Sunday Times 2
Foreign hand in local elections: The rhetoric and reality
In today’s globalised world, Sri Lanka’s presidential election scheduled for January 8 will definitely have its own degree of foreign involvement. The foreign press will cover the event. Foreign election observers may come. The issue of concern is whether any foreign involvement that may occur would inhibit or enhance the prospects for a free and fair election.
The Rajapaksa administration insists that the world is paying a great deal of attention to Sri Lanka’s elections for the wrong reasons. A senior cabinet minister has publicly declared that there is an “international conspiracy” to control the election and produce an outcome that these unnamed conspirators would like to see. It is not too difficult to guess at which countries the finger is being pointed.
Sri Lanka is a relatively small country with an economy that accounts for only about one tenth of one percent of global output and about one fifth of one percent of the world’s exports. It is not an oil exporter. Nevertheless the country has attracted the world’s attention for both good and bad reasons. Its location in the Indian Ocean on a major East-West shipping route is one major reason. The location is of strategic importance to the security of India. After World War II, the world was initially impressed with Sri Lanka’s functioning democracy, and its successful social welfare polices, and later disappointed with its protracted civil war.
File pic of a poster campaign: At least about Rs. 10,000m ($75m) is likely to be spent for the upcoming presidential election campaign
India and China
In the past 65 years, in general, Sri Lanka has had good relations with the two Asian giants, India and China. Both India and Sri Lanka were prominent members of the Non-Aligned Movement. The SLFP governments have been especially close to China. The three SLFP governments that a member of the Bandaranaike family headed have had excellent relations with Delhi. Relations with India have been somewhat strained under President Rajapaksa, especially after the war ended in 2009.
Tamil Nadu
Sri Lanka has to come to terms with the reality of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu that has the power to influence, make or break Colombo’s relations with Delhi. Jayalalitha’s AIADMK won 37 of the 39 seats in Tamil Nadu in the parliamentary elections in April this year. However, her hopes of holding the balance of power in Delhi were dashed because Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP won an absolute majority of 282 seats in the Lok Sabha. Thus minus the discomfiture of Tamil Nadu political leaders breathing down his neck, Modi now has the opportunity to formulate a more flexible or less constrained policy towards Sri Lanka.
But that also gives Delhi a freer hand to deal with Colombo in regard to India’s broader regional and global interests. In particular Colombo comes under pressure to balance and nuance its policy towards India and China. India’s publicly expressed concern over the recent docking of Chinese submarines in Colombo is an example. India’s National Security Adviser is scheduled to meet with President Rajapaksa and leaders of the Common Opposition early this week to discuss India’s national security concerns including the role that China is playing in Sri Lanka
Under Modi, India is likely to focus more on economic growth than on foreign policy. However, India is also conscious of the aspirations of its Asian rival China that requires the former to project its diplomatic and military strength in the region as a counter. India is expanding its relations with East Asian countries. It has also moved closer to the United States to counterbalance Chinese power. President Obama will be the chief guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations in January. Indian policy in Asia is likely to adjust to geopolitical realities engendered by the American “Pivot to Asia” designed to deal with a rising China. Sri Lanka’s own relations with both India and China must be viewed in the above context.
Chinese aid
Before 2000, China was a relatively minor donor to Sri Lanka and other developing countries. China launched an aggressive programme to provide loan assistance to the developing world after about 2000. The Rajapaksa regime has been one beneficiary of this policy. For example, in 2013, Sri Lanka borrowed Rs. 123,000m from China and Rs. 25,000m from India, both amounts net of repayments. The amount borrowed from China is almost five times more than that from India. Chinese funded high profile projects include Norochcholai Coal Power Plant ($450m), Hambantota Port ($361m) and Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport ($200m).
Unlike certain western donors that give grant aid, China and India mostly give tied loans to buy Chinese and Indian goods as the case may be. That largely explains why India led the way in 2013 as Sri Lanka’s main source of imports accounting for 17.6% of the total, closely followed by China with 16.4%.
Maritime Silk Route
China also has an interest in Sri Lanka, as an important port of call on the so-called “Maritime Silk Route” that China is reportedly keen to develop so as to ensure for itself a secure shipping lane linking East Asia and the East Coast of Africa and Europe via the Mediterranean. Some also describe the Hambantota Port as a part of a series of ports referred to as the “String of Pearls” built in Asia and the Middle East with Chinese funds.
Human Rights
In 2013, European Union countries took 31.5% of our exports followed by the US with 24%. India was a distant third with 5.2%. China’s share was a mere 1.3%. While aid from China is tied to imports from that country, it is not tied to human rights conditions. The West, in contrast, is increasingly tying its aid and trade to human rights conditions. Scandinavian countries, for example, no longer provide aid to major violators of human rights. The EU has become increasingly strict with countries that they consider are egregious human rights violators. The EU confirmed the suspension of Sri Lanka’s entitlement to its Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) Plus tariff concessions from August 2010.
Sri Lanka can afford to ignore the West in so far as foreign concessionary loans go because China has become a willing lender sans preconditions.
Western conspiracy
President Rajapaksa is making a serious bid to make the issue of human rights a central factor in the current election campaign though not from the perspective of good governance and rule of law. Rather it appears that his strategy is to use craftily this issue to resuscitate and revitalise his sagging domestic electoral support base. The Rajapaksa campaign is seeking to present the human rights issue to the electorate as part of a wider international conspiracy to undermine Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. The UNHRC and its ongoing inquiry on Sri Lanka’s alleged human rights abuses at the tail end of the war are cited as a concrete manifestation of this so-called conspiracy. The government’s strategy is to tarnish and undermine the opposition by tainting the latter by association with the alleged conspiracy.
Where major European countries are concerned the issue is far from settled. Just last week the UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee urged the Cameron government to consider “all possible options” including withdrawal of trade concessions to persuade Sri Lanka to allow access to investigators from the UNHRC.
The Rajapaksa campaign could, however, face two major credibility problems in respect of its Western conspiracy theory which might backfire. First, the JHU that is now part of the common opposition has impeccable Buddhist-nationalist credentials. It is opposing the government on the latter’s poor record on good governance.
Second, the Rajapaksa campaign sees the visit of Pope Francis to Sri Lanka in mid- January as a plus for the President’s popularity with the 1.2m Catholics of Sri Lanka. Linking the Papal visit to the election is another dimension of the internationalisation of the domestic election. In trying to gain electoral advantage from the visit, Rajapaksa runs the risk of jeopardising it because the Vatican has a policy of avoiding Papal visits that are too close to local elections.
Funding
There are no laws in Sri Lanka to regulate presidential campaign finance. This allows for unlimited and unregulated local and foreign funding.
Modern election campaigns are expensive. A 30 second TV spot in prime time on a popular privately owned Sinhala channel in the current election cycle is likely to cost around Rs. 50,000. A leader of an opposition party publicly claimed that the display of a large cutout costs about Rs. 500,000. At the rate of about five per electorate the cost for 1,000 cut outs to cover the entire island would be Rs. 500m ($ 3.8m). Printers quote around Rs. 75,000 to print 10,000 colour posters.
One of the authors of this article in research that he did on the 1994 parliamentary elections estimated that the candidates spent a total of about Rs. 700m (US $14m) for campaign work. Between 1994 and 2014 prices have increased five-fold. The country’s per capita income in 2013 was $3,280; about five times the figure of $665 in 1994. Adjusting for inflation, and taking into account the larger size of the national electorate, higher income, the enhanced role of the electronic media in publicity and other such factors that impact on campaign finance, it is likely that the 2015 presidential election campaign would cost at least about Rs. 10,000m ($75m) if not more. It is no surprise that such vast sums create an opportunity for foreign interests to finance local election campaigns and buy influence.
Image
In the 1950s and 1960s Sri Lanka had a positive global image as a decent and peaceful democratic country that could serve as a model for other postcolonial states. The image deepened and became stronger when scholars began to cite Sri Lanka as a rare example of a low-income country that had managed to produce remarkably good results in the spheres of education and health. Buddhism that underpinned the island’s culture was seen as a catalyst for good.
This image began to change starting with the first JVP insurrection in 1971. And it suffered irreparable damage with the events of the “Black July” of 1983. The 26 years of civil war that followed caused the country to suffer a negative international image. Instead of being the model democracy, Sri Lanka now began to be cited as a model to be avoided at all cost. From that perspective the 2015 election could be seen as a battle not only to rebuild a war-battered broken society but also as a battle to re-make the country’s international image.
Conclusion
Sri Lanka’s elections have seldom, if ever, been purely local affairs. The impending presidential election is no exception. In the post-war context, the forthcoming election will likely generate even more international interest than usual.
Since the war ended in 2009 both India and China, have invested heavily in Sri Lanka both as donors and as economic partners and hence they will watch closely our elections. EU member states including the UK may not be as concerned directly but will, on account of certain of their domestic constituencies, take more than a passing interest.
The more discerning among the Sri Lankan voters will bear in mind that our livelihood depends on some of these latter countries as we export tea, apparel and other products to their markets and also because our tourist industry benefits from them. Hence what countries outside our shores, especially those with greater economic resources, think about our politics and us do matter in the long run as we live in an ever increasingly inter-dependent world. Local elections, even in relatively small countries such as Sri Lanka, are now globalised.