After going round in circles in 2016,

which way(s) will the government go

in 2017?

by Rajan Philips-January 7, 2017

Even the most ardent supporters of the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe

government would have been disappointed with the
governments performance in 2016, and many of them would be
hoping for some positive turnarounds in the New Year that is just
starting. The governments meandering ways over the last two
years are arguably the result of the mismatch between the unique
expectations that were created and confirmed by the 2015
January presidential election, on the one hand, and the peculiar
composition of government that took office after the election, on
the other. After initially emerging as a minority government, the
Sirisena-Wickremasinghe (S-W) government was expanded
following the August 2015 parliamentary election to include a
sizable chunk of the SLFP that was defeated in both the January
and the August elections. This peculiar composition would seem
to have affected the governments ability to satisfactorily meet
the peoples expectations raised at the January 2015 election.

Manifestly, there has been a lack of cohesion and unity among

the governments constituent parts and its leaders - in regard to
specific commitments, their priorities and even the overall
direction(s) of the government. Whether the S-W government can
make positive turnarounds in 2017 and the years following will
depend on whether and how the government addresses these
anomalies. As I am not the first or the only person to raise and
address this question, I will summarize here three seemingly
representative viewpoints on the matter as backdrop to my own
argument.
The first viewpoint is complacent about the prospects of the S-W
government successfully muddling through not only this year but
also its full term in spite of its internal contradictions, but pulled
together by the apparently impregnable determination of
President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe to hang
together and see their term through, no matter what. In this view,
the government will certainly not meet all of its expectations, and
may not meet even many of them, but will achieve whatever that
is possible while forestalling the efforts of the Rajapaksas and the
Joint Opposition to topple the government. The second viewpoint
is combatively opposed to the first, predicts on a weekly basis the
unravelling of the government over this or that matter, and
bullishly expects the return of the Rajapaksas to power. The basis
for this bullishness is not astrology, but something worse: that it is
Sri Lankas turn for staging its own version of Brexit and
Trumpism. The stupidity of this viewpoint notwithstanding, we
should take note of it because it does exist and is fuelled by that
most inexhaustible energy source in politics: Ignorance.
The third viewpoint falls between the first two, and is more
focussed on the internal workings, or non-working, of the S-W
government. Even though the President and the Prime Minister
are not at all antagonistic to each other and are fully committed
to preserving their personally cordial political partnership, they

seem to avoid confronting difficult issues together until they

become unavoidable. This creates the space for the UNP and the
SLFP factions in the cabinet to pull in different directions, or work
at cross-purposes, with the SLFP playing the junior partner and
acting mischievously without responsibility, and leaving the UNP
as the senior partner sulking and hand-wringing. It is also the
apparent thinking in UNP circles that the government bureaucracy
has become incorrigibly corrupt and inefficient at all levels; and
hence the reliance on a cabal of individual ministers and a coterie
of doddering old outside advisors to make and implement
decisions, now culminating in the controversial Development
(Special Provisions) Bill. Add to all this, the hidden and not so
hidden links the Rajapaksas have to both the UNP and the SLFP
factions in the cabinet and the government. The government as a
whole is blatantly double-faced: attack the Rajapaksas politically
for public consumption, but protect them legally as friends in
need and friends indeed.

Expectations and Contestations

Historically, the 2015 presidential election was quite different
from Sri Lankas earlier elections in that the economic question,
usually involving unemployment and cost-of-living, was not the
central issue. Absent also was the strong ideological (left vs right)
divide that was the touchstone of the 1970, 1977, and even the
1994 elections. The 2015 presidential election was everything
about defeating an incumbent government over its abuse of
power and family bandyism, and on account of widespread
allegations of government corruption. The people by and large
were disgusted with the spread of crony corruption and family
bandyism that the Rajapaksas had become notorious for in their
last five years in office. The people wanted not only a formal

change in government, but also a real change in the style and

substance of governance.

This desideratum was expressed through the slogans: good

governance and yahapalanaya. The slogans were not empty
rhetoric. They represented the peoples unmistakable expectation
of the new government - to rapidly investigate the serious
allegations of corruption against the previous government, indict
those accused of corruption in accordance with the law, and to
demonstrably eliminate and avoid any form of corruption in
future. Encompassing these expectations was the concerted
campaign to abolish the presidential system altogether or, at the
least, significantly trim down the presidential powers especially
those that were unconscionably grabbed by the Rajapaksa regime
through the 18th Amendment.
The 2015 January election was also historic for another reason.
For the first time in Sri Lankas electoral history, the principal
Tamil political party, the TNA, and the main parties representing
the Muslims were in alliance with the main political parties of the
Sinhalese the UNP, the breakaway section of the SLFP led by
Maithripala Sirisena with the support of Chandrika Kumaratunga,
the JVP and the JHU. They were all part of the common opposition
united in spearheading the peoples desire for a change in
government. This electoral unity was also symptomatic of a broad
expectation that with a new government in place there would be a
fundamental change in the approach to achieving national
reconciliation. But beneath this overarching consensus, specific
details about national reconciliation carried different meanings,
emphases and endorsements in different parts of the country and
among different sections of the population.

There were three broad expectations among the Tamils in regard

to national reconciliation and each one of them generated a
different response among others. First was the humanitarian
expectation that the new government would provide systematic
humanitarian relief and set up the foundation for empowering
war-affected people to restore normalcy in their own areas. The
second expectation was in regard to war crimes investigation.
While it is true that all accredited and self-accredited Tamil
organizations in Sri Lanka and overseas have been uniformly
voluble in regard to war-crimes investigation, it may not be
equally true that every Tamil living in the northern and eastern
provinces gives equal importance to humanitarian redress and
war crimes investigation. Equally as well, the Tamil expectations
over war crimes investigation are highly contested by significant
sections of the Sinhalese people. And it is the question over war
crimes that gave cause to western governments to slap the
Rajapaksa government with a hostile UNHRC resolution in
Geneva.
A third area of expectations among the Tamils, especially the TNA,
was in regard to enhancing and streamlining the powers and
functions of provincial governments. While the Thirteenth
Amendment provided the framework for power sharing between
Colombo and the provinces, its implementation in general and
particularly in the northern and eastern provinces has been far
from satisfactory. At the same time, there was acknowledgement
that changes to the provincial system of government should
address not only Tamil concerns, but also the concerns of the
Muslims and the Sinhalese in the Eastern Province and those of
the Plantation Tamils in the Central Province.
Another unique aspect of the January 2015 presidential election
was the heightened emphasis on environmental protection and
the manifestation of professional frustrations over technically
amateurish and financially questionable methods used by the

Rajapaksa government in identifying and selecting

infrastructure/development projects and awarding contracts for
their implementation. During the election campaign, specific
projects such as the Port City project were singled out by
environmental stakeholders for significant reconsideration or
outright cancellation by the new government. Similarly, extensive
information was made available by professional experts on the
cost-overruns associated with highway projects.
Exposing and ending corruption, enabling good governance,
eliminating the insufferable powers of the presidency, embarking
on a steady path towards national reconciliation, and enforcing
environmental protection and professional standards in selecting
and implementing mega projects these then were the main
expectations that made the January 2015 presidential election a
uniquely historic election both in regard to the circumstances in
which the election was held and in regard to the consequences
that have flowed and could (yet) flow from it. These expectations
should now be the metrics, or yardstick, for assessing the S-W
governments performance so far and for indicating the
possibilities ahead.

Government composition
and performance
Before making any assessment, we should also note that just as
the 2015 election was unprecedented in regard to issues and
expectations it was also unlike any other in the formation of
electoral alliances and in the formation of government after an
election. While the common opposition parties in January 2015

were united and single minded in their goal of defeating President

Rajapaksa in the presidential election, they did not by any
measure constitute a political alliance like the CommonProgramme driven United Front of 1970, the banyan tree of a
political organization that was the UNP in 1977, or the aspirational
and charismatically led (by Chandrika Kumaratunga) Peoples
Alliance movement of 1994. I would note that the 1988 and 2005
presidential elections were oddities, in that they were staged
successions in government (with the LTTE playing its tilting hand
in both) and not electoral victories from the opposition.
There was no unanimous agreement among common opposition
parties in 2015 on a number of the expectations I have been
highlighting. For example, there was no agreement over the
abolishment of the presidency, or the undertaking of war crimes
investigation. But there was absolute unanimity in regard to
exposing and ending corruption in government. The Prime
Minister also went on record assuring that the Port City project will
be abandoned. The 100-Day Program that was the manifesto of
the Common Opposition presidential candidate Maithripala
Sirisena included specific initiatives for enabling good
governance. Although, national reconciliation did not figure
prominently in the election campaign, there was no mistaking the
positive understanding the TNA had with almost every one of the
opposition parties.

Compounding this lack of agreement on specific expectations was

the peculiar composition of the S-W government. Although the
January 2015 election was only a presidential election, the first
act of Maithripala Sirisena as new President was to appoint Ranil
Wickremesinghe, the then Leader of the Opposition, as Prime
Minister. Thus a new minority-UNP government was formed,
quietly displacing the then existing SLFP-majority government.

Although this switch involving the pre-election government and

opposition parties was rather unconventional, it was very much in
keeping with the peoples verdict in the presidential election. The
switch would have become even more validated if the new
government had kept its focus upon delivering on the specific
expectations that emerged during the campaign.
Instead, the President and the Prime Minister became focussed on
expanding the size of the government in parliament rather than
delivering on what the people were expecting them to do. The
unexpected transfer of the leadership of the SLFP from Mahinda
Rajapaksa to Maithripala Sirisena created many problems for the
functioning of the new government without solving any of the
problems facing the SLFP. It became quite clear that this
eventuality had not been anticipated or thought through by the
common opposition leaders, especially the so called troika of
Chandrika Kumaratunga, Ranil Wickremesinghe and Maithripala
Sirisena. The August 2015 parliamentary election, which led to
the formation of the so called national-unity government of the
UNP and a significant section of the SLFP, further widened the gap
between the S-W government and the peoples expectations as
expressed in the January presidential election. How do we explain
this seemingly bizarre and surreal gap?

Missteps and Next Steps

One clue to explaining the gap is in assessing how single minded
were the President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe in
exposing and ending corruption in government and in laying the
foundation for good governance? Looked at it this way, the gap is
really between the unmistakable clarity of the peoples principal
expectation and the lack of single mindedness on the part of the

two leaders to keep faith with that expectation. Of the two

leaders, it could be said that President Sirisena given his defection
from the Rajapaksa regime had the stronger motivation to be
single minded on the matter of exposing corruption and
abolishing the presidential system. But after literally a flying start,
the new President got bogged down in all the tomfooleries of SLFP
parliamentarians who wanted to two-time between the new
president and their old boss.
Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, on the other hand, is more
complicated for easy deciphering. Acclaimed for his personal
honesty, intelligence as well as his stubborn streak, he is also
known to frustrate even his admirers by his apparent reluctance
to hold others in the government and cabinet to the same
standards of honesty and probity that he is known for. This was a
criticism against him during his Premiership of 2001-2004, and
the same criticism has surfaced again now, the intervening 2015
presidential election notwithstanding. It may be that he considers
government corruption a fact of Sri Lankan political life and that
his energies could be better utilized to serve the people by
boosting economic development rather than policing incorrigible
colleagues. It would also seem that he has lost faith in the
behemoth of a government bureaucracy to do anything and so his
preference to rely on personals confidantes to run the
government.
Whatever justification such thinking might have in normal times, I
would respectfully suggest that it has no justification in the
extraordinary circumstances of the January 2015 presidential
election and its expectations. Even though the election was not
about the economy as I have been suggesting, the Prime
Minister as is his wont, it must be said in fairness, did project his
economic vision during the presidential election campaign. It was
also included in the 100-Day program. The PMs emphasis on the
economy figured even more prominently in the August

parliamentary election. The UNP/UNF Manifesto, "New Country in

60 Days", projected a five-point plan: Strengthening the Economy;
Eradication of Bribery and Corruption; Establishing Freedom and
Democracy; Investment for Infrastructure Development; and
Education.

And the PM went further and called the 60-Day promise, not a
manifesto but a Development Plan presented to receive the
peoples mandate. This was a problematic stretch then and it has
remained problematic since. For the PM now uses this mandate,
which he rhapsodizes as the mandate to create a million jobs, to
lash out at even constructive critics who pick on the devilish
details of government actions on every major file - free trade with
every country, resurrecting the Port City, re-leasing Hambantota,
launching the Megapolois, and so on.
Prof. Kumar David, if I remember right, tried to scale down the
PMs ambitious target: forget one million jobs; even 1000 of them
in key productive areas would be something. To the point of this
article, the peoples expectations are not so much about jobs, one
million or one thousand, but about not 100, not 10, but at least
one solitary case involving significant government corruption that
is successfully tried in court. Everyone is still waiting, and after
two years in making some of the cabinet ministers are reportedly
considering Special Commissions for trying corruption cases. At
the governments snail pace on these matters, it could be another
two years before any such commission came into operation.
The same goes for trying to by-pass government bureaucracy by
outsourcing decision making and enacting special legislations for
fast-tracking development approvals. For this approach is a clear
repudiation of the good governance expectations and promises.

There will be no good governance without the hard work of

reforming, restructuring and streamlining the bureaucracy. What
is the point in giving pay hikes and perks to government staffers
and MPs if they cannot be relied upon and trained to do a job of
work? Additionally, the UNPs economic plan based on Western
Province Megapolis and a plethora (89 according to the
Development Plan) of regional zones, has no place in it for
Provincial Councils. Why have these, if the entire development is
going to be delivered through a Super Ministry in Colombo? How
is this different from what Basil Rajapaksa was getting ready to do
before January 2015, except the presumption that this time it
would be cleaner hands?
The governments biggest misstep, certainly in hindsight even
though it may not have been apparent to many people when it
started, has been its monkeying with the Central Bank. And the
government does not seem to have learnt anything from that
experience going by the cheap put shots the Prime Minster and
the Finance Minister have been taking at the new Governor of the
Central Bank after stubbornly trying to protect the disgraced
former Governor from being discontinued at the end of his limited
term. When the controversy started, I remember being startled by
the comment of one of UNPs promisisng young hopes, that the
government was not concerned about the fuss over the then
governor and the bond scam because it was only a Colombo fuss
that had no reception outside the capital. Later, it apparently
transpired among UNPers that the bank scandal cost them the
majority government in August 2015. From the standpoint of the
January 2015 election, the Central Bank fiasco was a total and
absolute betrayal of what the people were expecting from the S-W
government and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe.
The second and the third missteps together were the renomination of proven degenerates from among both the UNP and
the SLFP MPs to run as candidates in the August 2015 election,

and the appointment of more than half them to the Rajapaksasized cabinet after the election. In fairness, the President and the
Prime Minister did offer some explanation for these shortcomings
at the Ravaya anniversary celebration. But the question is
whether the two leaders even jointly talked about doing things
differently in light of the peoples expectations in January 2015.
The unwieldy size of the cabinet is also a contributor to the
widening gap between the peoples expectations and the
government composition. The cabinet needs to be big enough for
the government to have close to a two-thirds majority, but the
government has so far passed nothing requiring the special
majority except for the 19th Amendment and the two budgets,
although budgets do not require special majorities.
In other areas, the constitution, electoral reform and national
reconciliation, government leaders have been positive and
supportive of progressive changes, but there is no certainty as to
how much of these changes will eventually be legislated and
implemented. On contentious issues, the government speaks
through multiple voices and sends multiple signals. Even cabinet
ministers cavalierly make conflicting public statements. Earlier
this week, the Local Government and Provincial Council Minister
made a public show of rejecting the report on the delimitation of
local government constituencies because all the members of the
delimitation committee apparently had not signed on to it. And on
Friday, the Minister of Justice casually trashed the entire report of
the Constitutional Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms on the
grounds that the Task Force included NGOs. In other words, the
government of National Unity has no internal unity. And there is
as much to be reconciled inside the government, as there is in the
country at large.
To end on the historical note that I started with, despite the lack
of internal unity and cohesion, the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe
government is not weighed down by the powerful political and

personality differences that marred the 1970-77 United Front

Government, or the hemorrhaging succession struggles that
afflicted the 1977-1994 UNP government. President Sirsiena and
Prime Minister Wickremesinghe have no internal challengers and
have all the necessary control over government members. The
question is how single-mindedly committed are they to marshal
their government forces to deliver on the hopes and expectations
that the people placed on them in the January 2015 presidential
election.
Posted by Thavam