Piecemeal shut down of representative government

by C.A.Chandraprema-September 23, 2017, 8:14 pm 

The scenes in Parliament on Wednesday last week made Parliamentary history. Never before have we seen anything like the horse trading that went on at the last moment to get the amendments to the PC Elections Bill passed. When the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the All Ceylon Makkal Congress wanted the proportion of provincial councilors elected on the proportional representation system increased to 50% from the 40% that had been decided on earlier, the government agreed in order to get the two thirds majority needed to pass the amendments to the PC elections law that enables the government to postpone PC elections. For the government, these amendments to the PC elections law were literally a matter of life or death. If the elections to the Sabaragamuwa, North Central and Eastern Provincial Councils could not be postponed, the government was staring defeat in the face.

At the presidential and parliamentary elections held in 2015, even though they were contesting against everyone else, the Mahinda Rajapaksa led UPFA won both the Sabaragamuwa and North Central Provinces. So the result of an election in these provinces was a foregone conclusion. This upped the ante for the government and made them agree to anything to avoid what they had deemed to be certain defeat - an eventuality that would have had fatal consequences on their already tenuous hold on power. Hence the last minute horse trading that went on the floor of parliament to increase the percentage of the provincial councilors elected on the proportional representation system with no consideration given to what effect this will have on the stability of the provincial councils as institutions. This is a government that is engaged in a headlong quest for political survival and such considerations no longer matter.   

 Local government elections have been due for over two and a half years but have not been held and there is no sign that they will be held anytime soon. When it seemed likely that the government would not be able to prevent the provincial council elections from being held, hasty attempts were made to prepare for LG elections because they would cause less damage to the government than the PC elections. As a part of these preparations, the government changed the system of elections to the LG institutions on August 25 this year. That in fact was the first time they made use of committee stage amendments to introduce changes to the law through the back door. A Bill to make certain minor technical corrections to the local government elections law had been gazetted earlier and the government in blind panic at the prospect of the provincial council elections being held, took this bill up for debate in Parliament and at the committee stage introduced over 50 new clauses completely changing the system of election to the local government institutions.

 Headlong quest to dodge elections

The idea was to head off the PC elections by holding the local government elections first, if having an election becomes inevitable. Having got away with introducing sweeping changes to a Bill at the committee stage, they adopted the same strategy to rush in changes to the PC elections law as well. Given the fact that many people in the government think they are not just looking at defeat in the face but death itself, they are obviously not concerned about how these desperate machinations look to a public that is already looking askance at the antics of this government. This mindless fear in fact could be the main cause of their undoing. The yahapalana coalition working together did manage to defeat Mahinda Rajapaksa in January 2015. In August that year, they were able to win the Parliamentary elections after the President upset the UPFA election campaign by stating publicly and in writing that Mahinda Rajapaksa would not be made Prime Minister even if he won the election and then following up by sacking the general secretaries of the SLFP and UPFA on the eve of the poll.

After emerging panting and palpitating from that election with a slim majority in Parliament, the yahapalana coalition developed an election phobia and are now in a state of mind where they will do anything to avoid an electoral showdown with the Joint Opposition led by Mahinda Rajapaksa. While it is certainly true that after the experience of the last Parliamentary election, the Joint Opposition will field their own list at any subsequent election and there will be no room for President Sirisena to repeat the antics of August 2015, still the fact was that the UNP and its allies had won 106 seats and over 40 MPs who had been elected to Parliament under Mahinda Rajapaksa’s leadership had defected to the government and a government with a two thirds majority had been formed. Under such circumstances, they could easily have held the local government elections.

Even if the Joint Opposition had fielded a separate list at that local government election and they had won a lot of local government institutions, still the yahapalana government could also have given good account of themselves – at least they would have been better placed then than they are now. But what has prevented the yahapalana government from having any election after August 2015 is because of the fear of not doing well or being defeated. Even if they were to be defeated, the margin of defeat would have been much slimmer if the LG elections had been held immediately after the Parliamentary election. The longer they delay, both the certainty and the margin of defeat increases. The government has been saying that they will be holding the postponed LG elections in January and the postponed PC elections in March 2018. But one can bet one’s last rupee that they will not hold any elections between now and the next Presidential or parliamentary election.     

 The logic of blind panic

 When one postpones elections for the fear of defeat, one operates on a different logic. You first put off the election because the situation is not propitious. With the passage of time, the situation invariably becomes even less propitious and the election gets pushed further away. The yahapalana coalition is now caught up in this vicious cycle and there is no escape. There are enough complications in the amendments to the LG elections law and the PC elections law that were made recently to ensure that no elections are held in foreseeable future and that is what is inevitably going to happen. The logic of dodging elections in this manner is that if the government loses an election it will lose its legitimacy and its ability to govern even though they have been elected for a fixed term in office. They think that by somehow dodging a mid-term test they would be able to retain their legitimacy and ability to govern at least until the term they were elected for runs out.

 However, the point that the government has to consider is whether this headlong quest to dodge elections which the voting public is only too well aware of, is doing anything to enhance their legitimacy in the eyes of the people. It’s true that the dodging of elections even in the desperate and blatant way the yahapalana coalition has been doing it, does not result in a loss of legitimacy as dramatic as that caused by an election defeat; but still, it does result in an irreversible loss of face which will prove enormously costly in the medium to long term. Still, not having elections helps. The example one can give is that when the elections to cooperative societies were being held last year, they were all going against the government. Usually cooperative societies are won by the government in power and the cooperative societies and the small businesses run by them are an important source of patronage for local politicians.

But in the recent past, when elections to cooperative societies were held they were all going against the government by huge margins. Given the fact that the cooperative societies have something like eight million members which forms a good part of the voting population, the message that the government got was that they were looking at resounding defeat come an election which is why they are doing things that nobody has ever done before in their headlong quest to avoid a test. If they went to the lengths we saw last Wednesday in parliament to avoid holding elections to three provincial councils, one can be certain that despite anything this government may say, they are under no circumstances going to hold the local government elections which have to be held countrywide which would therefore show the loss of the government’s legitimacy countrywide instead of in just two or three provinces.   

 So we are now faced with a situation where no elections will be held in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, not a single local government institution is functioning countrywide. From midnight on Tuesday, the provincial councils will also be dissolved one by one. Ultimately the only institutions of government left operational will be the presidency and the parliament. This situation will not be disliked by those who felt that there was too much devolution of power. Once all the provincial councils stand dissolved, Sri Lanka will be more centralized than it was even during British Colonial times when there was the British government which administered the whole country through the Government Agents. Today even venerable old local government bodies like the Colombo Municipal Council are being administered by a Commissioner.

Indian intervention undone by RAW

 The biggest irony is that the system of devolution that was forced upon this country by India is now being suspended for the rest of their tenure by a government that is widely believed to have been brought into power by RAW. Even though the provincial councils system was introduced to ‘solve the problems’ of the minorities living the north and east, one of the first PCs to stand dissolved will be the Eastern Provincial Council. The Northern Provincial Council will stand dissolved a year later. These are the people who were deemed to be in need of the provincial councils system – not the people of the South. The PC system was created for the people of the north and east and now they will be among the first to lose whatever benefits they had through this intermediate tier of government. Someone may point out that even though the PCs may stand dissolved in this manner for the time being, that the Constitution that the government was planning to bring would give vastly enhanced powers to the PCs and therefore, allowing these councils to lapse to ensure the political survival of this government was worth it and that this was why even the TNA helped in a process which would see the Northen and Eastern PCs dissolved without elections being held.

 This would have been a valid argument if a new constitution had been on the drawing boards. Even though the interim report of the Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly was presented to Parliament last Thursday, the two main parties, the SLFP and the UNP have not been able to agree on the fundamentals even though a consensus seems to have been by and large achieved between the UNP, TNA, SLMC, ACMC and the JVP. There is no agreement between the UNP and the SLFP even on whether the system of government is going to be a presidential or a parliamentary executive based form of government. There is no agreement on the powers to be vested in the Governors and on many other fronts. This constitution is never going to see the light of day unless the executive presidency is abolished – that was the principle demand that united the yahapalana coalition of January 8, 2015.    

 Just looking at the interim report of the Constitutional Assembly, it becomes plain that this is still a work in progress. Even though consensus seems to have been achieved between some political parties, that is only because the interim report presents several alternatives. There is no agreement between the political parties even on selecting one of the alternatives proposed. This is obviously not a constitution that is going to see the light of day in a hurry. So the postponement of elections to the local government institutions and the provincial councils will last till the next presidential election becomes due. Some were of the opinion that the LG and PC elections were being postponed in order to have the referendum for the constitution first, on the argument that a referendum will be the least unfavourable form of plebiscite for the government at this moment. At any election, the yahapalana vote will be split with some of the key partners like the TNA, SLMC, ACMC and JVP contesting separately.

 A referendum however provides an opportunity for all the yahapalana coalition partners to come together once again and the calculation was that with the UNP, the Sirisena faction of the SLFP, the TNA, SLMC, ACMC, JVP backed by state power and money from their patrons overseas would be able to prevail once again over the Joint Opposition which would be battling it out against a whole host of enemies on its own.  However for such a referendum to be held on the constitution, a draft constitution to which all the yahapalana partners are agreed should be on the table. But there is nothing of the sort and very little likelihood of any such thing materializing until the next presidential election is upon us. When it was announced that the Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly was going to table their interim report in Parliament, what this writer expected was a draft constitution, but what was tabled was just a statement of intent giving various alternatives.

 Referendum for a new constitution?

 So we can forget about a new constitution under this present government. Since we were on the topic of referendums, we have also to understand that it is the President who calls for referendums. This President stated in his presidential election manifesto that he will amend the constitution only to the extent that a referendum would not be necessary and he has since steadfastly opposed the holding of a referendum for any purpose. Many of his key backers also have expressed the view that a referendum cannot be won. Given that situation, what is the likelihood of a referendum being held on the constitution? Sirisena’s main reason for wanting to avoid holding a referendum is to hang on to his present job. The interim report has in fact proposed that the executive presidency be scrapped. There is very little likelihood of Sirisena supporting any such move. For all these reasons, the likelihood is that the constitution will be a non-starter. Hence all these theories to the effect that the government is postponing elections with a major ‘referendum offensive’ in view may not materialize in the manner expected.

 Thus, what we have now in practice is a situation where the elected institutions of government from the bottom up are going into abeyance stage by stage due to the fear this government has of testing the public mood at elections. The local government institutions were also dissolved in stages with the pradesheeya sabhas standing dissolved first and the Municipal Councils following some months later. Now the provincial councils will stand dissolved one by one. By next Sunday, the Sabaragamuwa, North Central and Eastern provincial councils would have ceased to exist. One must not underestimate the backlash that this will cause against the government. Even though the Uva province is where the yahapalana government is strongest with virtually all UNP and SLFP parliamentarians in the Badulla district in particular supporting the government, still this was where the aborted 20th Amendment was defeated first. The Uva PC voted with a two thirds majority against the 20A and those who voted against it included several UNP provincial councilors and the SLFP chief minister as well.

 The reason why the Uva PC voted so overwhelmingly is not because 20A sought to reduce their tenure in power in any way. 20A was in fact designed to see that all the other PCs also stood dissolved on the day that the Uva PC was to stand dissolved in October 2019. The Uva PC voted against 20A because the wording of the 20A said ‘not later than’ which means that the PCs ‘could’ stand dissolved on an earlier date if parliament so decided. The three words that sent the Uva PC to the other side was ‘not later than’ due to the ever so slight possibility that the government could decided to hold the elections a little earlier. This is now a case of every yahapalanite for himself and may the devil take the hindmost. The Uva PC members knew that all these maneuvers were due to the politicians holding power at the centre trying to ensure their own survival and they took steps to secure their own tenure regardless of party loyalties or their obligations to obey the boss.

When these provincial politicians lose their elected positions, they become nobodies overnight. Prasanna Solangaarachchi the former chairman of the Kotikawatte-Mulleriyawa was once a key figure in the Maithripala Sirisena camp ranking alongside Hirunika Premachandra. But after the local government institutions were dissolved and he lost his position as PS Chairman, Solangarachchi is not heard of any more. He has been given the position of SLFP organiser for Avissawella, but that means very little after you cease to hold elected office while your political party is wielding power. Unless he manages to shout and scream his way into a government position that will keep him in the limelight, the same fate is going to befall Peshala Jayaratne, the Chief Minister of the North Central Province.

 The yahapalana government managed to contain a rebellion that took place in the North Central Province by giving ministerial portfolios to several of the rebels with the promise that the terms of the PCs would be extended giving them the opportunity to enjoy the portfolios for at least two years.  This has now fallen by the wayside and the rebels who switched sides have been left high and dry. The provincial councils have greater relevance for the north and east than they have for the rest of the country. It will be interesting to see what the reaction of the north and the east would be to this situation of the PCs standing dissolved and elections being postponed indefinitely. The North got its first Tamil chief minister and the East got its first Muslim chief minister under Mahinda Rajapaksa. Under MR, the north and the east had functioning local government institutions and functioning provincial councils.

 Now under the yahapalana government, the very provinces that provided the extra votes needed for the present government to come into power will soon be without any kind of elected representation other than the MPs they have in parliament. It is difficult to imagine that this is what the people of the north and east anticipated when they voted overwhelmingly to bring the yahapalana candidate into power in January 2015.