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As we evaluate the performance of the Sirisena Presidency and the Wickremesinghe Government during its much vaunted 100-day period, it is only fair to assess this against the realities of what Sri Lanka faced at the close of the last year.

The measure of what was lost
For this was no ordinary transfer of political power. By the time that the January Presidential election came round, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brothers controlled substantial portions of the country’s budget and directly oversaw the Office of the Attorney General and Department of Police. Pivotal state institutions were literally at the beck and call of a ruling family cabal. The private media, civil society, trade unionists and academics opposing these trends had been under heavy attack for many years, some losing their lives in the process and others having to flee the country.

This week, as President Maithripala Sirisena addressed entrepreneurs in Colombo, his earthy injunction that unlike in preceding years, officers of the presidential guard will not be stepping into the waters of Sri Lanka’s rivers, hunting for precious stones was not made purely for colourful effect. This assertion was made as a matter of bare fact. Never quite free from corrupt manipulation at any point after the first few decades following independence in 1948, the state machinery had descended into unbelievably corrupt chaos during the decade of Rajapaksa rule. And the fact that investigations in that regard appear to be plagued by bottlenecks at every turn post-election is part of this systemic problem itself. After a decade of democratic institutions being stripped of their integrity and legitimacy with an unprecedentedly political subordination of the highest Court in the land, this is nothing to be surprised at.

State impunity at the highest point
At another level, the vast amounts of state money used for the Rajapaksa election campaign beggared the imagination. And the state media, which had been co-opted into the propaganda machine went completely beyond the pale in supporting his candidature. So too were Sri Lanka’s minorities, repressed and alienated post-war. In the former war-theatre of the North and East, the Tamil minority remained a subordinate community with their survival ensured only if they acceded to each and every demand put forward by the military administration which effectively ran civil administration in those areas.

This was precisely why President Sirisena’s return of lands to the Sampur war displaced this month was a significant marker that at least, some things are slowly being done right.

Systemic reforms are necessary
The Government is reported to be hastening to establish a domestic inquiry mechanism to inquire into alleged war time atrocities committed in 2009 during the end stages of the fighting between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Undoubtedly, this haste is linked to the forthcoming focus on Sri Lanka at the United Nations Human Rights Council. But systemic problems of impunity cannot be easily tackled by domestic mechanisms compelled only by targeted international pressure. Rather, what is necessary is a long term government effort aimed at dismantling impunity through systemic reform.

These issues are deeply complex. This was most recently evidenced by the furious protests of people in the Wanni and in the North over the rape and murder of a sixteen year old schoolgirl. It is immeasurably tragic that decades after the Krishanti Kumaraswamy case which also concerned the rape and murder of a schoolgirl and regarding which, at least some perpetrators were brought before the Court, we see no end to this pattern.

Typically these cases remain uninvestigated and unprosecuted or are poorly investigated and poorly prosecuted. Medical examination of the victim is either not carried out or is carried out at a stage long after the initial incident, this depriving the medical report of any value as evidence of rape cannot be found. These are the systemic reforms that ought to take place for any substantial change to be seen in the impunity culture in which we remain trapped.

How did the people resist?
The other minority, Sri Lanka’s Muslim community, had also been increasingly terrorized in recent years with their mosques and business places burnt and hate speech frequently being practised against them. The fact that the small but aggressively vocal group of Buddhist monks who operated with state patronage targeting Muslim establishments have now been reduced to caricatures of their former bombastic selves indicated the extent to which they were once immune from the law.

But the greater question in retrospect is, as to how in the face of overwhelming propaganda aimed at convincing Sri Lanka’s Sinhala Buddhist majority that the former President was the savior of the nation, did this political change come about? And make no mistake about it, the defeat of the former President was due to large swathes of the majority deserting the Rajapaksa ranks, not due only owing to the predictable antagonistic vote of the minorities. In short, there was an unmistakable electoral rejection of the abuse of power which the Rajapaksa Presidency had become irreversibly symbolic of.

Making the impossible, possible
So as the people of Sri Lanka astounded themselves and many others in the world by casting out an authoritarian ruling family cabal, we may agree with the cynical point of view that the one common factor uniting divergent opposition forces, was their overriding intent to bring about regime change. But even so, we must also acknowledge that the impossible was indeed made possible.

Nevertheless, holding the feet of those in power to the ‘yahapalanaya’ fire should be the public priority. This was a peoples’ victory in the name of democratic change and not purely regime change as it were. We have at least come to a clear public recognition of the dilemma that rights advocates had been struggling with for decades; namely as to what is the value of the Rule of Law when the Constitution itself is a manifest instrument of injustice and inequality?
That, by itself is no mean achievement. And the enormity of what was achieved in January 2015 must certainly not be forgotten in these palpably uncertain times.