El Salvador's Gangs Are Targeting Young Girls

And the Trump administration’s immigration policies are certain to make it worse.

Red Cross volunteers help Claudia at the Red Cross in Apopa, on the outskirts of San Salvador July 6, 2013. Claudia was raped and battered by alleged members of the Mara Salvatrucha street gang and then thrown into a ditch left for dead.

 MOLLY O'TOOLE- MAR 4, 2018

SAN SALVADOR—At dusk on a dusty soccer field in San Salvador last April, three girls sat 

together on a bench. Dani, 12, and Sofia, 16, regularly played soccer with the boys; Diana, Sofia’s 14-year-old cousin, came to watch. What else do you do for fun?, I asked them. They scuffed their shoes in the dirt, uncertain how to respond. So I told them what I did at their age: Played in my suburban neighborhood, or drove around town. Sofia’s eyes grew wide. “At night? Without your parents?” Dani asked. “So cool!” Diana exclaimed. When I told them that American teenagers often took buses or subways to get around town, Dani declared: “You have all the freedom in the world.” To them, such freedom was unfathomable. Their parents only allowed them to leave the house for soccer or school. “Here it’s dangerous because of the gangs,” Dani explained. “You can’t go out now.” Even at school, they felt insecure, Diana added. “Anybody can come in.”

In El Salvador, a small country of some 6.5 million, the defense ministry has estimated that more than 500,000 Salvadorans are involved with gangs. (This number includes gang members’ relatives and children who have been coerced into crimes.) Turf wars between MS-13, the country’s largest gang, and its chief rivals, two factions of Barrio 18, have exacerbated what is the world’s highesthomicide rate for people under the age of 19. In 2016, 540 Salvadoran minors were murdered—an average of 1.5 every day.

While a majority of El Salvador’s homicide victims are young men from poor urban areas, the gangs’ practice of explicitly targeting girls for sexual violence or coerced relationships is well known. Since 2000, the homicide rate for young women in El Salvador has also increased sharply, according to the latest data from the World Health Organization. To refuse the gangs’ demands can mean death for girls and their families.

These conditions leave them with few options but to flee their country. In fiscal year 2016, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended a record 17,512 unaccompanied Salvadoran minors. One-third of the children traveling alone to the U.S. border that year were girls, up 10 percent from just four years prior. In fiscal year 2017, which marked a 50-year low for illegal immigration, roughly a third of unaccompanied minors, again, were girls. Yet in listening to President Donald Trump, one might assume that all of these Central-American youth are blood-thirsty male gang members. “MS-13 gang members are being removed by our Great ICE and Border Patrol Agents by the thousands, but these killers come back in from El Salvador, and through Mexico, like water,” Trump tweeted on February 23. “El Salvador just takes our money.”

Last spring in San Salvador, I spoke to more than 20 young women, aged 12 to 30, whose everyday realities suggest a story largely absent from Trump’s narrative. Rather than posing a threat to America, Salvadoran girls are under threat—and U.S. policy seems certain to exacerbate it.

To help justify its immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has pointed to a spate of murders in the United States tied to MS-13, arguing that immigration has dramatically expanded the gang’s American membership. Trump officials tend to omit that the street gang was formed in the 1980s in Los Angeles by refugees from El Salvador’s civil war—a war fueled in part by Washington—and that the gang was effectively exported to El Salvador through deportations from the United States.

Yet the federal government’s current estimate of around 10,000 MS-13 members across 40 U.S. states hasn’t changed in more than a decade, and only a fraction of unaccompanied minors apprehended since 2011 have confirmed gang ties. The Trump administration has endorsed San Salvador’s militarized approach to fighting the gangs, which designates anyone collaborating with gang members as terrorists, too. Human rights officials have excoriated Salvadoran authorities’ use of excessive force and extrajudicial killings, including against teenagers. The White House, meanwhile, has recommended slashing aid to El Salvador, prioritizing combatting the gangs instead.

Such policies do little to help El Salvador’s young women. The gangs’ targeting of girls dovetails with a wider rise in femicide, or killing motivated by gender, in El Salvador. The rate of violent death for women is the third-highest in the world. In 2016, 524 women in El Salvador—one in every 5,000—were killed, with most of them under the age of 30. From the beginning of 2017 through October, there were nearly 2,000 sexual assaults, with about 80 percent of victims 17 or younger, according to the Salvadoran Women’s Organization for Peace. Through November, there were were 429 femicides, according to the Institute of Legal Medicine. In the first two months of 2018, 72 women were murdered, a more than 50 percent increase from the same period last year, Salvadoran police reported on March 2.

But few of the perpetrators ever face justice. Between 2013 and November 2016, the Salvadoran government opened 662 femicide cases, but only 5 percent reached a conviction. With pervasive gender inequality and widespread impunity, part of the reason for the epidemic of violence against women may simply be that assailants believe that they can get away with it.

Yolanda Blanco, a government lawyer who co-founded the soccer club at the dusty San Salvador field where Dani and Sofia play, explained that gang members take revenge on rivals through the murder and rape of their sisters and daughters. “Girls are the objects of vengeance for the gangs,” she told me. “They are in the eye of the hurricane.”

A few days after visiting the soccer field, I met Ingrid, a 23-year-old woman from a northern suburb of San Salvador, at a hotel. Ingrid, along with her 3-year-old daughter and her family, had gone into hiding, and needed a safe location to meet. When in the eighth grade, she got a boyfriend and soon dropped out of school. Two years later, he became a member of a faction of Barrio 18, after the gang threatened to go after his sister if he refused to join. “Before joining the gang, he was very loving, taking care of me,” she said. “Almost overnight, he changed.”

Ingrid’s boyfriend soon began to lock her inside their house. He would get drunk, beat her, rape her, and forbid her from using contraceptives, she told me. After one beating, she was hospitalized, and learned she was pregnant. The doctors told her she might lose her child because of her injuries. Yet when Ingrid later gave birth to her daughter, her boyfriend promised to stop the abuse, and pushed her to get married. Shortly after, the beatings started anew, and she ultimately left her then-husband. Still, he eventually found them.

When I spoke to Ingrid, she told me she had considered applying for a visa to travel to the United States. She had even mulled the possibility of traveling north with her baby, either to claim asylum at the border, or enter America illegally. “My plan is to give her all the love and care I can,” Ingrid said, “and get as far away as I can.”

Magdalena Arce, the president of a network of women’s shelters in the foothills of San Salvador, argued that the violence against women comes down to machismo. As academics have argued, the sexism that devalues Salvadoran girls is so ingrained—in El Salvador’s politics, culture, even its religion—that many young women “don’t even know they have rights,” Arce said. That includes the right to safely leave abusive partners and report sexual and domestic violence, or even the right to higher education or economic opportunity.

Celina de Sola, who runs a community-development NGO called Glasswing International, emphasized that girls are not inherently vulnerable. Instead, she said, the violence in El Salvador is exacerbating existing external factors—like high rates of school dropouts and teen pregnancies—to further imperil young Salvadoran women. While one-third of Salvadorans live in poverty, the unemployment rate for 16-to-24-year-olds is double the national average;300,000 in that age group neither work nor study. Many girls face these long odds with young children: A quarter of young women between the ages 15 and 19 have already become pregnant, the highest rate in Latin America.

Amid all this, the Trump administration has cut annual refugee acceptances for people from the Caribbean and Latin America from 5,000 to 1,500. It also ended two programs for Central-American minors, which enabled those with family in the United States to apply in their home countries for refugee status or humanitarian parole. The abrupt termination of these programs stranded thousands of children in imminent danger. Most of the 13,000 applicants came from El Salvador.

With their chance of obtaining refugee status diminished, more Central-American women and girls may risk the journey north—and the sexual violence that often comes with it—to claim asylum at the border. U.S. law affords them protection if they can prove they have been persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, political beliefs, or membership in a particular social group. Though victims of rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence may qualify for special visas, these criteria, derived from the 1951 Refugee Convention, have effectively become outdated for young Salvadoran women caught in the current wave of gang violence. In its first year, the Trump administration, which vowed to crack down on asylum “abuse,” lowered approval rates for asylum. According to several lawsuits, the administration has also illegally turned away asylum seekers at the border.

Per the 1980 Refugee Act, U.S. authorities can legally return immigrants to a country where they are in danger only if they have been convicted of a serious crime or officials “reasonably” determine they threaten national security. Yet under Trump, hundreds of thousands of the 2.1 million Salvadorans already in the United States, the overwhelming majority of whom are not criminals and pose no threat, now stand to lose protections that allowed them to stay in the country without fear of deportation. The Salvadoran government has argued that it cannot absorb these imminent returnees, on top of the 40,000 forcibly deported the past two years alone.

Once these people arrive in El Salvador, gangs target many of them for attacks and extortion, believing that returnees have more money and fewer connections to the community. Young people, often alienated from a country they barely know, can be vulnerable to the gangs’ aggressive efforts to recruit minors. For young women who fled El Salvador for the United States and now face deportation back to their home country, the situation is even more dire, Salvador Carrillo, president of the National Network of Returned Entrepreneurs of El Salvador, told me. “When they come back, they can experience retaliation [ranging from] from rape to assassination,” he said.

In April, Ingrid told me she knew Trump didn’t like Latinos, but argued that those coming to the United States were not all “bad hombres,” as the president  suggested. “We deserve a chance, because we [leave] out of necessity,” she said of Salvadorans. “We have to get out of this country.” Today, she is still in El Salvador, raising her daughter while on the run.

Trump’s moves to block desperate Salvadorans from escaping their country while also removing them from the United States are likely to feed the gangs more young recruits and victims—turning them into an even greater danger to  Salvadoran women and girls. In other words, Trump may well wind up undermining his own stated goals of curbing immigration and bringing down gangs like MS-13.

Today, El Salvador is holding municipal and legislative elections. These elections will serve as something of a response to Trump’s policies, and as a referendum on the government’s mano duro, or iron fist, approach to combating the gangs, which depends on U.S. support.

The first time I went to the dusty soccer field, I met Sofia’s grandmother, Maria Lucia Paz de Artiga. The 78-year-old woman’s gold teeth glinted when she laughed, and the words I love grandmother were written in English on a white cast on her arm. During El Salvador’s 12-year civil war, which took 75,000 lives, she and her children fled the countryside for San Salvador. She’s grateful her children are grown-ups now, because it’s difficult to raise kids today, especially girls, she said. “Gangs are starving for them.”

El Salvador today is worse than during the war, Lucia told me. “During the war, at least we could roam freely,” she said. “Nowadays, you have to get permission. If you enter gang territory and nobody knows you—te vas pa el norte,” she said, laughing at her own double meaning. Typically, when Salvadorans say el norte, or “ the north,” they’re referring to the United States. Instead, to explain her meaning, Lucia pointed to the blue sky overhead. She preferred to use the slang for homicide, my fixer said. Te vas pa el norte—they’ll send you up.

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Reporting for this article was funded by an Adelante fellowship from the International Women’s Media Foundation.

South Africa's popular sandwich shops bear brunt of listeria scare

A worker pulls a trolley after removing processed meat products at a Pick n Pay Store in Johannesburg, South Africa, March 5, 2018. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

Sisipho Skweyiya-MARCH 6, 2018

SOWETO, South Africa (Reuters) - As South Africa grapples with the world’s worst listeria outbreak, it is small mom-and-pop stores that dot places like the black township of Soweto that are taking a financial hit as customers fear for their lives.

Ntsintsi’s Fun Food’s popular “kota” sandwich - a hollowed-out quarter loaf filled with spicy mango condiment, french fries and a popular ready-to-eat cold meat called polony - has to undergo a makeover after health authorities traced the listeria outbreak to a polony factory.

“We have to change our game. But the problem we’re going to have is affordability - don’t forget French (polony) and viennas (hot dogs) are the cheapest things that you can get,” said Thabang Matomela, manager at Ntsintsi’s.

“But now if we have to reinvent the kota and have a prego (marinated beef) steak, or have even fish in it, although it did have it, which means the price is going to a bit high. Now who’s going to afford it again?”

Health minister Aaron Motsoaledi said the source of the disease, which has killed 180 people since December last year, was found after pre-school children fell ill after eating polony, which is made from cooked ground meat, similar to American baloney or a cheaper form of Italian mortadella.

Motsoaledi urged South Africans to not eat any processed meat even though the department’s agency ordered a recall of three cold meat products that include polony, prompting a frenzied clearing of shelves by retailers.

The U.N. World Health Organization called the outbreak the largest ever recorded globally, after 948 cases were reported since January 2017. Listeria causes flu-like symptoms, nausea, diarrhea and infection of the bloodstream and brain.

Neighboring states also acted swiftly. Kenya, Zimbabwe and Zambia banned imports of South African processed meat, dairy products, vegetables and fruit. Mozambique and Namibia halted imports of the processed meat items and Botswana said it was recalling them. Malawi stepped up screening of South African food imports.

“I’m scared for the kids more than anything. I’m scared to give it to them because I heard that it’s been around for a while, so when I saw it on TV, I realized even more that it’s dangerous,” Tshepiso Mpelane, a concerned parent said.

However, among those who eat it, polony - also a staple in school lunch boxes - is royalty in sandwiches and removing it from the menu would be an assault on the way of life.

“Listeriosis? What’s that?” said Linda Mwansa a 22-year-old mobile phone saleswoman in the Zambian capital Lusaka. “We don’t have such things in Zambia and I am not going to stop eating polony just because there are problems far away in South Africa.”

Politicising the Lasantha Wickremetunga murder investigation

C.A. Chandraprema-March 3, 2018,

On January 8, 2009, it was a diplomat in the Indian High Commission who phoned me and said that Lasantha Wickremetunga had been ‘shot dead’. I was out of Colombo at the time and was not able to go to the Kalubowila hospital where he had been brought following the attack. I was one of those who had a personal debt to Lasantha which I was never able to repay. Later at the Barney Raymond’s funeral parlour where Lasantha’s remains lay before being taken to his house in Battaramulla, Sarath Kongahage doing an astrological analysis told me that Lasantha was not able to survive the sub period of Saturn in the major period of Rahu. The latter is a malefeic planet that basically ruins lives and makes everything go wrong. It drives one from pillar to post and makes one wander from place to place with no relief in sight. The major period or Rahu lasts 18 years and the sub period of Saturn kicks in about six years into the major period of Rahu. Had he been alive Lasantha would have been under the influnce of Rahu till around 2020.

Politicising the Lasantha Wickremetunga murder investigation.docx by Thavam on Scribd

GoSL-WVL ink MoU to provide water to Sarasalai North

From Left to Right: Ms. Selvarani Nicholas Pillai, Director of  Planning, Eng. E. Jegatheesan, Regional Manager, NWSDB - Jaffna, Mr. Jeyald Antony Rasaratnam, Project Manager, CS-WASH,  Mr. N. Vethanayahan, District Secretary, District Secretariat, Jaffna, Dr. Dhanan Senathirajah, National Director, World Vision Lanka (WVL), Mr. Clarence Sutharsan, Director-Corporate Partnerships, innovations and Public Engagement of WVL, Mr. Jeyald Rasaratnam, Project Manager CS-WASH.

2018-03-06

The Jaffna District Secretariat, the National Water Supply and Drainage Board (NWSDB) - Jaffna and World Vision Lanka (WVL) recently signed a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on a pipe-borne water provision project in Jaffna.    

The project will provide household level pipe-borne water to Sarasalai North – the Grama Niladhari (GN) division in Chavakachcheri, an area which has serious water-related concerns. The project will provide 88 households (nearly 350 individuals including 110 children) with water connections. 

This endeavour is an extension of the already-existing initiative called the Civil Society-Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Project (CS –WASH), which World Vision Lanka has been implementing since July 2014 in the Jaffna District. The project, which targets those who are facing difficulties to access these basic needs, is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Australia. The project so far has given access to safe drinking water and sanitation, and promoted hygiene practices among rural folks in the two DS divisions, namely Chavakachcheri and Chankanai. 

The signatories to this MoU were N. Vethanayahan, District Secretary, District Secretariat Jaffna, Eng. E. Jegatheesan, Regional Manager, NWSDB - Jaffna and Dr. Dhanan Senathirajah, National Director, World Vision Lanka. The event was also attended by Selvarani Nicholas Pillai, Director of Planning, Jaffna District Secretariat, Clarence Sutharsan, Director-Corporate Partnerships, Innovations and Public Engagement of WVL and members of WVL management. Commenting on this programme, Mr. Vethanayahan said, “World Vision is a good partner for us for development, rehabilitation and emergency response intervention. We are very happy about this partnership with World Vision and NWSDB – Jaffna.”  

Meanwhile, Dr. Senathirajah said, “I am glad to note that this initiative is focused on an area which we term ‘most vulnerable’ to water and sanitation needs. Sarasalai North GN is an area that has many water quality issues including salinity and contamination. Most of the people use common, unprotected wells. We are happy to be a part of a project that will bring pipe-borne water to their homes.”  

The total funding for this initiative is over Rs. 13 million, of which 75% will be from government agencies (District Secretariat – Jaffna and NWSDB - Jaffna) and the remainder from DFAT funding through World Vision Lanka. This signifies a joint implementation partnership between the Jaffna District Secretariat, the NWSDB - Jaffna and World Vision Lanka (WVL). WVL will play a facilitation and coordination role and work with the government agencies and WASH CBO to ensure fair beneficiary selection. It will also work directly with the Water Board on the execution of excavation and pipe-laying work and construction of champers. World Vision is a Christian, relief, development and advocacy organisation dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. 

One Year in Keppapilavu

GROUNDVIEWS-03/05/2018

The gates of the 59 Division Mullaitivu Security Forces Headquarters dominate the view 10 kilometres inwards from the Nandikadal lagoon and the Eastern coast. The protest tent a few metres away appears particularly small next to this towering presence. On March 1, the residents of Keppapilavu had been protesting for one year inside this tent. They are asking for the right to return to their ancestral lands, which lie within the bounds of the military complex.

Identified as one of the island’s most militarised areas, with nearly 60,000 troops (25% of the country’s active military personnel) stationed in the district, large swathes of land in Mullaitivu remain under military occupation, denying citizens of their ancestral lands and livelihood in the name of ‘national security’. Most recently, an RTI request revealed that 600 acres near the Nandikadal lagoon were being allocated for the SLNS Gotabaya camp, a move that was met with resistance from residents awaiting resettlement to that area.

This site is one of many citizen-led resistance movements that are being staged in the Northern and Eastern provinces that activists have documented on Groundviews over the last year. As the 37th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council are being held in Geneva, it is crucial that the statements or promises made by the Government on the international stage are critically examined in light of these ground realities.

View the story, compiled on Adobe Spark, here or scroll to view the embed below.

Crisis in ‘Good’ Governance aftermath of LG Elections in Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka’s elections and campaigns, there is a certain element of populist mass dynamics. Instead of formal competitions between established political parties, the voters tend to go by emotions, slogans and mere propaganda.

by Laksiri Fernando-Mar 5, 2018

I don’t want you
But I hate to lose you
You’ve got me in between
The devil and the deep blue sea ~ Christopher Rea (ssongwriter

( March 5, 2018, Sydney, Sri Lanka Guardian) Volatility of voter behaviour cannot be discounted when election results are analysed for 2010, 2015 and 2018. This is a belated post-mortem of LG elections, due to unavoidable circumstances, nevertheless with a final focus on the present crisis in ‘good’ governance. Within these eight years, the voter behaviour has fluctuated from one end to the other or between ‘devil and the deep blue sea.’ This is not to blame the voters for any inconsistency, irrationality or opportunism, but to understand the underlying reasons why they behave in such a manner probably given the profound uncertainties in the political economy as a whole.

In 2010, at the presidential elections, Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR) obtained almost 60% of votes while his former Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka left with only 40%. Both were ‘war winning heroes,’ but perhaps the people trusted more of MR for economic management than a mere Army General. These were the heights of executive presidentialism. MR’s administration managed some economic strides, even during the war years, thanks to the Chinese loans and investments.

When it came to the presidential elections in 2015, not only that the war euphoria had somewhat waned, but the economy also was slowing down without any new initiatives and/or marred with corruption. The voters have a tradition of elected democracy since 1931 and they have effectively changed governments several times since 1956. It was such a change that they particularly wanted in 2015. There was a pressing need for a change given the implications of the 18th Amendment; MR vying for a third term breaking the conventional democratic traditions.

Voter Behaviour

Strictly speaking, there is no possibility of changing a national government at a local government election. This is a terrible myth cultivated by the power seekers, taking the opportunity of holding the elections on the same day nationally. What the voters wanted however appears to be to send a powerful message to the government. In addition, it has virtually created a crisis in the government with attempted changes in the hierarchy. It took five years for the first disillusionment of the voters (2010-2015), and only three for the second (2015-2018).

It is difficult to attribute rationality to individual voters. When they vote, the behaviour could be impulsive also influenced by propaganda. Under modern circumstances, the monopoly of propaganda does not rest with the government. Even otherwise, the Sri Lankan voters in particular have shown traits of rebelliousness when it comes to disillusionment.

In a fragile, contradictory and uncertain economic circumstances, the disillusionments run quick and high. It is not the rich that determine a voting results at an election, but the poor. When the poor realizes that their elected government is overtly aligning with the rich, national or particularly international, their disillusionments can run a mock. Therefore, the political economy factor stands crucial.

Although the individual voting behaviour might not be counted as rational, the collective voting behaviour is not as such. The voters collectively pass rational messages to the rulers. Otherwise, there is no point in having elections and elected democracy. The failure to take signals would be fatal to the incumbent regimes.

Factors Behind  

When individuals vote, they do so on the basis of (1) their traditional party affiliations, if there is such, (2) the reliability of the candidate/s, (3) the policies put forward by the parties or the candidates, (4) the attraction or charisma of leaders of the parties, fronts or electoral movements and (5) issues at stake, economic or political. In a country like Sri Lanka, ethnicity, religion and also the general ‘ideological orientation’ do play a role in voting, depending on the voter. That can be considered the sixth factor, but largely working through the previous five.

It appears from various election results of the past that party affiliation is not a long term determinant among voters. There can be some diehard party adherents (Kapuvath UNP), but the general voters often change their party affiliations. This is more so in the case of practicing politicians! This can be one reason why the voters also change their parties. Another reason is the fluctuating political fronts, as the individual parties are not confident in winning alone. This has been the case in many elections since 1956.

In the case of the last local government elections, the party affiliations became completely overturned. One of the oldest parties in the country, the SLFP, performed extremely poor  (4.5%), irrespective of the fact that the President of the country that they elected three years back being the leader of the party. That is a dramatic change.

It is a mindboggling question why did the SLFP put forward candidates under the party name, disregarding a major split within the party, instead of totally contesting under the name of the UPFA (8.9%). The most traditional party in the country, the UNP, also performed quite poorly (32.6%), one of the lowest percentages that they have ever obtained. In contrast, the newly formed party, the SLPP, obtained 44.7% of votes nationally, leading the contest quite spectacularly.

In a local government election, what should have become important are the candidates and the local policies, in addition to perhaps political parties. However, none of the parties put forward such local policies and the ballot paper did not give the names of the candidates contesting for a ward. Instead, the voters were asked to select among certain symbols (and the party/group) quite primitively.

Most of the voters did not have a clue to whom they were actually voting. This became hilariously evident at Maharagama, a good number of voters voting for the ‘Motorcycle’ and the candidates being quite unknown to the locals. The voting procedure in fact betrayed the objectives of the so-called new electoral system, boasted as an attempt to deepen democracy by giving the people a true representatives closer to their needs and interests in a ward.

There are criticisms that the Joint Opposition or  the SLPP turned the local elections into a national one. Whoever were the advisors, the blame should go to the responsible Minister and the government for holding local government elections nationwide on the same day after repeatedly postponing the elections on the pretext of formulating a new and a better electoral system.

‘Referendum’

In Sri Lanka’s elections and campaigns, there is a certain element of populist mass dynamics. Instead of formal competitions between established political parties, the voters tend to go by emotions, slogans and mere propaganda. This should not be exaggerated however. In such a dynamic, when it happens, what becomes crucially important are the leaders and the issues involved and not so much the parties, the candidates or the policies. Such mass upheavals are often led by (pretentious) charismatic leaders and not the rational ones.

There is much talk about the efficacy of ‘single issue campaigns’ in different intellectual quarters. It is argued that the ousting of the previous regime was effected on the basis of such a single issue: changing the presidential system. If that was the case that was also the major weakness of that change or campaign. That may be the subjective intention of some campaigners, in particular from the civil society or the left. However that does not appear to be the sole reason why the voters voted for a change in 2015.

If there was a ‘single issue’ that predominated an election campaign in the recent past, then that was at the last local government elections. Perhaps the opposition learned it from the government strategists. The opposition called for a ‘referendum.’ It was the single issue: ‘whether the people have confidence in the government or not.’ Although the opposition that called for the ‘referendum’ did not strictly obtained over 50 percent vote, to fulfil a formal referendum, nevertheless the result was overwhelmingly against the government.

Crisis in Local Governance

There are crises in governance at two levels. What is most neglected is the crisis in the local government system. The other is within the Cabinet and in the UNP-SLFP ‘national unity’ government. Both are the creations of the politicians and not the voters or the people. What is revealed at the local government elections is not only the political culture or behaviour of the voters, but mostly of the politicians.

Sri Lanka has had the most disastrous local government reform last year, under the patronage of ‘good governance,’ and the crisis that the country is experiencing now is largely due to this irrational reform. This was also after three years of procrastination. No country has ever doubled the number of councillors in one stroke like in Sri Lanka. It is said that the number of councillors in some councils in fact exceeds the number of workers employed by the council.

Even after a month of the elections, the authorities have not yet been able to officially constitute the councils. There are now efforts to disregard the women representation at least in some councils, on various pretexts, without admitting the flawed procedures or rectifying them without delay. Even after the final constitution of the local councils, it is likely to have the most antagonistic and thus a dysfunctional system quite detrimental to the needs of the local populous. This is a mammoth tragedy considering that the indigenous local government system or Gamsabhas have a long history in the country. This is also a major failure of ‘good governance’ or Yahapalanaya that the present government is elected on.

Crisis in the ‘National’ Government   

The crisis in the ‘national’ or the ‘national unity’ government is not merely a result of the recent local elections. The verdict of the people has just aggravated it. There are many interpretations given, pseudo-constitutional and other, to the present crisis and what is mostly neglected is the policy aspects and crises.

From the beginning, the government did not appear to follow the basic principles of parliamentary democracy, for example, in dismissing the previous PM, and in appointing the new one in January 2015. This was the same in the case of ousting the incumbent Chief Justice and appointing a new one or the previous one. The government appeared to put forward a theory that ‘good governance may be achieved through bad governance or authoritarian principles.’

Although the governmental change created a considerable space for ‘free speech’ and political activity, soon came the ‘Bond Scam’ within a month quite negating the anti-corruption drive that it promised to the people. The main defender from the beginning of this corruption was the PM himself who was politically responsible for the initial and subsequent corrupt practices. This was mostly the reason why the UNF could not obtain a clear majority at the general elections in August 2015, even though at that time the full details and gravity of the corruption were not clear. The people were baffled without a proper alternative.

The arbitrary governance became continued by appointing and continuing to retain the TNA leader as the Leader of the Opposition. This is irrespective of the need to accommodate the representatives of the North in parliamentary processes and governance. The parliamentary democracy became distorted irrespective of what was promised at the elections.

There are three main policy areas that have become controversial and questionable at present:

(1) Foreign policy which apparently negates the necessary requirements of national sovereignty. The government’s sponsoring of the Geneva resolution is one example.

(2) Economic policy that gives priority to the urban sector and the foreign interests neglecting the rural, the poor and the national business classes/enterprises. The rupee has taken a deep dip while the growth is sluggish and stagnating.

(3) Even the reconciliation policy has become controversial without a genuine attempt to build broad national consensus. There are concerns that the present policies might open room for the attempts to negate or reverse the defeat of terrorism and separatism in the country.

Conclusion

It appears that ‘good governance’ has become a misnomer for certain elitist and neoliberal policies primarily carried out by the Prime Minister, Ranil Wckremesinghe (RW) and his cohorts, while in fact negating the standard democratic principles and practices. In addition, RW has become the ‘god father’ of corruption in this government and he is no different to Mahinda Rajapaksa in this respect. The political culture and behaviour of the political leaders and politicians have not changed. They are primarily the same as before January 2015 or even earlier.

It is unfortunate that the people at elections still do not have a viable third alternative or  a ‘middle path’ between the ‘devil and the deep blue sea.’ The LG elections should have been completely different otherwise. However, it is to the credit of the people that they have given a powerful message to the government and everyone. It is very clear that when the voter behaviour is analysed between 2015 and 2018, it constitutes a ‘protest vote’ and not a clear mandate.

The SLFP could have become a third force or a ‘middle path’ if they had left the government before the LG elections and immediately after the Bond Commission revelations. They have however vacillated quite dramatically, detrimental to their own interests. The JVP would not be trusted easily by the people as a third force, because of their violent past.

It may be that the 19th Amendment is a noose around the President’s neck, among other adversarial aspects. He could however have shaken it, with little more guts and determination. He was apparently coerced with ill advice and perhaps with foreign persuasion to do the contrary. Now the ball has rolled into the Parliamentary court to resolve the crisis. Will they do it? And can we trust them? People who voted against the government and others must be waiting in earnest.

Sri Lanka’s Latest Election Weakens the Ruling Alliance

The local government vote has national implications.

By Taylor Dibbert-March 03, 2018

Sri Lanka’s nationwide local government election has produced some troubling results. The Sri Lanka People’s Front, a new party backed by former strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa – who ruled in an increasingly authoritarian fashion from 2005 to 2015 – won convincingly.

The election results are another example of the former president’s continued relevance in the war-torn island nation’s politics. They are also a reminder that the current government has fallen well short of expectations and become increasingly unpopular.

It’s hard to imagine significant chaos occurring at this scale and at such a level following a local election. Yet that’s precisely what happened at the top echelons of government in Colombo. The poll results clearly deepened cracks within the ruling alliance; confusion and ambiguity followed the February 10 vote, as it wasn’t clear that the coalition was staying together.

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Formed after a parliamentary election in 2015, the power-sharing arrangement between President Maithripala Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United National Party has become increasingly tenuous.

The tension within the alliance was quite evident during the recent electoral campaign since the two parties contested separately. The partnership is complicated by the fact that the two parties are historical rivals. What’s more, Sirisena unexpectedly unseated Rajapaksa during the country’s January 2015 presidential election largely due to support from the United National Party – in spite of the fact that Sirisena was a cabinet member of Rajapaksa’s administration and a longtime member of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. (Rajapaksa remains a member of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.)

The local poll has been framed largely as a referendum on the government’s performance. Nevertheless, the fact that Rajapaksa, his acolytes, and others associated with hardline Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism have demanded that parliament be dissolved (claiming that the present administration no longer has a mandate to govern the country) is ludicrous.

In the Sri Lankan press, it was widely reported that Sirisena had asked Wickremesinghe to resign the premiership, and that the prime minister refused to step down.

A continuation of the existing coalition looks like the best possible outcome under the circumstances. The alliance could have fallen apart, and that’s still a possibility before the next round of national elections, which are expected in 2020.

Some analysts and commentators have already proclaimed that, given the local poll results, there’s no chance for major reform in the next two years, even though Sirisena campaigned on an ambitious agenda in 2015.

A bleak assessment about the future of the present administration is more than warranted. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the prospects for deeper reform with the current government have been quite poor for some time, and that any result from this local poll was not going to change that.

Activating reconciliation policy requires governmental unity now 

By Jehan Perera-March 5, 2018, 8:28 pm

The setback suffered by the government at the local government elections has not dissuaded it from following through on its plans for national reconciliation. This is a cause for hope that the battle for national reconciliation through a lasting political solution is not yet lost, although it has got much delayed and the best time for moving forward is now gone. The government recently appointed the members of the Office of Missing Persons and is preparing to pass a new law on enforced disappearances. However, the time frames for visible action may change, with constitutional reform being pushed to the back. The political vulnerability of the government will be greatest with regard to constitutional reform that changes the nature of the state, and brings into focus the long term apprehension regarding the devolution of power.

One of the key themes of the opposition’s campaign at the local government elections was the alleged weakening of the state by the proposed constitutional reforms that sought to replace the current unitary state with a fragmented one, as a federal solution demanded by the Tamil polity has been described. The decades-long claim of Sinhalese nationalists has been that the devolution of power will weaken the central government, and will pave the way for the division of the country. At this election, as at previous ones in which the character of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has loomed large, the clarion call has been for a strong leader who centralize powers once again. In this context it will be politically costly, maybe too costly, for the government to wish to revitalize the constitutional reform process that has been steadily evolving over the past three years.

There is presently a draft framework, albeit one in which there are still alternatives and options given, and in which the answer is not a single given. The leaders of the government need to be willing and able to show a do-or-die type of commitment to resolve the ethnic conflict with its seventy plus years of grievance, trauma and mistrust. That is indeed the only way in which the problem can be solved. But it is unlikely the government will wish to deal with constitutional reform regarding the ethnic conflict at this time given the internal and external travails it faces. The next opportune time for constitutional reform will come after the next round of national elections in late 2019 and early 2020. The best that might be done until such time with regard to constitutional reform will be for the government and those committed to promoting and supporting such change, to continue with the challenging task of public education on controversial political matters.

OMP TASK

The strategy of the government at this time is likely to be more on issues pertaining to the UN Human Rights Council resolution where the focus is on human rights issues than on larger constitutional issues. The ability of the political opposition to prejudice the minds of the people will be less on human rights issues than on constitutional issues. Human rights violations tend to focus on the deeds of individuals whereas constitutional issues focus on matters that concern the country as a whole. In going ahead and appointing the commissioners to the Office of Missing Persons, the government has shown it is prepared to deal with issues of human rights violations, and promoting national reconciliation through addressing the grievances of individuals.

The recent appointment of members of the Office of Missing Persons is a positive example of continuing governmental commitment to the national reconciliation process. The government’s continued commitment to the reconciliation process and meeting the concerns of the victims of human rights violations is also be seen in its bid to pass the legislation pertaining to the crime of enforced disappearances. Many of those who went missing, and continue to be missing, were abducted by armed personnel who came in white vans, which was a branding symbol that struck terror in to all and sundry. The general public has been at the receiving end of this type of human rights violation on several occasions, not only during the period of the LTTE war, but also during the two JVP insurrections. However, it can be expected that those in the opposition, and who fear they will be held accountable for the human rights violations of the past, will seek to conjure up negative images of these new institutions.

The opposition to the OMP came immediately from members of the former government. They did not dispute the fact that there are tens of thousands of missing persons. But they questioned the usefulness of this new body in the context of previous commissions of inquiry into missing persons having submitted their own reports. They sought to undermine the credibility of the OMP by questioning the appointment of NGO leaders who had already taken a stand against perpetrators of war crimes. With their charisma and formidable communication skills, these former government leaders can be extremely effective in taking their negative message to the general population and generating opposition in them too.

POSITIVE MESSAGING

It is therefore important that the negative messaging of the opposition leadership should be countered by positive messaging by government leaders. It is important that they mainstream this counter-messaging without being satisfied with a niche audience, as those who oppose the reconciliation process are catering to the mainstream. Former President Chandrika Kumaratunga is playing a central role in this through the Office of National Unity and Reconciliation that she heads. Last week ONUR launched a national policy on reconciliation and also three short movies by three of Sri Lanka’s most prominent film producers. The film "Thundenek" (also titled Her, Him, the Other in the English language) co-directed by Prasanna Vithanage, Vimukthi Jayasundara, and Asoka Handagama is composed of three inter- connected short stories with three parts. They deal with themes that all Sri Lankans can identify with—loss, memory and inter-connectivity (dependent origination).

The first story in the trilogy is that of a soldier’s fiancé who goes through the agony of awaiting news of her missing love’s fate. There are over 5000 soldiers still missing in action and there will be as many families with unhealed wounds. It helps us to reflect on the plight of the 15000 plus families of the missing from the Tamil community. The second story is about the exploitation that a poor Sinhalese family is subjected to when an LTTE member is reborn to them. It shows us the vulnerability of those who are poor and defenceless. The third story is about a yearning of a Tamil mother who mistakenly sees her missing son in a disabled soldier. It is about the love of parents that never dies. These are sad themes, but each one of them is realistic and could be for real. They enable us to see the other side of life, and the other side of our country’s people and generate empathy within us, as great art would do.

At the launch of the movies the three leaders who led the movement for the change of government in 2015 were present together in a show of unity that has not been since the honeymoon days of their victory. Former President Kumaratunga spoke about obtaining the unity of the three film producers who pooled their talents to create a unique story line. President Sirisena spoke of the fomenting of violence against sections of the people which would not be permitted. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe spoke of the Sri Lankan ideal of uniting the people and the country that has existed from the times of the ancient kings. The small number of national leaders who speak in this manner and inspire all Sri Lankans on public platforms is a matter of concern. This has been seen most recently in Ampara in the case of the mob attacks on Muslims. The leaders of the Muslim and Tamil political parties have condemned these incidents and made calls to the government to take deterrent action. However, the paucity of government and opposition leaders making similar calls is most disturbing. It is to be hoped that these three leaders will resolve to fight for national reconciliation with the same determination that they fought for election victory in 2015 while sorting out the power political problems that divide them. There is less than two years more for this to be done.