\u2019s economic fundamentals.\u00a0 President Premadasa and many others among Sri Lanka\u2019s political classes, Sinhalese sovereignists and Tamil separatists, mistakenly used to see economic parallels in Singapore.\u00a0 Those innocent daydreams have taken nobody anywhere.\u00a0 Sri Lanka is small as islands go but it is much larger and more complex than the prospering city sates of Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau.\u00a0 The premises and pathways to solving Sri Lanka\u2019s political and economic problems have little to draw from the experience of Asia\u2019s city states.\u00a0 However, given its closeness to China, it wouldn\u2019t be too mischievous to ask the question if the Rajapaksa government might look at China\u2019s one country-two systems approach as a potential approach to Sri Lanka\u2019s North-East problem and an alternative model to the 13A<\/span><\/a> system supposedly imposed by India on Sri Lanka?\u00a0 In other words, follow China to spite India, and get support in Geneva!<\/p>\n

It would now seem ancient, but Sri Lanka was the first non-western political society to embark, in 1931, on the exercise of universal franchise.\u00a0 Ironically introduced by colonial rulers, the system has not been preciously nurtured by local leaders.\u00a0 With misplaced idealism the Jaffna Youth Congress spurned the first election that allowed free voting by women and men above the voting age; in the process it handed the political store to merchants of Tamil communalism.\u00a0 The Ceylon National Congress went a step further and turned the first State Council into a chamber of Sinhalese communalism with its ill-advised pan-Sinhalese Board of Ministers. If these were not bad enough by way of starters, the UNP machinery in the three parliamentary elections in 1947, 1952 and 1956, systematically subverted the electoral process to maximize its own winning conditions.\u00a0 The UNP succeeded in 1947 and 1952, but no malpractice was enough to prevent its rout in 1956.\u00a0 Post-elections violence became the norm after 1965, and somehow the outbreak of violence was correlated to the first-past-the-post election system.\u00a0 It was also suggested that a proportional representation system would greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the provocation to post-election violence, even though the roots of electoral violence are in the political culture of the UNP and the SLFP and not in the different methods of election. \u00a0Interestingly, proportional representation and preferential voting are now said to have created the new form of same-side fighting among allies, as opposed to fighting between opposing parties.<\/p>\n

President Jayewardene formalized his Party\u2019s political culture and power intentions through his constitution and its many amendments.\u00a0 President Rajapaksa has surpassed JRJ with his magical-stroke of a singular (18<\/span><\/a>th<\/span><\/a>)<\/sup> amendment, and has proved to be quite an artful practitioner of the election game.\u00a0 Unlike JRJ<\/span><\/a>, President Rajapaksa avoids the problematic referendum route and doles out elections one or few at a time, in this or that part of the country, or in the entire country, as he pleases.\u00a0 It may be that he subjectively believes that his way of doling out elections is much more democratic than not holding elections, and that every time he calls an election he is empowering the people to legitimize his regime and endorse his actions.\u00a0 Objectively, however, the President is subverting every purpose of an election.\u00a0 If in the West, the people have become cynical about the usefulness of elections, in Sri Lanka the government has become a cynical expert in the abuse of elections.\u00a0 And the abuse is constitutional!\u00a0 Further, whereas the Tea Party in the US is the anti-establishment outsider, in Sri Lanka the likes of JHU and BBS<\/span><\/a> are fostered by the establishment.<\/p>\n

The point in all this is that there is no rhyme or reason for President Rajapaksa to stagger Provincial Council elections rather than allowing the Commissioner of Elections to hold them simultaneously in all the Provinces on periodically fixed dates.\u00a0 Equally, there is no justification for the President to call for parliamentary and\/or presidential elections more than two years before they are due. \u00a0But the President is being expected to call three provincial elections in 2014, along with either the parliamentary or presidential election, or both.\u00a0 That would be three, four or five elections this year, give or take.\u00a0 It may be that the President thinks that doling out elections is an act of political charity, at least for his loyal supporters, if not for his opponents.\u00a0 But does he have real opponents to speak of?\u00a0 Parliament is so seamless that everyone other than the few in the JVP and the TNA can be gathered under the big Rajapaksa tent.\u00a0 Either you are in the tent, or not; just as every Sri Lankan is either a patriot, or a traitor.\u00a0 There should be no other difference.<\/p>\n

In all the speculations about elections, there has not been any worthwhile comment about the political goal that the President might want to achieve by having them in 2014.\u00a0 The one exception is an interesting take, if not a hilarious one.\u00a0 According to this view, apparently emanating from government sources, the President needs a new mandate to replace his earlier nationalist terms of reference with a pro-reconciliation platform in order to have the maneuverability to manage the demands of the international community.\u00a0 I would ascribe this to some hopeful thinking among the helpless pro-reconciliation groups in the UPFA, rather than any strategic thinking on the part of the President.\u00a0 The President, quite frankly, does not need three, four or five elections to advance any part of a pro-reconciliation platform.\u00a0 All he needs is to make up his mind and talk with the TNA and the Northern Provincial government.\u00a0 That would be a clean and inexpensive way of advancing a pro-reconciliation platform compared to the clumsy and hugely expensive method of holding elections.\u00a0 As well, sincere and purposive steps on the ground will impress the international community more than blowing election hot air year after year.\u00a0 Such steps will also augur well for the President in 2014, more than any astrological mumbo jumbo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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