{"id":192561,"date":"2018-08-05T00:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-08-04T18:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=192561"},"modified":"2018-08-10T01:59:23","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T20:29:23","slug":"military-ex-military-current-politics-in-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/military-ex-military-current-politics-in-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"Military, Ex-Military, & Current Politics In Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jayadeva Uyangoda<\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda<\/p><\/div>\n

The relationship between Sri Lanka\u2019s military and politics is a topic that gets occasional media attention. However, there is hardly any serious scholarly work on the subject, despite the fact that maintaining a framework of balance in civil-military relations during and after the civil has surely been a major policy preoccupation among the country\u2019s civilian political leaders. This essay attempts to map out some key features of the recent dynamics in Sri Lanka\u2019s civil-military relations.<\/p>\n

As this essay will later suggests, the theme of civil-military relations also provide a new prism through which to view Sri Lanka\u2019s contemporary politics in a manner which is substantially different from what we usually read in the media.<\/p>\n

Viyath Maga<\/b><\/p>\n

The topic of military\u2019s role, or its absence, in Sri Lanka\u2019s current politics has surfaced in a peculiar context. The emergence of a new political grouping called Viyath Maga, partly led by some very senior retired officers of the armed forces, to back the candidacy of Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa<\/a>, the former defense secretary, to be Sri Lanka\u2019s next president has aroused a great deal of interest and controversy. Rajapaksa himself is an ex-military officer. This group of officers was also in the forefront in the last phase of the war that crushed the LTTE\u2019s insurgency and therefore has built a reputation of themselves as \u2018war heroes.\u2019 They appear to think that because of their specific contribution to the defeat of the secessionist agency and the restoration of the islands \u2018sovereignty\u2019, they have secured a special role to play in charting the country future political trajectories as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This feeling has been heightened by the insistence by the UN and powerful global states that Sri Lanka\u2019s post-war peace building efforts should have a strong component of transitional justice and war-crime investigations. In this context, it is quite obvious that both political and military leaders who led the successful counter-insurgent war against the LTTE have organized themselves as a lobby to protect their own interests as individuals as well as corporate entities. Sarath Weerasekera, the ex-Navy commander, who became an MP at the parliamentary election of 2015, is playing the leading role in this effort.<\/p>\n

However, what is new in the Viyath Maga<\/a> campaign, of which Weerasekera is the main spokesperson, is that it has now launched a political<\/i> campaign of retired military personnel. It is similar to a social movement, with an agenda to intervene in Sri Lanka\u2019s forthcoming presidential and parliamentary elections. This is the main aspect of the issue that invites the interest of the political analyst.<\/p>\n

Caution<\/b><\/p>\n

A cautionary word is needed at the beginning, though. Sri Lanka\u2019s armed forces and the judiciary are two public institutions that figure in very frequently in Sri Lanka\u2019s media about their institutional role in changing social and political landscape in the country. Other than mere reporting, the media does not seem to go deeply to analyze important themes such reporting highlights.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One major reason is perhaps the fear of unwelcome consequences of such analysis, which would be construed by the heads of those institutions as threats to their institutional autonomy. While one institution, the judiciary, is protected by some archaic practices arising from a the belief that it is placed above critical public scrutiny almost as an institutional birth right, the other, the armed forces, operate on the assumption that any public scrutiny of its actions would amount to interfering with its functions of safeguarding national security. Thus, in this essay, I will be exercising a great deal of caution in my formulations and propositions, despite the fact that I am a political analyst by training and vocation.<\/p>\n

New in Viyath Maga<\/b><\/p>\n

What is it that the Viyath Maga movement has to command the attention of a political analyst? The main reason is that it constitutes an entirely new phenomenon in Sri Lankan politics that has the potential to re-shape the civil-military relations that Sri Lanka\u2019s democracy has maintained throughout the post-independence period. It is also a development that also has the capacity to alter the balance Sri Lanka\u2019 state structure, by changing the composition as well as the role of conventional democratic institutions of governance such as the cabinet, parliament and the judiciary. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In my view, leaders of all civilian political parties, from the UNP, SLFP and SLPP downwards, should draw their attention to this new development too, while fighting their intense and internecine electoral battles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Background<\/b><\/p>\n

Since independence, Sri Lanka\u2019s has had a remarkable record of maintaining its institutional structure of parliamentary democracy, despite severe setbacks in managing ethnic relations, social conflict, and the welfare state. The development of a strong multi-party system, with two dominant parties, and the presence of a vibrant civil society, a widespread Left movement, an active trade union movement and a politically alert citizenry with a very high degree of electoral participation have been its key causes as well as features.\u00a0 <\/span>The British tradition of strong civilian control of the military has also been a feature of Sri Lanka\u2019s post-independence democracy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is also where Sri Lanka and India radically differed from Pakistan and later Bangladesh. In both countries, within ten years of independence, the civilian governments were overthrown by politically ambitious groups of military officers, amidst the failure of civilian political leadership to consolidate and institutionalize democratic governance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the two failed military coup attempts in 1962 and 1966 probably inaugurated a new thinking, even a consensus, among Sri Lanka\u2019s civilian political leaders, both in and out of power, over one important point about managing the post-coup state in Sri Lanka. It is about how to keep the armed forces and the defense ministry under very strict civilian control.\u00a0How they did do it so successfully is a theme that requires a separate essay and also a fresh research programme. Suffice it to say that this bi-party consensus between the UNP and the SLFP on managing civil-military relations is a truly remarkable dimension of the survival of Sri Lanka\u2019s democracy, even during the four-decade long period of two civil wars, starting with 1971. This is also a theme that has not received adequate attention or appreciation in Sri Lanka\u2019s political science literature.<\/p>\n

Post-2009 Shift<\/b><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a unique change began to occur in the nature of civil-military relations, not during the civil war, during which the military has expanded enormously in strength, but after the war when the national-security burden of the military became less salient.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This somewhat unusual phenomenon was marked by the emergence of the ministry of defence as a very powerful player in Sri Lanka\u2019s post-war politics.\u00a0 <\/span>The defence ministry continued to remain under the civilian President Mahinda Rajapaksa. However, its de facto<\/i> head was Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the Defence Secretary, who happened to be the civilian president\u2019s younger brother. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had of course become a civilian by that time, but his military credentials and military mindset made him more a military leader than a civil bureaucrat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To state a long story in brief, what appeared during the years 2009-2014 was setting in motion a new political role for the defence establishment with a decisive role to play in Sri Lanka public policy, crucially in such areas as defence, law and order, judiciary, foreign relations and diplomacy, education, urban development, cultural affairs, human rights and peace building.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is the regime change of January 2015 that halted the consolidation of this unusual tendency in politics and governance in Sri Lanka\u2019s post-war politics. Amidst all its dismal political failures, the yahapalanaya government of President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremasinghe should be given due credit, at least belatedly, for arresting this tendency with tact and care as a part of their overall project of restoring democratic governance in post-war Sri Lanka. This is also a theme that warrants a research paper of substantive length.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fonseka Phenomenon<\/b><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Sarath Fonseka<\/a>, the military commander who led the successful ground war against the LTTE, constitutes another phenomenon that warrants analysis in relation to civil-military relations in Sri Lanka\u2019s post-war politics.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even when he was leading the war under the political and institutional supervision of the two Rajapaksa brothers, there were sigs, particularly in 2008 and 2009, that the latter were cautious of the personal ambitions of Fonseka. By this time, Fonseka had acquired an enormous authority through the army\u2019s role in the battlefield. There was even a joke among diplomats and journalists in Colombo that the three most powerful men in the country at the time were Sarath Fonseka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Mahinda Rajapaksa, in that order. The fact that soon after the war ended, the Rajapaksa brothers took the unprecedented and surprising decision to swiftly remove Fonseka from his powerful military leadership position and then to \u2018disarm\u2019 him by giving him a dubious promotion, tells us, in retrospect, that that decision probably had important political grounds of course mired in, or presented as, personal rivalries.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Fonseka saga did not end there. It has had two very significant sub plots. The first is Fonseka\u2019s decision to challenge President Rajapaksa at the presidential election of 2009. In that highly dramatic election campaign, what became highlighted were the personal rivalries and animosities between Fonseka and the Rajapaksa brothers. Fonseka\u2019s candidacy received very strong backing of the UNP, the main opposition party and the opposition. He was the joint opposition challenger to the formidable incumbent President, Mahinda Rajapaksa.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Towards the end of this highly acrimonious election campaign, there were signs, noted by only a very few journalists and observers at the time, that the UNP leader\u2019s enthusiasm for ensuring Fonseka\u2019s electoral victory was waning. And during the last two weeks of the election campaign, Rajapaksa campaign\u2019s attack on Fonseka focused primarily on one point, the danger of a military government emerging in Sri Lanka under Fonseka\u2019s leadership. There were also rumours in Colombo that the Ranil Wickremasinghe camp was feeling uneasy about the key role that Fonseka had assigned to a circle of ex-military officers, personally loyal to him, to organize not only the final phase of the election campaign, but also the task of making plans for the taking over of power after the election victory and even organizing the new government. The latter task Fonseka seemed to have initiated on his own, without consulting the UNP leadership.<\/p>\n

These were of course rumours. They nevertheless point to the possibility that there probably was a last minute understanding between Mahinda Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremasinghe that the winner of the crucial presidential election of 2009 should be a longstanding civilian political leader. This is of course a hypothesis the testing of which requires qualitative interviews with Mahinda Rajapaksa, Ranil Wickremesinghe<\/a> and Sarath Fonseka.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How have President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe been managing the Sarath Fonseka phenomenon? When we look at from the perspective of civil-military relations, an extremely interesting narrative can be constructed. The President and the Prime Minister seem to continue to honour the old consensus among Sri Lanka\u2019s civilian political leaders that politically ambitious ex-military officers should be kept under strict civilian control. Giving Sarath Fonseka the promotion to the rank of Field Marshal and then assigning to him some insignificant ministerial positions cannot but be elements of some shrewd political thinking on the part of both President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremasinghe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What Next<\/b><\/p>\n

This is the backdrop against which Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa\u2019s current presidential ambitions are being promoted by an organized group of ex-senior military leaders who themselves have unconcealed political ambitions. It would be most interesting for political analysts to watch how President Sirisena, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa \u2013 the three senior most civilian political leaders who also lead Sri Lanka\u2019s three leading civilian political parties\u00a0 <\/span>\u2013 will handle this emerging situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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