A convincing victory for Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the presidential election divides the electorate on the municipal lines
For almost ten years, the Rajapaksa family ruled Sri Lanka. Now, after a five-year hiatus and a little reshuffle, they’re back. On November 16, 84% of unprecedented voters ran to crown Gotabaya President Rajapaksa, giving him well over half the vote in a world field crowded with 35 candidates. Mr. Rajapaksa had been chief of defense during the 2005-15 reign of his brother Mahinda. The latter, prevented by the constitution from becoming again head of state, is likely to be the Prime Minister of his younger brother.
This electoral result had been widely predicted. In fact, it was something of a surprise that Mahinda never left office. He was and remains popular with the Sinhalese Buddhist majority in Sri Lanka, which earned him and his brothers the end of a bloody 26-year insurgency of Tamil separatists in 2009. Only when ‘A trusted lieutenant, Maithripala Sirisena, defected into the opposition, bringing with him a slice of Sinhalese voters disgusted with the cronyism of the Rajapaksa ruler, whom Mr. Rajapaksa older became vulnerable. A shaky coalition of Sinhalese economic reform supporters and Tamils and other minorities, horrified by the government’s brutality in the last days of the war, allowed Sirisena to resign from office with a margin by just four percentage points.
This electoral alliance proved difficult to handle from the start, leaving the government a duck sitting down to shoot from the formidable political machine of the Rajapaksa. Vicious battles between Sirisena and his Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, a suave, pro-Western politician, have made policies inconsistent and ineffective. As the debts accumulated under the Rajapaks matured, the necessary austerity measures became an easy target for critics. In anticipation of his own political demise, Mr. Sirisena attempted to return to the Rajapaksas. His attempt last October to mount a “constitutional coup” against Mr. Wickremesinghe and replace him with Mahinda Rajapaksa was thwarted by the Supreme Court. The result was an even more dysfunctional government, with agencies under the President’s control refusing to communicate with government departments under the leadership of Mr. Wickremesinghe.
While ordinary Sri Lankans were not yet dismayed enough, a locally-generated terrorist group, inspired by Islamic State, launched a series of destructive attacks last Easter, killing more than 250 worshipers and tourists. It was not only the scale and suddenness of the carnage that horrified ordinary Sri Lankans, but the fact that the authorities had not taken obvious preventive measures, despite repeated signs and warnings from friendly governments. The security agencies headed by Sirisena were particularly delinquent, but the Prime Minister’s distancing also raised obstacles.
This mixture of administrative inconsistency and incompetence, as well as the voters’ feeling that a strong hand was needed to prevent the pursuit of terrorism, provided a typhoon-like tailwind for the return of the Rajapaksas. Indeed, the electoral results show that the coalition that pushed the Rajapaksas to power in 2015 collapsed, most of the Sinhalese returning to the Rajapaksa camp. Support for Gotabaya’s closest rival, Sajith Premadasa, who won 42% of the vote, appears to come largely from Tamils and Muslims (most of whom speak Tamil, but are considered a separate ethnic group in Sri Lanka).
In other words, Sri Lankan society is becoming worryingly polarized. Most Sinhalese seem ready to look beyond the authoritarian instincts of the Rajapaksa and clan politics. Minorities, on the other hand, seem afraid of the treatment such a government could inflict on them. The last time, Mahinda Rajapaksa intimidated the press and the judges and tried to stay in power by amending the constitution, among other disturbing tactics. If Gotabaya saw a problem with this, he didn’t say it. Indeed, the main hope of the Sri Lankan liberals is that the two brothers fall, which makes the new government as ineffective as the outgoing government.