- In 2014 anti-Rajapaksa propaganda mobilised vast sections of the population
- The issues in 2019 are all rooted in the failure of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration to address the issues
- Sajith, on the other hand, is an option they are still weighing. If he comes up well, they will vote
I see the candidates, but where are the issues? An election of such profound significance can’t be devoid of debates over vital matters of state. Yet that is what we are seeing with Election 2019. The argument can be made that of the two main candidates only one has been put into the race, while the other remains daunted by splits and factions within the party from entering it. But that has not pre-empted the latter from organising rallies and live-streamed interactive Q&A sessions. In fact, I’d say that as far as election campaigns go, Sajith Premadasa is not 
behind Gotabaya Rajapaksa. If each is serious about outdoing the other, though, there has to be debate. Mudslinging and holier-than-though chest-thumping will get no one anywhere.
What is even more significant is that 2019, as far as political issues go, is not 2014. In 2014 anti-Rajapaksa propaganda mobilised vast sections of the population, especially the young, the disenchanted, and the floating voters, to rally around Maithripala Sirisena. To say that 2014 revolved only around corruption and nepotism would be stretching things too far, but those were the main problems. They were resorted to. They were bandied around. And they were debated. People saw that debate. They got the message. Perhaps that wasn’t what led most of them to vote for Sirisena and against Rajapaksa. Still, it helped.
The issues we are facing in 2019 are all rooted in the failure of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration to address the issues they were elected to resolve in 2015. These include not only the massive levels of debt – which soared to more than 87% of the GDP last June – and the weakening of the security apparatus, but also the little, little problems no one talks about, like the price formula, the COPE Committee Report, the People’s Bank imbroglio, and the salary anomalies nearly everywhere in the public sector. There are reasons why they don’t get talked about, which I will get to later; in any case their exclusion signifies a problem, not only with the two main aspirants, but also with those opposing them.
In 1965, 1970, and 1977, when the ruling government was dislodged from power, the overwhelming issues were all economic, if not political. In 1956, as I pointed out a week or so ago, various cultural and social factors interlocked to kick the UNP out, but these factors and the grievances over them were preceded by severe economic downturns in the country. 1988 was the natural consequence of a party, enjoying unprecedented powers under an all powerful presidential system, becoming more and more populist thanks to far-reaching and rapid social and demographic changes brought about by that party.
"Issues of democracy, devolution, and constitutional amendments are all good and fine, and they are vital as they were in 2014. But in 2014 these were seen as a means to an end, not an end in itself"
If Premadasa had to be put forward as the face of the UNP that year, it was because people didn’t want other options from the UNP and they didn’t want to go back to what things were before 1977. Two issues stood out: insurgency in the South and anarchy in the North. Premadasa promised a solution to both. He was elected. He delivered, though at an exorbitant cost.
My point is that no election in this country, in which there was mass opposition to the party in power, was ever fought without a rational discourse over economic grievances. In 2014, opposition to the Rajapaksas was sleekly mobilised through statistics showing just how the family bandwagon had ruined the economy. There was every sane reason to fear another Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency, or so we were led to believe: debt to GDP had risen to 71% and with all the economic and political concessions to its cronies the regime had facilitated over the years, that debt was bound to increase dramatically.
In that sense, the new government not only failed to deliver, but consistently marketed to the country and the world that it was trying to deliver. Ranil can, five years on, say (you need to admire his confidence) that we need to reform the economy and they will have to turn it into something better by 2025, but people do not want to listen to optimistic prognostications anymore. Whether they are turning to Sajith is another debate altogether; the important thing is that an awful lot of those who voted for this government, and came to regret it, are left without an option. They can’t vote for Gotabaya, because to do so would be to repudiate what they believed in five years ago, but they can’t go ahead with this regime either. The NPP offers an alternative, yet even that is quiet. Sajith, on the other hand, is an option they are still weighing. If he comes up well, they will vote.
Issues of democracy, devolution, and constitutional amendments are all good and fine, and they are vital as they were in 2014. But in 2014 these were seen as a means to an end, not an end in itself.
As a few months passed after January 2015, however, they were increasingly marketed as ends in themselves.
There was a fatal disconnect between one party espousing them from a populist perspective and another enacting some of the most soft-pedalled neo-liberal reforms Sri Lanka has seen in recent years. If 2015 wasn’t exactly a return to 1977, it was certainly a reminder of 1994: what Chandrika Kumaratunga, one of the chief architects of Sirisena’s candidacy, referred to as neo-liberalism with a human face. The more extensive reforms, like welfare cuts and price formulas, came later, when spiralling levels of debt left them with no other option, though even in 2015 overtures were being made to the IMF to bail the country out. Indeed, the only reason why neo-liberalism wasn’t allowed to triumph as it was in 1994 was the fear of a populist backlash (i.e. what we’re seeing now).
"If 2015 wasn’t exactly a return to 1977, it was certainly a reminder of 1994: what Chandrika Kumaratunga, one of the chief architects of Sirisena’s candidacy, referred to as neo-liberalism with a human face"
The result of all this was that issues like governance and democratisation, which for the first time, in many years, had been debated as part of a cohesive social economic reform package which remains unparalleled by its ambitious scope (regardless of the fact that it failed), were isolated and rationalised purely in terms of anti-Rajapaksa propaganda.
So if Mangala Samaraweera, while holding the price formula and with Eran Wickremeratne laughing at journalists and, implicitly, at people who have failed to understand that formula, can speak loftily about democracy, multiculturalism, and progressive politics without seeing a contradiction between what he’s saying and what he’s doing; if Ranil can call for the abolition of the Executive Presidency even though we have seen what can happen with its powers diluted; and if left civil society intellectuals (who left the left a long time ago) can campaign for Ranil during the 52-day Mahinda-Maithri regime and not raise as much as a hum against his government’s policies, the only thing that can be said is that economic issues have been relegated to empty good governance rhetoric.
To put it simply, opposition to Rajapaksa vadaya today remains at the centre of the UNP’s campaign. If Sajith isn’t falling for that and he’s trying to take a different route, his biggest champion from the Ranil camp,Mangala, continues to take it even though it has not worked. This is a sign of their political and intellectual bankruptcy, and it shows that the mistake made by the UNP and sections of the SLFP, the de-linking of political reforms from economic reforms, continues to be made by the UNP.
The SLFP has since learnt the errors of this tactic the hard way. That’s why it’s trying to go alone without spewing too much vitriol against the former leaders. The UNP, however, has not learnt. Quite probably, it will not learn. My friend Michael Patrick O’Leary, that gentle soul from Ireland who writes now and then, noted that the insularity of the Colomboans was what prevented Ranil from getting elected. Today I think we can adjust that a little: it is the insularity of those Colomboans which prevents not just Ranil, but the entire UNP machinery, from getting into power. The tragedy is that it hasn’t even got into the race.
