Election Campaign: Prevent Polarisation
By Jayadeva Uyangoda
Sri Lanka’s new presidential election campaign is slowly shaping up. It will heat up
only after the nominations are officially submitted which is likely to happen during the
next few weeks.
Unless there are separate Tamil or Muslim candidates backed respectively by main
Tamil and Muslim political formations, the real contest will gravitate around the two
principal candidates, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.
If there is a separate JVP candidate, in addition to adding a lot of colour to the
election campaign, it will hurt Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse’s chances.
Meanwhile, a separate JHU candidate is unlikely to have an impact on the outcome
of the election this time around. The JHU has largely lost its glamour among the
Sinhalese middle class voters in and around Colombo. The candidate who can forge
the broadest ethnic and social alliance will have the greatest chance to win.
I make these sweeping statements at the risk, or rather for the fun, of further
irritating my regular detractors. I am delighted that this column inspires three or four
other columnists to respond to me quite intensely although their responses are not
always presented in the spirit of democratic civility. That to me is a part of the
occupational hazard of being an advocate of political moderation in a society ripped
apart by conflict, violence, hatred and envy.
Campaigns
To get back to my main theme, election campaigns in Sri Lanka have almost
regularly contributed to the polarization of the public debate on critical issues in a
manner that has only aggravated the multiple crises in our society.
The approach to the ethnic conflict in general and the strategy to engage with the
LTTE have been the most critical issues that have repeatedly polarised the debate.
As it often happened, the two main parties/alliances, the SLFP/PA/UPFA and
UNP/UNF, have in the past played the game of appealing to extreme nationalist
sentiments of the Sinhalese electorate on the premise that arousing the fears and
anxieties of the Sinhalese nationalist mind would bring in votes and electoral victory.
The UNP strategy at the Presidential election in November 1994 was exactly that and
it did not quite work. The PA repeated that strategy in the December 2001
parliamentary election and failed.
In April 2004, the UPFA succeeded in winning the election through an intense
campaign of polarizing the electorate. The UPFA strategy at that parliamentary
election was to frame the ethnic conflict and peace process in pro- and anti-LTTE
terms and present to the electorate a black-and-white option.
At the forthcoming Presidential election too, the risk of such polarisation looms large.
The necessary ingredients for reducing the electoral options in stark terms of black-
and-white are easily available at present. The peace process between the
government and the LTTE is at a standstill. In the midst of escalating violence, the
cease-fire agreement is being observed more in the breach.
The LTTE is identified as the main culprit of most of the breaches. The Kadirgamar
assassination occurred only the other day. Against this background, anti-LTTE
sentiments are rampant in Sinhalese society. Norway has re-emerged as the
whipping boy for some leading politicians. In an age of economic globalisation and
globalised domestic peace, some may see the political utility of xenophobia during
an election.
The JVP and JHU appear to frame their political campaigns and slogans in an
exclusively anti-LTTE position. This is where Prime Minister Rajapakse’s campaign
might run the risk of appropriating, or capitulating before, the JVP-JHU strategy of
polarisation. Perhaps, the Prime Minister is aware of the risk. That may be the
reason why he is reported to have told the Associated Press the other day that he
was willing even to walk the extra mile for peace, even meeting the LTTE leader in
the Vanni.
A Broad Framework
Despite pressures from their potential alliance partners, the two principal candidates
– Rajapakse and Wickremesinghe – need to define a broad framework of consensus
to address the challenge of advancing the peace process in difficult times.
They should use the election campaign to put before the electorate that framework
which the winner can actually implement. This is where the actors in democratic civil
society can meaningfully intervene in promoting ideas and dialogue.
At least there are four ‘commitments’ that the two main candidates should ideally
make. Strengthening the cease-fire agreement and its proper implementation in
order to prevent further escalation of violence, including political killings, is the first.
The second is maintaining the state’s commitment to finding a political solution to the
ethnic conflict in a framework of power sharing.
The Oslo Communiqué and the Tokyo Declaration have already set out the broad
principles as well as an outline of a ‘road map’ to this end. Incidentally, both the UNF
and UPFA governments have accepted these principles.
The need now is to reiterate that commitment during the election campaign. The
third involves broadening and making inclusive the negotiation process to ensure
the participation of all communities who should be co-owners of the process towards
the settlement as well as the negotiated settlement itself. The fourth commitment is
to continue the reconstruction efforts in areas affected both by the war and the
tsunami without any discrimination.
The candidates could obviously have their distinct approaches with varied nuances
within this broad framework. For example, on the question of continuing political
engagement with the LTTE, the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition might
have their own strategies, timetables and tactical preferences. The question of how
to strengthen the CFA and implement it with accountability might also be one about
which the two main Presidential aspirants may have distinct and different
approaches.
The point is that let the differences between them emerge on those finer points while
they agree on the basic framework.
Election campaigns in Sri Lanka have been occasions for politicians and their
publicists to utterly simplify critical public issues, distort policy priorities and commit
the state to disastrous policy options.
The ethnic question has suffered this fate for too many years, at too many election
campaigns. Perhaps, Sri Lanka’s democratic civil society should now assert itself to
arrest this process by making constructive interventions with leading Presidential
candidates. Election campaign needs to be transformed into occasions for serious
public engagement with critical policy and political issues.
Persuading the main candidates to make commitments towards a broad framework
of principles on the ethnic conflict, the peace process, negotiations, human rights
and political reforms are now necessary. Perhaps, a civil society agenda for peace
and democratic reforms needs to be worked out as the basis of dialogue for
candidates and their parties.
[Courtesy: Daily Mirror]