Editorial

Nominations for parliamentary elections next month concluded on Friday with a distinctly lower degree of public enthusiasm considering the clamour there was for a new set of legislators to replace the older lot. Some 160 MPs from the former Parliament are in the fray again.

“The mandate” of the people was the battle cry of the then opposition, comprising the SJB and the JVP/NPP. Both kept demanding an election. Now, pitted against each other for parliamentary supremacy, the eagerness of the SJB to bounce back from the reversal of the presidential election is patently lacking.

Negotiations for a combined opposition alliance in Parliament to challenge the JVP/NPP Presidency fell through recklessly even before it could get off the ground. Whether this has paved the way for the victors of last month to have a free ride to a comfortable majority next month and gain complete capture and control of the Legislature is to be seen. What they could not do the extra-parliamentary way, they may well succeed doing the democratic way.

Candidates put up by the newly elected president’s party are mostly first-time candidates, largely unknown quantities in the public eye. This can be unnerving to many voters. They are banking on these novices as the people have had enough of the current politicians bedecked with gold chains and rings, flaunting their newfound opulence through public office. Thus, the President’s party decided to remain a monolith group with its own identity, studiously avoiding even the traditional Left parties angling to join them. The local Communist Party, meanwhile, was auctioned to the highest bidder.

On the other hand, the SJB Alliance is continuing to rely on traditional politicians—a mixed bag of the good, the bad, and the corrupt. Meanwhile, some veterans who have dominated local politics for decades have called it a day giving way to a new breed of wannabe lawmakers. A significant feature of this election will be the withering away of the long-established UNP and the SLFP. The old order changeth. For better or worse, even a crystal ball may not say what the future holds at the dawn of this new era. In the North, the ITAK (one-time TNA) is also on the wane as new players make inroads.

The Election Commission (EC) has intervened for the first time in suggesting to political parties how they must field candidates, calling for a greater number of women and those from minority communities to be on the National List of these parties. Such gratuitous counselling may not be its job, but there you have it.

While the post-Independence Constitution provided for appointed MPs chiefly to represent minorities, the 1978 Constitution introduced National List MPs for the express purpose of inducting ‘intellectuals’ into governance and law-making. While some made valuable contributions for the betterment of legislation and of the country, they were few and far between. Party leaders across the board were guilty of neglecting what was expected of them and often appointed utterly useless persons whose only contribution to the Legislature was carbon dioxide.

As any citizen can be introduced to Parliament on the National List at any stage, the lists provided on Friday do not provide any proof of any ‘systems change’ on that score. Any future electoral reforms should probably allow for the Head of Government, be s/he an Executive President or Prime Minister, to draw a certain number of the great and good from the general population, even if they are without voting rights in Parliament, to ministerial portfolios. Like in the United States, this will be necessary if the standard of political leadership in the country is to be raised from the abysmal levels of the present.

Negotiating Geneva pitfalls

Elections and some deft diplomatic manoeuvring by the new Government earned the country an additional year’s reprieve from the guillotine and a far less censorious text at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), where the executioners-in-waiting, some Western powers known as the Core Group, reintroduced and got adopted a draft resolution against Sri Lanka this week.

Sri Lanka’s recent position has been consistent on these resolutions, strenuously opposing them, and the new Government astutely followed suit. It argued that these indictments are selective and politicised and that no self-respecting sovereign state can allow the establishment of an international mechanism to gather evidence on internal matters when domestic recourse mechanisms exist. Others at the Geneva Council have denounced the sheer waste of resources to maintain such UN offices and staff as futile when faced with non-cooperation from the country concerned. An international tribunal in post-conflict Cambodia cost over USD 330 million—to convict some five Pol Pot regime individuals after 16 years.

The year’s grace granted by the Core Group may not necessarily be based on altruistic considerations or a courtesy given to a new government in office. These champions of human rights are themselves at the receiving end of worldwide criticism for their overt support for genocide in occupied Palestine by the state of Israel and for the material support given to the flouting of all humanitarian norms of warfare in Gaza and now the wider region.

In Sri Lanka’s closing statement in Geneva this week, the new Government said, “At a time of intense cynicism and polarisation within the multilateral arena on human rights and humanitarian situations in the context of the ongoing travesties of these norms, we urge the co-sponsors of this politicised draft resolution, which we oppose, to support and encourage the Government’s clear intention to address human rights and reconciliation through domestic processes and in line with our international obligations.”

This announcement of the new Government’s intention on human rights devolves on it an important responsibility to actively address the residue from the armed conflict that ended separatist terrorism in 2009. If effectively pursued, it will provide the Government and its Core Group executioners with the much-needed exit route from Geneva and the space to negotiate it. With high numbers of conflict-affected Sri Lankan diaspora as their citizens now, the Western powers are prisoners of their own democratic systems, and vote-based domestic politics drives their foreign policy as well.

The audacious report of the supposedly impartial UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was endorsed by the Core Group. Conveniently, it means the indictment remains on the table when needed and includes economic and political issues as well. The Government will have to step gingerly in meeting its international obligations with countries with which trade and investment are heavily dependent while ensuring domestic sensitivities and the national interest are not jeopardised.

It is against these trends in the global background that the Government announced this week that it will seek membership in the BRICS, a relatively recent global ‘alignment’ gathering rapid momentum and coming together on the common interests of the Global South.