Editorial

The opening of a new session of Parliament, probably the last before the next general election, set the stage for what is in store on the political battlefield in the coming months.

The main Opposition boycotted the event which in the old days was the ‘Throne Speech’ by a Governor General on behalf of the Government of the day. It gave an opportunity to the Opposition to test the Parliamentary strength of the Government and in March 1960, the Dudley Senanayake Government was defeated at the vote that followed.

Today, it only gives the two sides of the House an opportunity to exchange words. It is a warm-up game for the big match to come. A few MPs who remained in the Opposition benches gave an indication that they were keeping their options open. The Northern politicians were no different from their Southern colleagues with leadership battles and infighting, some keeping away, some remaining, but the bigger buzz was the absence of the JVP leadership due to them being hosted in India this week.

Once a vehemently anti-India party, Indian hegemony was one of the five infamous lessons that were used by the JVP founders to indoctrinate youth to rise against the state in 1971. They continued this stance into their second-generation insurrection from 1987-89 following the Indo-Lanka Pact. In recent times, the party has taken a strong position opposing a multitude of proposed Indian investments in Sri Lanka.

Having lost its influence following the recent elections in the Maldives, and China having regained its clout in the atolls spread out in the Indian Ocean, India must surely have been concerned about the future of its relations with Sri Lanka if it were to come under a JVP administration. This was, therefore, no ordinary invitation.

The India side was keen on the optics of the visit, releasing tweets and press releases of the visiting delegation’s meetings with senior government ministers and officials including its high-profile National Security Advisor. This was in contrast to the JVP remaining economical in what it had to say about the visit.

One takeaway that the host extracted from the visitors was that their party stood for neutrality in their foreign policy. This seemed a moral victory for India in that the JVP has long been viewed as a camp follower of the Chinese Communist Party.

Big power intervention in the internal affairs of other countries; sovereignty, self-determination, non-interference etc., were the protective armour of the Non Aligned nations (including India) at the time of Independence against former colonial powers. Now, foreseeing its turn on the global stage and its aspiring role to global power status, India clearly sees it differently, requiring a stable regional environment not only as a net security provider but also as an economic stability provider.

In Perth, Australia, the Sri Lankan President met with the Indian External Affairs Minister at an Indian-led dialogue on the Indian Ocean, soon after addressing Parliament on Wednesday. One would reasonably expect the President to have got some sort of debrief on the JVP delegation’s visit to India as much as the Chinese embassy in Colombo may also get a debrief by the visitors themselves on their return.

All this is a pointer that the forthcoming elections in Sri Lanka are not only of interest to its own citizens, but there is an abiding interest in the world’s capitals in its outcome as well.

 Elections in Pakistan

Pakistan has long been an all-weather friend of Sri Lanka. It helped quell a separatist insurgency; its people backed the Sri Lanka cricket team to win a World Cup; and at international assemblies where Sri Lanka gets crucified for its human rights record by countries with a mote in their own eyes, it has been a steadfast defender of this nation.

However, political developments in Pakistan these days cannot go unnoticed with its elections held last Thursday. The jailing of a former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, and disqualifying his PTI party goes beyond the pale.

Pakistan has always struggled with democracy since its birth by cesarean section of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. It was unable to emulate its bigger neighbour and bitter rival India, nor for that matter Sri Lanka, which despite some hiccups along the way – like the stripping of former PM Sirima Bandaranaike’s civic rights or keeping an Election Commissioner hostage at Temple Trees on a crucial election day—has changed governments through largely free, and generally fair, elections.

The cases against Mr. Khan would seem ridiculous to most of the democratic world. Pakistan’s judiciary, once responsible for the judicial murder of one of its former Prime Ministers Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was a few years ago hailed as a beacon of hope to an emerging democracy after years of military rule. It has once again fallen down under the sheer pressure of the rulers. It is so weakened that some of its orders are not followed unless they have the imprimatur of the government.

Mr. Khan appears to have made two fundamental mistakes, however principled they were. One was to rub the powerful military on the wrong side despite having its support in the early years of his tenure. The other was having the gumption to say that Pakistan should be a neutral country in its foreign policy. That was heresy to the USA as Pakistan has long been treated as one of America’s proxy states, first in its opposition to Russia and India which shared a Defence Pact, but now against China.

His political downfall was engineered through Parliament. These ‘regime change’ exercises happen throughout the world, as they did through Aragalayas in Ukraine and almost, in
Sri Lanka in 2022. Being neutral is no longer an option in the books of the big powers as they jostle for influence in a multipolar world.

These big powers feel they have an entitlement to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, to have a stake in who governs that country, financing political parties and politicians towards that end, justifying all of it as being in their own national interest and in the interest of world peace.