President Sirisena seeking exit strategy?

October 15, 2016, 6:22 pm 

To say that President Maithripala Sirisena caused a flutter with his outburst against the CID, FCID and Bribery Commission at a ceremony held to distribute land and houses to disabled soldiers at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, would be an understatement. Various people have come up with various interpretations of why the president lashed out at these institutions. Some say that this was in retaliation for the release of CCTV footage of the attack on the ‘Clique’ night club in which his son Daham is alleged to have been involved. The CCTV footage could not have been leaked to the press without the police being involved. Earlier, the President’s own media director Wasanthapriya Ramanayake had stated to this column that there is a direct link between these police units and sections of the media and that a conversation he had with an FCID officer over the telephone had been reported on a website operated from overseas within two hours.

We wrote about that episode involving the President’s media director on an earlier occasion. Ramanayake would have informed the President of his experiences. Most people think the FCID obtains statements only from those shown on TV giving ‘voice cuts’ outside the FCID premises, but in reality, the place is like a busy factory with statements being obtained every day from dozens of government employees up and down the hierarchy. Ramanayake told this writer that before he was asked to give a statement, many employees below him in the Information department had been brought to the FCID and that they were working their way upwards and that this process had generated a great deal of resentment among government servants. He said he is convinced that the FCID was doing this deliberately to turn government servants against the government.

 This was the kind of feedback that President Sirisena was getting even from his closest staffers. Several incidents piling up one on top of the other would have led to the President’s outburst. Even in October last year the President had criticized the CID for having summoned Wasantha Karannagoda to record a statement and had wanted to be kept informed whenever a head or former head of a branch of the armed services is summoned to record a statement. The President was obviously sensitive to the fact that he was the commander in chief of the armed forces and also the Defence Minister and when key members of the armed forces are hauled before the CID and FCID the public resentment is aimed more at him than any other member of the government. During his outburst a visibly angry President lashed out at the way members of the intelligence services had been kept in remand for months without proper charges being brought against them.

 What had obviously angered him most was the fact that former Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and three former Navy Commanders had been taken to courts by the Bribery Commission without keeping him informed. He was obviously acutely aware of the toll that such incidents were taking on his role as the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. On top of all this came the news that the State Minister of National Integration and Reconciliation A.H.M. Fowzie had been noticed to appear before Colombo Chief Magistrate’s Court on October 28 over ‘corruption’ charges filed by the Bribery Commission. The charge was that Fowzie used a vehicle given to the Disaster Management Centre for his personal use. This latter incident undermined the president in his role as the leader of the SLFP.

At times one sees in the media reports that the Bribery Commission had filed four or five ‘corruption’ cases against someone or the other. Such reports convey the impression that these are four or five major cases of bribe taking by the individual concerned and the public assumes that millions of rupees would have been involved. But on inquiry, one finds that these are five cases filed against that individual for not handing in his assets and liabilities declarations for five years – each taken as a separate ‘corruption’ case.  

That odious creation,

the FCID

Not handing in one’s assets declaration is improper but it can hardly be described as an act of corruption in itself. That Fowzie took a vehicle with him from one ministry to another hardly qualifies as a major act of corruption. As S.B.Dissanayake explained, all ministers take their vehicles with them to other ministries when they change ministries and you can’t drag people to courts for something like that. Authorizing such vehicles to be ‘seized’ and returned to the correct ministry by specially assigned police teams may be the most rational way to go about it. Be that as it may, it was obviously a combination of all these pressures that caused the President’s outburst.

The president’s broadside has divided even the NGO supporters of the yahapalana coalition right down the middle with one group standing by him and another criticizing him for helping the ‘rogues’ of the former regime by publicly attacking the CID, FCID and Bribery Commission. The NGOs that stood by the president candidly admitted that just as the president said, the CID, FCID and the Bribery Commission had in fact been used for political purposes.  

The CID and FCID come under a UNP minister and hence they could be, and have been, used to harass political opponents. But the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery and Corruption is supposed to be an independent commission of which the members are appointed by the Constitutional Council. So how was such an institution subverted and used for political purposes? The Bribery Commission is made up of three members who have been appointed by the Constitutional Council and nobody, not even journalists can remember their names. Nobody even remembers seeing their faces anywhere. As far as the public is concerned, the ‘Bribery Commission’ is its Director General Dilrukshi Dias Wickremesinghe. The latter’s name and face is widely recognised as face of the Bribery Commission. But she is a political appointee who was appointed to the Bribery Commission after having removed the previous Director General because he was considered  ‘unsuitable’ by the new government that came into power in January 2015.

When a new government removes key officials from institutions like the Bribery Commission and appoints people more to their liking what does that look like to the outside world? Dilrukshi Dias Wickremesinghe was appointed to that position to carry out a witch hunt – what President Sirisena is saying now was known to all and sundry from the very beginning. Even more scandalous was the setting up of the FCID. Though everybody refers to it as the Financial Crimes Investigation Division, the gazette notification that set it up refers to it as the Fraud and Corruption Investigation Division. By whatever name it is called, this was one of the most diabolical creations that some warped mind had conjured up. In this era where the independence of state institutions and especially law enforcement agencies are being talked of, the FCID was the very antithesis of that, made all the more revolting because it was set up by a government that came into power promising good governance and independent government institutions.

The FCID acts on complaints forwarded to them by an ‘Anti-Corruption Committee’ of polititicians and politically involved individuals headed by the Prime Minister. The other members of this committee are Ministers Mangala Samaraweera, Patali Champika Ranawaka, and Rauff Hakeem, parliamentarians Anura Kumara Dissanayake, R. Sampanthan, M. A. Sumanthiran and Democratic Party Leader Sarath Fonseka, Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne, J. C. Weliamuna and Malik Samarawickrema. This odious arrangement has been functioning now for 18 months and is one of the main reasons why this government is so scared of holding any election. They obviously fear that if they have an election and lose, they will be devoured by the very demons they themselves have created.

 Little likelihood of

a breakup

 Despite President Maithripala Sirisena’s outburst against the CID, FCID and Bribery Commission all of which are controlled by the UNP, it is highly unlikely that this will cause a parting of ways between the UNP and the SLFP (Sirisena faction). Both sides are only too well aware that they either stand or fall together. Despite some speculation that the SLFP (Sirisena faction) will join hands with the Joint Opposition, there is little likelihood that happening because the voters of the Joint Opposition will not vote for members of the Sirisena faction even if Mahinda Rajapaksa himself makes a request to that effect. It is unlikely that anybody in the Sirisena faction has any illusions about being able to join the Joint Opposition and carry on as if nothing happened. Whether they like it or not, the futures of the SLFP members in the government will in the medium to long term lie with the UNP.

 However in the short term because Maithripala Sirisena is the President, the UNP is always left holding the short end of the stick. It is the UNP that had to take a step backwards on the issue of abolishing the executive presidency. It was the UNP that had to yield on the question of distributing the ministerial portfolios and give some of the best portfolios to the SLFP group and it will be the UNP that has to grin and bear it and say and do nothing when the president lashes out at the law enforcement agencies controlled by them. One major cause for concern for the UNP however is that this outburst by the president was after this matter was discussed extensively at a meeting between the two sides the previous night. The fact that the president lashed out in public after such a meeting indicates that he thought it necessary to make the matter public to enforce his will on the UNP.

Be that as it may, another meeting was held between the two sides following the outburst and the very next day the president and prime minister were seen officiating at a temple ceremony together in Colombo and things seem to be under control at least for now. UNP members are also under strict instructions not to make any public pronouncements on what the president said. As we said earlier, whatever the differences between the two sides, they both know that they either stand or fall together. That is signified by the fact that even though it was to the UNP’s advantage to go in for the local government elections soon after the parliamentary elections last year, the UNP has not been pressing too hard for it. This is because after what happened at the parliamentary elections, it is unlikely that the Joint Opposition would contest together with the SLFP and if the JO fields a separate list, the Sirisena faction could be placed at a serious disadvantage at an election. That would in turn undermine the UNP which derived its power from Sirisena.

Ratnajeevan Hoole, a member of the Elections Commission wrote a interesting piece to The Island on Friday where he had described how the Minister of Local Government and Provincial Councils Faiszer Musthapha had given  Asoka Peiris, the Chairman, of the Delimitation Committee an unsolicited extension up to 31 October 2016. When Peiris had promised to finish his work by 15 August 2016. The minister had given him this unsolicited extension because he (the minister) could see that Asoka Peiris was working with impossible dates and ruining his health and wanted to give him a respite!

As the due date for completing the delimitation process draws near, the SLFP faction in the government has now dreamed up a new way of delaying the elections further – by holding an all party conference just to make sure that every political party is satisfied at the way the delimitation work has been carried out. If some party is not satisfied, more time can be taken to make the necessary adjustments. You very rarely hear any member of the UNP saying anything publicly about the local government elections. It is almost always a member of the SLFP in the government who makes pronouncements on the LG elections. The UNP has allowed the SLFP group to run around in circles in this manner to avoid holding the LG elections despite pressure from their own rank and file to hold the elections so that their ground level activists will have some standing as elected representatives.

There is resentment building up especially in the areas whether the UNP has been traditionally strong because the activists in those areas feel that they could be controlling the LG institutions in their areas and ruling the roost whereas they have now had to kick their heels doing nothing.

Dodging elections

at any cost

Despite the pressure coming from their own increasingly impatient rank and file the UNP has not been angling for the LG elections because they know that if the SLFP Sirisena faction is wiped out they too will lose power. Now with a string of cooperative election defeats indicating that the ground situation is not favourable to the UNP either, even the UNP would have lost their appetite for elections. Given this elections phobia that has now spread from the SLFP (Sirisena faction) to the UNP, it seems likely that by the end of next year we may find the provincial councils too ceasing to function one by one. When their time is up, the provincial councils stand automatically dissolved. The way things are going, given the fear that the government has of elections, by next the end of next year the Sabaragamuwa, North Central and Northern provincial councils may be allowed to lapse without holding an election. That a new constitution and a new system of devolving power is in the pipeline will be a convenient excuse for not holding the PC elections when they come due.    

 If the government has any hope of remaining in power till 2020, that will be entirely dependent on not having any election till then. If they hold any election whether it be the local government or provincial council elections and the government fares badly as they have been doing at the cooperative society elections, they will not be able to govern thereafter. In such an event, a period of transition will begin with the Joint Opposition calling the shots and nobody taking the lame duck government seriously. In such circumstances, it will be better for the government to agree to dissolve parliament and call for fresh elections. This is why the postponement of all elections is so important to the government. At any future election, the battle lines will be drawn between the UNP and the Joint Opposition. The faction of the SLFP led by President Sirisena really does not have any ground level presence worth talking about. In any event at elections, people divide on the basis of being either pro-government or anti-government and there the SLFP (Sirisena faction) is running the risk of falling in between two stools – the government space being occupied by the UNP and the opposition space dominated by the Joint Opposition.

The SLFP (Sirisena faction) by trying to be in the government while claiming to be not of it and hoping that the people will buy that story, will end up in a limbo. What really are the options that President Sirisena has in front of him? In order to see what his options are, we have to first figure out where he stands at this moment. In November 2014, Maithripala Sirisena joined up with the UNP to defeat the Rajapaksas. As soon as he won, he appointed Ranil Wickremesinghe as the prime minister and allowed him to form a new government even though the UNP had only 46 seats in parliament. But he had clearly told the electorate that if he wins, Wickremesinghe would be made prime minister. After all, his election was largely due to UNP votes plus those of the minorities. In order to ensure that the UNP minority government was not defeated in parliament, he had to take control of the SLFP – the leadership was offered to him on a platter - which he did and he used the majority of the SLFP to keep the UNP government in power. Then when it came to the 2015 parliamentary election, the fact that he was the leader of the SLFP helped defeat the SLFP and perpetuate UNP rule. But he delayed the election till the UNP lost some of its previous edge won by defeating Mahinda Rajapaksa. This, analysts believe, was not to give the UNP too much power.

So up to August 2015, it was useful for the UNP that Sirisena was the leader of the SLFP. But after August 2015, there is no practical use for the UNP in Sirisena continuing to be the leader of the SLFP. Now it is only Sirisena who needs the SLFP group in parliament for his own protection against the UNP which wants to abolish the executive presidency and deprive him of his job. In January this year, when Ranil Wickremesinghe introduced a resolution in parliament to convert parliament into a constitutional assembly, one of the main objectives of constitutional change according to its preamble was the abolition of the executive presidency. Sirisena used the SLFP ministers in the government to have the entire preamble expunged from the resolution. So that is now the role of the SLFP – protecting Sirisena’s job from the UNP.

For this he is maintaining the SLFP in grand style having given them the best possible portfolios. By that very act he is keeping the UNP restricted to some of the less important ministries creating enormous pressure on the UNP at the ground level. So the situation that the government has ended up with is that the UNP which has the votes does not have the power to help their voters but the SLFP group in the government which does not have votes has the power to help people but they have not been able to win the support of the majority of the SLFP rank and file even after liberally doling out patronage. Thus as of this moment, the President’s continued leadership of the SLFP has sent the governing coalition into a tailspin from which it is unlikely to recover. As we said earlier, the reason why neither of the coalition partners in the government are keen on having elections is because they are both acutely aware of the dicey situation the government is in – which is why some see the President’s broadside against the CID, FCID and Bribery Commission as a case of him trying to come to a separate peace with the Joint Opposition as an exit strategy for himself.