{"id":51455,"date":"2019-10-24T11:00:30","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T00:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=51455"},"modified":"2019-10-24T10:27:43","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T23:27:43","slug":"the-end-of-sri-lankan-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-end-of-sri-lankan-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of Sri Lankan democracy?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

One of Asia\u2019s oldest democracies may be in jeopardy. Sri Lanka\u2019s presidential election next month is expected to bring to power another member of the Rajapaksa family, whose affinity for authoritarianism, violence and corruption is well known. While Sri Lanka\u2019s democracy survived the last test\u2014an attempted constitutional coup by outgoing President Maithripala Sirisena a year ago\u2014it may not survive a Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency.<\/p>\n

Gotabaya, as he\u2019s popularly known, is the current frontrunner and previously served as Sri Lanka\u2019s defence chief under his older brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sirisena\u2019s predecessor. Mahinda\u2019s decade-long tenure, which ended in 2015, was characterised by brazen nepotism, with the four Rajapaksa brothers controlling<\/a> many government ministries and about 80% of total public spending. And by steadily expanding presidential powers, Mahinda created a quasi-dictatorship known for human-rights abuses and accused of war crimes.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Mahinda\u2019s pro-China foreign policy allowed for the swift expansion of Chinese influence in Sri Lanka\u2014and rapid growth in Sri Lankan debt<\/a> to China. It was the debt incurred during the last Rajapaksa presidency that forced Sirisena in 2017 to sign away to China<\/a> the Indian Ocean\u2019s most strategic port, Hambantota, along with 6,070 hectares (15,000 acres) of nearby land, on a 99-year lease. This Hong Kong\u2013style concession was modelled on the United Kingdom\u2019s 19th-century colonial imposition on China.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s little reason to doubt that Gotabaya would revive his brother\u2019s corrosive legacy. Simply by becoming president, he could gain immunity from two lawsuits<\/a> pending in US federal court over war crimes<\/a> allegedly committed while he was Sri Lanka\u2019s defence chief. (With the parliament\u2019s restoration of presidential term limits prohibiting Mahinda from running again, Gotabaya renounced<\/a> his US citizenship to become eligible<\/a> to contest the election.)<\/p>\n

Mahinda oversaw the end of Sri Lanka\u2019s brutal 25-year civil war in 2009. But he was no agent of peace. During the war\u2019s final years, thousands<\/a> of people\u2014from aid workers and Tamil civilians to the Rajapaksa family\u2019s political opponents\u2014disappeared or were tortured. And the final military offensive against the Tamil Tiger rebels was, according to the United Nations<\/a>, a \u2018grave assault on the entire regime of international law\u2019, with as many as 40,000 civilians killed<\/a>. According to the wartime military commander, Sarath Fonseka, Gotabaya ordered the summary execution<\/a> of rebel leaders as they surrendered.<\/p>\n

Despite the horrors they inflicted on Sri Lanka\u2019s mostly Hindu Tamil minority, the Rajapaksa brothers became heroes to many among the country\u2019s largely Buddhist Sinhalese majority. That emboldened Mahinda to step up efforts to fashion a mono-ethnic identity for a multiethnic country.<\/p>\n

Renewing this approach, as Gotabaya is sure to do, will hardly ease the sectarian divide that triggered the civil war, let alone more recent tensions between the Sinhalese and Sri Lanka\u2019s Muslims. Those tensions increased sharply in April, when Islamist militants carried out a series of bombings on Easter Sunday<\/a> that killed<\/a> 253 people and wounded hundreds more.<\/p>\n

Not only was this one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in history, it was also the first major Islamist militant attack that Sri Lanka, where Muslims constitute one-tenth of the population, had ever experienced. But that doesn\u2019t mean it was unforeseeable.<\/p>\n

In fact, Sirisena admitted<\/a> that defence and police officials had received an Indian intelligence report warning of an imminent attack and identifying the plotters, but that he had not seen it. Nor did Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe\u2014the target of Sirisena\u2019s attempted coup last October\u2014receive the warning<\/a>. (Sirisena abruptly fired Wickremesinghe and swore in none other than Mahinda Rajapaksa, before dissolving parliament to avoid a challenge. His actions were reversed when the supreme court ruled them unconstitutional.)<\/p>\n

The Rajapaksas have already used the Islamist bombings to fan the flame of Sinhalese nationalism. And Gotabaya has promised his supporters that, if elected, he will strengthen the intelligence services and reintroduce<\/a> surveillance of citizens, in order to crush Islamist extremism. The prospect of an alleged war criminal still wedded to extrajudicial methods becoming president rightly terrifies minority groups, the media and civil-liberties advocates.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s more worrisome news, though. Gotayaba\u2019s camp has also confirmed<\/a> that, as president, he plans to \u2018restore relations\u2019 with China. Given Sri Lanka\u2019s strategic location near the world\u2019s busiest sea lanes, the implications of this pledge extend well beyond the island. Indeed, Sri Lanka could play a pivotal role in the struggle for maritime primacy between China and Indo-Pacific democratic powers (India, the United States, Japan and Australia). China\u2019s \u2018string of pearls\u2019 strategy has been encircling India by securing strategic military and commercial facilities along major Indian Ocean shipping lanes. The Hambantota port, which Chinese President Xi Jinping described as central<\/a> to his Maritime Silk Road project, is a particularly valuable pearl.<\/p>\n

At a time of growing international skepticism toward Xi\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative, the Rajapaksa family\u2019s potential return to power in Sri Lanka is welcome news for China, which hopes to turn the country into a military outpost. But it\u2019s bad news for practically everyone else. A Gotabaya presidency would block already-delayed justice to victims of his brother\u2019s regime, deepen ethnic and religious fault lines, and help China gain strategic supremacy in the Indo-Pacific. Sri Lankan democracy appears more vulnerable than ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of Asia\u2019s oldest democracies may be in jeopardy. 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