Sri Lanka Election Reinforces Sinhala Nationalism

By Henry Srebrnik, [Monkton, NB] Times & Transcript

 

Gotabaya Rajapaksa of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) won Sri Lanka’s presidential election on Nov. 16, with 52 per cent of the votes, beating Sajith Premadasa of the United National Party, who came second with 42 per cent. A total of 35 candidates were vying for votes.

Rajapaksa is the younger brother of Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was president from 2005-2015, during the final victory over the Tamil Tigers in 2009, ending a vicious civil war. Mahinda could not contest the 2019 election due to Sri Lanka’s presidential term limits.

Even though he is the son of a former president who was assassinated by Tamil rebels in 1993, Premadasa had strong support in minority Muslim and Tamil areas but a poor showing in larger Sinhalese constituencies. The two minorities together form about 22 per cent of Sri Lanka’s 21 million people.

Defeated in 2015 by a coalition led by Sirisena, who promised to reform the economy and break with Sri Lanka's history of human rights abuses, nepotism and corruption, the Rajapaksas are back in power, winning on the basis of ethnicity and religion.

Incumbent Maithripala Sirisena chose not to run again. after coming under criticism following the Easter Sunday bombings earlier this year.

The attack by Islamic State group-linked militants in April, which targeted churches and high-end hotels across the island, left at least 269 people dead. It devastated the tourism industry.

Many Sri Lankans believed the government had failed to protect them.The blasts led to riots targeting the island’s Muslims, mainly led by right-wing Sinhala Buddhist leaders.

The Rajapaksas are a political clan from Hambantota, in the south of the island. Mahinda followed his father into politics in the left-leaning, Sinhala-nationalist SLFP in the early 1970s.

In 2006, the Rajapaksa government launched a massive military offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist movement seeking to establish an independent state for Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority in the north and east of the country.

Within three years, the Tamil Tigers were defeated, ending nearly three decades of civil war in which more than 100,000 people are estimated to have died.

Mahinda and Gotabaya, who was defence secretary at the time, have had to deal with allegations that soldiers under their oversight committed war crimes, including the summary execution of surrendering fighters.

Disappearances continued into the years after the war ended, when businessmen, journalists and activists seen as opponents of the Rajapaksas were rounded up and never seen again.

Rajapaksa family members came to dominate many institutions of power and public offices. By one conservative estimate, Mahinda and two brothers controlled over 50 per cent of the national budget.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory may escalate ethnic tensions. In the lead up to the election, he said that he would not honour a United Nations resolution to investigate alleged abuses that occurred during the civil war.

He also announced he will appoint his brother Mahinda as prime minister. The election results have shown how polarised this country is.

The result is not good news for India. Rajapaksa plans to restore good relations with Sri Lanka’s top lender, China, while Premadasa was seen as leaning towards India and the United States.