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The curse of the executive presidency
View(s):Just as much as Premadasa played the ‘common man’ card effectively, Rajapaksa was happy to be cast in the role of the outsider from Giruwapaththuwa with the trademark maroon shawl that signified the ‘kurahan’ (finger millet) that grew in abundance in the region.
The Kurahan shawl is losing its shine: The 'Rajapaksas Go Home' cry is getting louder by the day
Rajapaksa didn’t mind being classed with the ‘baiyas’ or rustic villagers as opposed to the ‘toiyas’ or elite snobs because the former easily outnumbered the latter and had more votes. In reality, he was neither. Though not raised within the leafy avenues of Cinnamon Gardens, he too was a scion of a well-established, prominent family from Beliatte that was political royalty in the Deep South.
If winning the war was Mahinda Rajapaksa’s greatest achievement, it also led to his undoing. As public adulation grew and he swept into power for a second term with a record majority and his initials, MR, came to be interpreted as ‘maha rajaaneni’, he not only ruled but also reigned, a modern day Shah of Iran believing in his own political invincibility.
The realisation that he was not immune from a backlash from the masses would have dawned on him only on the morning of January 9, 2015, when the results of the presidential election began trickling in, with the unfancied Maithripala Sirisena defeating him and sending him packing to Medamulana in a helicopter hastily arranged by incoming Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Unfortunately for Sri Lanka and fortunately for the Rajapaksas, Sirisena fluffed his lines, so too did Wickremesinghe and the ‘Yahapalanaya’ drama did not go according to script. The Rajapaksas were waiting to pounce which they did, in late 2019. By then the 19th Amendment was in place and Mahinda Rajapaksa couldn’t run again for President for what would have otherwise been a record fourth attempt. The SLFP had been taken over by Sirisena but Basil Rajapaksa had cleverly created the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) with the ‘pohottuwa’ as its symbol.
The SLPP did not look around for the next best candidate. They searched instead for the next best Rajapaksa. Chamal was available but thought to be not charismatic enough for a bruising contest. Basil did not want to renounce his United States citizenship. Namal, then thirty-three years of age, was two years shy of the then constitutional age limit of thirty-five years.
Enter Retired Lieutenant Colonel Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa; like Barkis, he was willin’. He had the advantage of being Defence Secretary during the decisive phase of the Eelam War. There was some controversy around his American citizenship status. Chamal was ready as the ‘spare wheel’, if Gotabaya was disqualified at any stage. As it turned out, that was not necessary. At the poll, Gotabaya Rajapaksa won a resounding victory, polling the now infamous ‘69 lakhs’ of votes.
Barely a few months into his Presidency, Rajapaksa II was confronted with the Corona virus pandemic. Initially, he ordered a series of lockdowns that kept the country safe, leading to the now much mocked remark, “api thamai hondatama keruwe” or “it is we who did it the best”. Later on, however, Rajapaksa preferred the advice of close business associates and the military as opposed to the medical fraternity and re-opened Sri Lanka. That led to a surge of cases and deaths. A well-coordinated immunisation drive, again using the military, meant that deaths due to the illness remained relatively low and saved him from greater embarrassment.
By then Gotabaya Rajapaksa had tightened his grip on power. The August 2020 general election gave him a near two-thirds majority in Parliament. With a bit of coaxing and coercing, a two-thirds majority was fashioned and the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, conferring even greater powers on the Executive President sailed through Parliament, with six votes more than the 150 required.
That also brought into Parliament, Basil Rajapaksa, as the 20th Amendment allowed dual citizens to enter Parliament. He was entrusted the key Finance portfolio (as opposed to the Economic Development portfolio he held under Mahinda Rajapaksa), bringing the number of Rajapaksas in the Cabinet to five.
Beginning of the decline
It is difficult to define the exact point in time when this Rajapaksa Presidency began its decline, but tell-tale signs soon emerged. Many state institutions were placed under the purview of retired military officers, several with detrimental outcomes. The much hyped ‘Viyath Maga’ turned out to be an assortment of professionals, some hell bent on obtaining the perks and privileges of power rather than providing a scholarly input into the workings of government.
With no political base of his own, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was reliant on brothers Mahinda and Basil to deliver the numbers in Parliament. That they did but they came in the form of the same old, tired faces that the masses had seen for decades, many of them encumbered by allegations of corruption pending in court.
When each of those was dropped by the Attorney General and the accused discharged from proceedings, when convicted murderer Duminda Silva who was the MP monitoring the Defence Ministry when Rajapaksa was Defence Secretary was granted a presidential pardon but not an Opposition MP and when Galagoda-aththe Gnanasara thera was appointed the head of a ‘One Country, One Law’ Task Force, the sense that justice under Gotabaya Rajapaksa was not justice at all, grew. These decisions did not endear Gotabaya Rajapaksa to the masses. They realised that, instead of ‘system change’, what they got for their vote was business as usual, Rajapaksa style.
To this recipe of growing discontent, Gotabaya Rajapaksa added his own ingredient, a decision to ban chemical fertiliser overnight. Perhaps with the best of intentions, Rajapaksa made this a crusade of his. He was grossly misled partly by leaders of the Government Medical Officers’ Association, the doctors’ trade union, to embark on this project. No country in the world has succeeded in such an abrupt switch- and Sri Lanka failed miserably. The resultant decline in crops and rising food prices were the first signs that an economic meltdown was on the horizon.
Good leaders succeed because they choose the right man for the right job. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, however, not only chose brother Basil as Finance Minister, he also parachuted Ajith Nivard Cabraal from Parliament as Governor of the Central Bank. From that point onwards, the economy was as good as dead. Prudent economic management was the need of the hour but Cabraal kept muttering his mantra that printing money did not lead to inflation.
There are other factors that did not help. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was never the ‘hail-fellow-well-met’ type of politician that brother Mahinda is. Many of his public utterances have been disasters, illustrated by the many quotes that are being reused on social media to taunt him. His attempts to mingle with the masses, especially at the ‘gama samaga pilisandara’ or ‘a chat with the village’ appear contrived and the President comes across as condescending.
There is also something about Sri Lanka’s Executive Presidency that invests the holders of that office with an aura of arrogance that leads them to stray from the straight and narrow. When Ranil Wickremesinghe blessed Sirisena with votes of the United National Party (UNP), he expected Sirisena to meekly toe the line and become a ceremonial figurehead, only to find that he had created a political monster that went on to violate the Constitution. When the Rajapaksas sat around the dinner table at Medamulana (or Mirihana) and decided on Gotabaya as candidate, Mahinda Rajapaksa would have expected Gotabaya to constantly seek counsel from his older brother who entered public office forty-nine years before him.
That did not happen. Gotabaya Rajapaksa took key political decisions on his own, at times against Mahinda Rajapaksa’s advice. Some of them have backfired spectacularly. A recent example is his decision to sack ministers Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila against Mahinda’s fervent pleas. Mahinda obviously was able to foresee the public discourse the garrulous duo could generate. Now, Gotabaya is having talks with them to get them back into the Cabinet!
The thread that held together the fabric of the Rajapaksa dynasty was the unity of the Rajapaksa siblings. It did not seem to matter to them as to who held the reins or the purse strings, they always made it look like one, big happy family. That appears to have come apart at the seams now. This week, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was inviting political parties for a discussion on an ‘all-party government after the resignation of the current Cabinet and Prime Minister’. Meanwhile, Mahinda Rajapaksa was busy lobbying provincial councillors, parliamentarians and the Buddhist clergy, issuing public statements saying he would not resign and throwing down the gauntlet, saying if anyone could muster 113 votes in Parliament against him, he would quit. The Rajapaksa household is not what it used to be.
It would be unkind to say that Gotabaya Rajapaksa has squandered in two years and a few months, the goodwill Mahinda Rajapaksa generated over five decades. During his years at the top, virtually unopposed at the time, Mahinda Rajapaksa unwittingly set the tone for his own political eulogy, carrying out acts of political vengeance against the likes of Sarath Fonseka and Shirani Bandaranayake, acting with impunity, making a mockery of appointments to high posts and not allowing the rule of law to prevail. That is why, many events Gotabaya Rajapaksa is being tarnished with now — such as the Lasantha Wickrematunge killing and the Rathupasawala tragedy — are incidents that occurred during Mahinda’s tenure.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa would have imbibed generously from this political ambience but he did not have the charisma to pull it off and still remain likeable: instead, he came across as stubborn, arrogant and ruthless. As a result, the Rajapaksa name, once the best-selling brand in Sri Lankan politics has been irrevocably damaged. Now they are considered soiled goods, well past their expiry date.
Constitution is on Gota’s side
Where to from here, not only for Gotabaya Rajapaksa but for Sri Lanka? Contrary to government expectations, the ‘Gota go home’ campaign at Galle Face has not fizzled out; in fact, it is gathering momentum. It has an assortment of people — youthful idealists craving a better world, ordinary citizens feeling the economic crunch and the ‘usual’ non-governmental organisations dipping their toes in troubled waters. It also has a significant component of ethnic and religious minorities who Gotabaya Rajapaksa alienated during his election campaign (and subsequent victory speech) by saying he was elected with the votes of the Sinhala Buddhist majority, a patriotic card that he and the SLPP were not ashamed of playing repeatedly.
There is a constitutional crisis in the making. A sizeable section of the population wants to see ‘Gota go home’. Gotabaya Rajapaksa refuses to listen, his military training to not retreat in the face of fire, coming to the fore. The Constitution is in his favour: he has a mandate to govern for five years. Impeachment, the only way to compel him to go, appears a distant dream for the opposition which is struggling to cobble together a simple majority, let alone the two-thirds majority required for impeachment. The thinking in the Gotabaya camp is that, armed with this constitutional protection, if they can ride the economic storm perhaps with an ‘all-party’ government (even if it does not include the real opposition), the protests will give way to fatigue, then falter and flop eventually.
Mahinda Rajapaksa appears to have a different agenda. He is desperate to ensure that his legacy does not go waste and Namal Rajapaksa can succeed him one day. Some predict that recent events will ensure that no Rajapaksa will be elected to office ever again. That is what they said of Mrs. Bandaranaike in 1977. In the Philippines, the clear frontrunner to win its presidential election on May 9 is Bongbong Marcos, the son of Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos (Snr.) ruled the country for twenty-one years before being ousted by the ‘Peoples’ Power’ movement, forcing him to flee the country carrying with him crates of cash and jewellery to Hawaii.
How this drama will play out, it is impossible to tell. There is a revolutionary fervour at Galle Face that appears to transcend ethnic, religious, party and class barriers. That explains why the ‘aragalaya’ (‘struggle’) has been sustained for so long, despite there being no direct political participation, although informal political inputs have been aplenty.
The gist of the ‘aragalaya’ is that not only should Gotabaya Rajapaksa and all the Rajapaksas ‘go home’, so should the executive presidential system. Gotabaya Rajapaksa may be the target at which all the invective is directed, but the ‘aragalaya’ is really a struggle to get rid of the Executive Presidency, which successive Presidents promised to abolish but never did, once they tasted its absolute power. So, the masses have taken it upon themselves to do so. Coincidentally, it is being staged at Galle Face, the exact site where J.R. Jayewardene introduced it forty-four years ago, being sworn in as the first Executive President, there.
Jayewardene was fond of saying he framed the current Constitution based on the Gaullist model in France. Interestingly, the French presidential election last week produced a victory for incumbent Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Penn by 58 percent to 41 percent, not much dissimilar to the 52 percent to 42 percent margin Gotabaya Rajapaksa had over Sajith Premadasa. Le Penn is now looking forward to the upcoming French parliamentary elections, hoping to usurp Macron’s powers there, just as much as Premadasa, once a staunch advocate for the presidential system of government, is now calling for its abolition in the wake of the current crisis.
Those engaged in the ‘aragalaya’ are convinced that the fundamental flaw in our presidential system of government is that it confers too much power to one individual. Time and again they have been let down by the holders of that post, the only person to have left office without a fuss being the only person not to be elected to that office, Dingiri Banda Wijetunge. So, they want the Presidency to go too, just as much they want ‘Gota’ to ‘go home’.
If they succeed, it will be the ultimate irony because all Presidents who promised to abolish the Executive Presidency — Mahinda Rajapaksa, Chandrika Kumaratunga and Maithripala Sirisena — failed to do so. Apart from J.R. Jayewardene and Ranasinghe Premadasa, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was the only President in recent times who campaigned to have it strengthened. Now, by his actions, he may be inadvertently causing it to be stripped of most of its powers, effectively politically castrating the Executive Presidency.
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