Was it a zero sum game?

By Ranga Jayasuriya

President Mahinda Rajapaksa belied the projections of many an observer, including this correspondent who guessed that the election would be a close call. Rajapaksa romped home with a massive margin of 1.8 million votes in an election which many including the opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe described as relatively peaceful on the election day. That is a fair assessment. But, a relative peace in a polling day alone could not underwrite a free and fair election. This election was tainted by an overwhelming evidence of blatant abuse of state property and libelous coverage of the state media, all of which prevented Mahinda Rajapaksa from claiming a principled electoral victory. More than anyone else, it was a shame for Rajapaksa, who could have won, as his massive 17 per cent lead accentuated, even if he opted to a fairly decent line of electioneering.

Lamentation

Elections showcase the scale of democracy in a country. This election proves once again that legitimacy of the electoral process is at great strain when other democratic institutions of the country can not function independently. The televised lamentation of the election commissioner was a case in point as to how difficult it had been for the election commissioner to discharge his responsibilities. The conduct of the state media was an affront to the election commissioner- and by extension to the very constitution of the country, which bestows the election commissioner with powers to conduct elections, which were brazenly flouted by the state media heads.
Sri Lankan villages suffer from a chronic information vacuum which was filled by the slanderous and ethnically divisive propaganda aired by the state media institutions. Hapless villagers were fed with an overdose of a slanderous coverage about a pact between Sarath Fonseka and the Tamil National Alliance and a Western conspiracy against Sri Lanka etc. That explains why this election, more than any other in the past reinforced ethnic fault lines in voting. Rajapaksa won all the majority Sinhalese electorates while Fonseka secured minority majority districts. Now, some of the government spokespersons, many of whom are the torchbearers of a culture of sycophancy deep rooted in Sri Lankan politics, are brazen enough to provide a patriotic undertone to votes cast to Rajapaksa. By omission, they label 4 million voters who voted for Gen Fonseka and several thousand others opted for other candidates as ‘unpatriotic.’ That is dangerous stuff. The government is on a dangerous track to alienate millions who, anyway, had reservations about its democratic credentials.
What happened in the aftermath of the election itself is a dangerous first in the Sri Lankan politics. Military encircled the hotel where the campaign staff of the main opposition contender had camped and later in the week raided his office and arrested some of the retired military officers in his staff. The government accused the main opposition candidate of plotting a coup from a five star hotel adjacent to the air force headquarters. Not a plausible explanation.

Directly targeted

Sri Lanka has had a history of violent elections. However, this is the first time in three decades, since the abolishing of the civic rights of Sirima Bandaranaike, that a losing candidate was directly targeted by a well orchestrated campaign by the winner of the election. Had Sri Lankans believed that local politics matured since authoritarianism of JR Jayawardene’s era, they seemed to be mistaken. Later in the week, JVP’s mouthpiece, the Lanka newspaper office was sealed and its editor was arrested. All these developments portend an ominous trend.
One would call this the Ahamedinejad doctrine, named after the eccentric Iranian president who won a flawed election in June last year and proceeded to crack down on the protesting supporters of the losing candidate Mir Hossein Musavi. However, all such antics are bound to lower the stature of President Rajapaksa, who, in fact, sounded conciliatory to the losing party.
He said he would be the president to all, to those who voted him and those who did not vote him.

Liberal democratic agenda

That is a good starting point. But, the president should realize that those 4 million odd citizens who didn’t vote him had, in fact, voted for a greater liberal democratic agenda. They voted against nepotism, corruption and absolute power enjoyed by the highest office of the state. They voted to reactivate the 17th amendment, set up independent commissions and to enhance civil liberties. None of these are policies deleterious to body politic of the state. They are the principles which should be at the core of any aspiring democracy. Sri Lanka needs strong institutions, not political or military strongmen if it is to restore its democratic traditions and to provide a more accountable government to its people. Millions of rural villagers who voted Rajapaksa en masse would definitely be the beneficiaries of such a move. They would find that they are no longer the proverbial serfs of their political masters. They and their children would find new political and economic avenues open to them and vibrant government institutions at their disposal. But, more than anyone else, that would help Mahinda Rajapaksa. It would improve his stature in the eyes of the community of democratic nations and give him a clear and decisive break from Ahamedinejad.