The Coming Storm? Presidential Election Risks Worsening Sri Lanka’s Bitter Divisions

[A slightly different version of this article was published at www.opendemocracy.org, on 17 November 2005]

War Fears Rise as Election Nears

by Alan Keenan

With today’s election to replace Chandrika Kumaratunga as Sri Lanka’s powerful Executive President, the war-torn island off the southern tip of India faces another turning point in its long and tortured post-colonial history. Unfortunately, neither of the alternate paths laid out by the two major candidates provides much cause for optimism about Sri Lanka’s ability to escape the cycles of ethnic violence, injustice, and poverty that have plagued it for decades. Instead, only a fundamental restructuring of the Norwegian-facilitated and internationally-backed peace process between the Sri Lankan government and the separatist Tamil Tigers – one that places fundamental democratic rights and basic human security at its center – would seem to offer any chance at preventing Sri Lanka from plunging into the abyss of yet another, even more destructive, stage in a war that has been raging off and on for more than twenty years.

Fears of renewed war between the Tamil Tigers (known formally as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or the LTTE) and the government of Sri Lanka – dominated by leaders from the Sinhalese majority – have been running especially high the past few months, following the August 12th assassination of Lakshman Kadirgamar, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister. Kadirgamar, an ethnic Tamil and a sharp critic of the Tigers’ claim to be the sole representative of the Tamil people, had been a major thorn in the Tigers’ side for years. It was Kadirgamar who led the international campaign in the late 1990’s to have the Tigers’ banned as a terrorist organization, and virtually all knowledgeable observers believe that the sniper’s bullets that killed Kadirgamar were fired on orders of Tiger leaders.

Even before Kadirgamar’s assassination, the three and a half year-old ceasefire between the Tamil Tigers and the Sinhala-dominated government has seemed repeatedly near the breaking point. The main flashpoint has been the island’s Eastern Province, which the LTTE considers part of the “traditional homeland of the Tamil people” but is now almost equally divided among Tamils, Sinhalese, and Tamil-speaking Muslims (who do not accept the LTTE’s leadership). Already reeling from the massive death and destruction of last December’s tsunami, it is now the scene of almost daily killings, as the Tigers seek to reassert their control over the region after the breakaway of its eastern military commander in March of 2004. The forces of the renegade ex-LTTE commander, known as Colonel Karuna, have been waging a low-intensity guerrilla war against their former comrades, operating with support from at least some parts of the Sri Lankan military. Their success at killing a number of senior LTTE leaders over the past few months has enraged the Tigers, who have stepped up their assassinations of any and all members of Tamil political parties opposed to the Tigers, in addition to conducting repeated hit and run attacks against Sri Lankan military and police posts in both the Eastern and Northern Provinces.

Tiger violence is not merely a response to attacks by Karuna or other paramilitary forces, however, but instead has been a disturbing and contradictory feature of the Sri Lankan “peace process” from its beginning with the signing of a ceasefire agreement between the Tigers and the government in February 2002. Taking advantage of ceasefire clauses that granted them free movement throughout government controlled areas, the Tigers have conducted a systematic campaign of murder and intimidation aimed at eliminating the small number of remaining dissenters in rival Tamil political parties. This includes an unsuccessful suicide bombing against government minister and head of the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP), Douglas Devananda, one of the Tigers’ only remaining serious Tamil rivals. The Tigers have also continued “recruiting” – often through abduction -- thousands of children and underage fighters, in blatant disregard of their public pledges to UNICEF, other international agencies, and scores of diplomats who have come to call at the LTTE’s de-facto “capital” in the northern Sri Lankan town of Kilinochchi.

It was only with the murder of Kadirgamar, however, that representatives of the “international community” finally recognized the need for strong action to be taken against the Tigers. In late September, the European Union, under the presidency of Great Britain, announced that it was imposing a ban on travel to the EU by delegations representing the LTTE, adding that the EU and its member states would continue to consider stronger measures against the Tigers, including their possible listing as a banned terrorist organization. High profile trips by LTTE delegations to European and other capitals have been a major feature of the peace process, as the Tigers see increased international legitimacy as central to their political struggle. In this context, the EU travel ban has been a big blow to the LTTE. While the ban suggests that the Tigers might have overplayed their hand in killing Kadirgamar, the long term effects of the change in EU policy are still unclear and will depend on the outcome of the Presidential election and the policies followed by the new President.

Opposition to the Tigers’ human rights and ceasefire violations have been a rallying cry and source of renewed political strength for hard-line Sinhala political parties, whose recognition of the historical injustices suffered by Tamil Sri Lankans at the hands of successive Sinhala-controlled governments and whose commitment to a just negotiated settlement of the conflict are questionable at best. Both the left-wing People’s Liberation Front (known by its Sinhala initials as the JVP) and the conservative National Sinhala Heritage party, led by Buddhist monks and known as the JHU, are now at the forefront of a powerful political movement opposed to any agreement with the LTTE prior to their disarmament and clear repudiation of their quest for a separate state – terms which effectively amount to opposition to any negotiations with the LTTE at all. Motivated by fear of legitimating and expanding the area of North-East Sri Lanka under effective Tiger control, the JVP even opposed President Kumaratunga’s plan for an agreement with the LTTE to administer jointly the billions of dollars in international aid promised for the relief and reconstruction of tsunami hit regions of the North-East of Sri Lanka. When the President finally responded to enormous international pressure and signed the agreement this June, nearly six months after the tsunami, the JVP withdrew its support from Kumaratunga’s parliamentary coalition, immediately rendering it a largely ineffective minority government.

The Disappearing Middle Way

Against this backdrop, the choice facing Sri Lankan voters committed to democratic values and a just and sustainable peace on November 17th is a difficult one. On the one hand, there is Ranil Wickremasinghe, candidate of the right-wing United National Party (UNP) and Prime Minister from December 2001 to April 2004 under an uncomfortable “cohabitation” arrangement with his arch rival President Kumaratunga. (In Sri Lanka’s French-style governmental system, the Executive President and the Parliament are elected separately.) It was Wickremasinghe who signed the ceasefire agreement with the LTTE in February 2002 and led the internationally-backed peace process through an initial year of promising peace talks and tantalizing near-breakthroughs – as when the LTTE agreed in December 2002 to pursue an settlement based on a federal model of “internal self-determination” for the Tamil people in the North-East of Sri Lanka. Despite the Wickremasinghe government’s policy of never uttering a critical word about the LTTE’s many ceasefire and human rights violations, the peace process nevertheless stalled in April 2003 when the LTTE withdrew from formal talks, complaining of lack of government will to address the burning needs of reconstruction and economic development in the war-ravaged areas of the North-East controlled by the Tigers.

Wickremasinghe’s premiership also saw the revival of growth in Sri Lanka’s economy, as the ceasefire paved the way for an inflow of foreign investment and international funds for reconstruction. Unfortunately, the benefits of the foreign investment and economic liberalization policies were far from evenly distributed. While there was an increase in overall growth rates, the boom was largely restricted to the stock market, the upper middle classes and elite, and the areas around the capital city of Colombo. The rural poor saw the end of agricultural subsidies and other supports, and there was increasing hardship for the urban poor and lower middle classes in general.

It was precisely this powerful combination of factors -- a peace process that appeared powerless to prevent the Tigers’s systematic violation of the ceasefire agreement, hyper-capitalist liberalization that left many average Sri Lankans worse off than before, and an expanding role for foreign governments and international organizations in promoting both developments – that has fueled the rejuvenation of the JVP (and to a lesser extent the emergence of the JHU) and led to the downfall of Wickremasinghe’s government in April 2004. Fears widespread among Sinhalese that the pressure from Norway and the rest of the so-called “international community” would lead to the ultimate establishment of a separate LTTE-controlled state in North-East Sri Lanka seemed to be confirmed for many when the LTTE announced their long-awaited proposal for an “Interim Self-Governing Authority” (ISGA) in November 2003. The Tiger proposal for an ISGA would grant them virtually complete control of the entire Northern and Eastern Provinces for a minimum of five years, with no effective safeguards for the basic rights of the local Muslim and Sinhalese minorities living on the east coast. Many people – not only Sinhala nationalists but also long-term supporters of substantial devolution of power to the North-East – were worried that it would be hard to prevent such an “interim” arrangement from becoming permanent. The proposal – and the UNP government’s agreement to open negotiations based on it – led to widespread cries about the imminent loss of Sri Lankan sovereignty, including from both the JVP and the President’s confidante – and then shadow Foreign Minister – Lakshman Kadirgamar. Within days of the LTTE unveiling their ISGA proposal, President Kumaratunga used her powers as Executive President to seize the initiative. Declaring that the UNP and Norwegian-sponsored peace process had fundamentally endangered national security, Kumaratunga took personal control of the Defence, Media, and Interior Ministries, thus effectively rendering Wickremasinghe’s government powerless to pursue talks with the Tigers. The ensuing political stalemate was ultimately broken by elections in April 2004, when a coalition of Kumaratunga’s SLFP and the JVP and assorted smaller parties won a narrow victory over the UNP-led coalition.

Despite this recent history and the slow but steady deterioration of the peace process, Wickremasinghe and the UNP – with support from most of Tamil and Muslim political parties – promise to return to the model of conflict resolution and development policy they pursued from 2001-2004, with only minor adjustments in their public rhetoric in response to the growing power of JVP and Sinhala nationalism.

In sharp contrast, the other major candidate for Presidency – the SLFP’s Mahinda Rajapakse – is promising a return to policies even farther back in Sri Lanka’s post-colonial history. In electoral pacts signed with both the JVP and the JHU, Rajapakse promises to preserve the “unitary” character of the Sri Lankan state, explicitly rejecting any solution to the war and ethnic conflict that would be based on federalism or significant political autonomy for the largely Tamil-speaking North-East. When warned that such a rejection would rule out any possibility of talks with the LTTE and would increase the danger of war, Rajapakse offers vague assurances of seeking a peaceful settlement that is fair for all communities. In addition to an economic platform that promises to move away from the foreign investment and export driven policies of the last few decades, Rajapakse’s agreements also reject any aid-sharing deal with Tigers for post-tsunami relief in the North and East, rejects any consideration of the Tigers’ ISGA proposal, and demands a fundamental re-writing of the ceasefire agreement so that it is less conducive to the Tigers’ increased military and political power. The package as a whole has been widely seen by political analysts as a classic case of political opportunism and “ethnic outbidding.” Attacking Wickremasinghe and the UNP for endangering Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, the strategy is to concentrate on winning the votes of the fearful and disaffected Sinhala majority, who make up some 75% of voters, at the expense of any serious outreach to Tamil or Muslim constituencies. (Nonetheless, Rajapakse has been endorsed by a range of Tamil parties opposed to the LTTE – including the party established by Karuna – though it is not clear how much support such parties have among Tamil voters.)

While Rajapakse’s strategy might have seemed to make good electoral sense, it was always a high-risk one. It has already added to tensions with the LTTE, who have denounced Rajapakse’s agreements with the JVP and JHU as part of a plan to “thrust war on the Tamil people.” It also provoked a major split within the SLFP. Kumaratunga reacted angrily to Rajapakse’s agreements with the JVP and JHU – in the form of public letters chastising Rajapakse for contravening party policies in support of federalism and the tsunami aid-sharing agreement with the Tigers, and for stoking communal fears and hatred. Kumaratunga – one of Sri Lanka’s most charismatic politicians and a powerful draw at political rallies – has gone so far as to challenge Rajapakse’s policies during SLFP campaign rallies in support of his election, at times even hinting that Wickremasinghe would be more likely to continue her policies than Rajapakse.

Kumaratunga’s angry reaction to Rajapakse’s electoral pacts should come as no surprise, given that his rejection of federalism in the name of preserving the “unitary” character of the Sri Lankan state strikes at the heart of President Kumaratunga’s greatest – and only major – political achievement: the official recognition at the highest level of government that Sri Lankan Tamils have legitimate grievances – stemming from decades of official discrimination and state-sanctioned violence – that need to be addressed through a fundamental restructuring of the Sri Lankan state, including substantial political autonomy for the predominantly Tamil areas of the North-East. Despite her failure to translate her principles into concrete institutional reforms, Kumaratunga is still the only major Sinhala political leader to champion this position – most comprehensively in her various proposals for constitutional reform in the mid- and late 19990’s – and it was her leadership that pushed the SLFP to adopt policies in support of devolution of power and greater autonomy for Tamil areas of the island.

Despite Wickremasinghe’s attempt to exploit the split in the SLFP by playing up the fact that they share Kumaratunga’s commitment to federalism and negotiations with the Tigers, the UNP approach is different from Kumaratunga’s in crucial respects. The UNP has never spelled out in any detail what kind of federal structure it would endorse, nor given any sign that human rights principles, political pluralism, or democracy would play any significant role when negotiating a settlement with the LTTE. It is doubtful that the UNP, had it been in power, would have called for the kinds of tough international sanctions that Kumaratunga and her government did in the wake of Foreign Minister Kadirgamar’s assassination. Given the lax nature of the ceasefire that the UNP arranged with the Tigers, it is not surprising that many Sri Lankans – and not only supporters of the JVP – see the UNP’s peacemaking strategy as primarily a matter of empowering the Tigers to rule the North-East in exchange for peace and quiet in the South.

The Pragmatic and Moral Necessity of Human Rights

Where does this leave Sri Lanka’s battered and minimalist peace process? Can it be salvaged? The urgent need of the hour is to put an end to the steadily escalating violence between the LTTE and fighters aligned with Karuna, acting with some degree of support from the Sri Lankan military. This will require careful revision of the ceasefire agreement, which has clearly proven inadequate. While both the Tigers and the Kumaratunga’s government have agreed in principle to talks aimed at better enforcing – and possibly rewriting – the ceasefire agreement, they have been unable to agree on the location for talks. More important, each side has very different goals for such talks. The Tigers would like to insure that the ceasefire agreement is both interpreted and enforced so as to block any links between the Sri Lankan military and Tamil fighters opposed to the LTTE. The government, on the other hand, would like to see the ceasefire reworked so as to reign in the Tigers’ quest for total domination of the North-East. It’s hard to see where the room for compromise could be found.

What many human rights activists have been urging since the beginning of the peace process is for the the government and the LTTE to sign a separate human rights agreement, to be enforced by an independent international human rights monitoring mission, managed either by the United Nations or some consortium of (non-Scandinavian) countries. Calls for such an agreement have come from Human Rights Watch, as well as from independent Sri Lankan groups such as the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, the University Teachers for Human Rights, and the Sri Lankan government’s own independent Human Rights Commission. While proposals for a human rights agreement were initially made in the hopes of bringing to an end the killings and child conscription committed by the Tigers, such an arrangement is only more urgently needed now, given the violence now being committed against the Tigers and their supports, as well as the special potential for abuse of Tamils’ human rights that resides in the government’s declaration of a state of emergency that followed the Kadirgamar assassination. Unfortunately, while the Kumaratunga government expressed its enthusiastic support for a human rights agreement, the Tigers demurred. Without ruling out the possibility of such an agreement in the future, the LTTE announced that consideration of such an agreement would have to wait until after completing talks on strengthening the ceasefire agreement.

On the Edge of an Abyss?

Any progress – towards either a strengthened ceasefire or an enforceable human rights agreement – will require a government committed to human rights protections and possessed of a clear understanding of the weaknesses of the ceasefire and peace process as they are presently structured. Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe that this will be true of either a Rajapakse or a Wickremasinghe Presidency.

Assuming that the Tigers have not given up entirely on the possibility of a negotiated settlement, their clear preference should be to deal with Ranil Wickremasinghe. In the event of his victory, the pressure presently being placed on the Tigers – both covertly and in terms of public lobbying at the international level – is likely to evaporate. There is little likelihood that his government would press for a human rights agreement. And while the LTTE is now more skeptical about Wickremasinghe’s ability to deliver them control over the North-East than they were at the start of the peace process, Wickremasinghe has at least promised to return to where the peace process left off in November 2003 and begin negotiations based on the Tigers proposal for an interim self-governing authority.

However, while Wickremasinghe and the UNP might want to return to the status quo ante, the political context has changed fundamentally over the past few years. Any negotiations with the LTTE will now take place in more polarized and volatile conditions, with an angry and emboldened JVP and JHU ready to rage at Ranil and UNP for capitulating to Tiger and international pressure to divide – and further subjugate – Sri Lanka. The more Wickremasinghe presses his agenda for less-than-critical accommodation with the Tigers and for expanded liberalization and internationalization of the economy, the sharper – and potentially more violent – will become the divisions among Sinhalese.

Should Mahinda Rajapakse become President, the outlook is less clear. Were he to maintain his hard line against the Tigers and against any meaningful forms of autonomy for the North-East, tensions among Sinhalese might be more manageable, but the peace process as a whole would be gravely undermined, as there would be little ground at all for any discussions with the Tigers. The ceasefire would be hard to sustain – even in its present weak form – without at least the theoretical possibility of negotiations to come. Given that he hasn’t previously been seen as anti-Tamil or uncompromising on ethnic issues, Rajapakse’s decision to toe the JVP and JHU line is seen by many as purely opportunistic. This has generated much public speculation – including among his own high-ranking supporters – that Rajapakse will quickly moderate his position and reach out to Tamils and to the Tigers after he is elected.

This scenario gives little cause for comfort, however, as history of modern Sri Lankan political history is littered with examples of politicians – beginning with Kumaratunga’s father in 1956 – who used strongly pro-Sinhala positions and rhetoric to win elections and then found themselves unable to retreat from their hard line once in power. (Kumaratunga’s father, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, was assassinated in 1959 by a Buddhist enraged at his attempt to devolve power to the Tamil-speaking regions of the North-East.) Should Rajapakse try to back down from his opposition to autonomy and to an Tsunami aid-sharing agreement with the Tigers, there will be a ferocious reaction by the JVP and JHU, for whom feelings of betrayal already run deep and strong. Having done nothing in the course of the election campaign to prepare Sinhala voters for such a shift, Rajapakse will be on weak ground to resist the JVP and JHU attacks.

He will also not likely be able to bring the Tigers in, even if he tries to. The Tigers will surely denounce his victory as a victory for Sinhala chauvinism and as further evidence for their belief that Tamils can never get a fair deal from the Sinhalese and thus have no other choice but formal separation. Having no clear plan of action and no principled basis for addressing Sri Lanka’s deeply ingrained ethnic divisions and distrust, Rajapakse will have little to offer either the Tigers or the Tamil and Muslim people, and thus little in the way of evidence to challenge these claims. Renewed war will seem the only option for increasing numbers of Sri Lankans from all communities.

While the Tigers have stated that they have no preference between the two main candidates, their proxy organizations in the North-East have gone further and called on Tamils to boycott the election. Such a boycott would seem guaranteed to help Rajapakse, as Wickremasinghe’s policies are clearly much more popular with Tamil voters that Rajapakse’s. The LTTE’s indirect support for a boycott would seem to suggest that it would prefer to have its own hard-line positions legitimated by Rajapakse-JVP-JHU intransigence than to continue down the long hard road of negotiations, even on the favorable terms offered by Wickremasinghe.

In such an explosive and apparently intractable situation, the effort to push forward a human rights and human security agenda that could ultimately be agreed to by the Tigers and the Sri Lankan government might seem something of a quixotic pursuit. However difficult activism on human rights issues has been during the Sri Lankan peace process, though, it offers one of the only avenues for potential compromise among the various stakeholders. If the international parties involved in supporting the peace process are truly committed to a just and sustainable peace in Sri Lanka, it is now long past time to make it clear to both the Tigers and the government – whomever is elected as President – that the only peace process they can support from this point on is one based on a strengthened ceasefire agreement and a human rights agreement with effective monitoring and enforcement mechanisms.