Editorial

Is it the calm before the storm as parliamentary elections next week take their course in unusual quietness?

Our team of reporters who fanned out to the cities and the countryside have the following conclusions: (1) those new voters of the JVP/NPP are not particularly impressed with the per-formance of the new administration; (2) they feel this alliance is unaccustomed to governance and finding its way; (3) the new administration has been unable to ramp up on their campaign pledges; (4) but they will give them a further chance to prove themselves; (5) the Opposition is fractured and unable to change the status quo; (6) a lower voter turnout than the national average is likely, which should benefit the JVP/NPP more than the Opposition.

Some 8,800 plus candidates are in the fray for the 225 seats in Parliament without those on the National Lists. The JVP/NPP has pre-identified which candidates need to enter the legislature, and party cadres are expected to back them over others. District leaders on the list are expected to be the chosen ones.

That the alliance’s campaigners are calling for a two-thirds majority to change the Constitution—first through a referendum, is aimed at creating a virtual one-party state is the Opposition’s cry.

Those fears may well be unfounded and over the top. The alliance head honchos say not to create false narratives of their intentions. Having concealed their past Marxist-Leninist ideology but with the red and yellow hammer & sickle flag still flying outside their headquarters, they are keen to portray to the country a more acceptable social-democratic image that sheds outdated economic principles. This is a more modern-day socialist model—where the commanding heights of the economy are not exclusively state-owned but accepting the private sector as an engine of economic growth.

The Opposition is not impressed. They keep plugging the line that next week’s election is a choice between the radical socialist Left and the free market Right. That debate has, however, not found traction with the electorate, where tackling endemic corruption is the key issue in the South while the North continues with its traditional communal demands.

It is unfortunate that the last Parliament was unable to ensure the passage of electoral reforms that would have had a widely accepted hybrid system of part proportional representation and part the old first-past-the-post method that would have given the voter direct contact with a local MP representing a smaller constituency than an entire district.

If a JVP/NPP victory is then a foregone conclusion, their anticipation of a two-thirds majority is arguably an excessive expectation. What remains would be the question of whether they would be the alliance with the single largest number of seats in the House short of an absolute majority, or clear the hurdle of 113/225 seats for an absolute majority without the need for a coalition with other parties and form a government on their own.

Any other result will be an unlikely one. As a famous Bob Dylan lyric puts it, “You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Political diplomessy

The new presidency decided recently to recall all ‘politically appointed’ heads of Sri Lanka’s missions abroad by informing them that their contracts end with immediate effect.

The President further buttressed this decision from a political platform in Nuwara Eliya and the Foreign Minister spoke on the topic on several occasions.

The blanket order seems to have been taken by the ‘shadow government’, or the ‘politburo’ of the President’s party, with little consultation and professional understanding of the situation. An almost routine, normally discreet, and phased decision at the change of any government has unfortunately been overblown for political purposes.

There was an immediate backlash from several quarters—some saying it was a cheap political stunt by the government to impress its supporters on the eve of a parliamentary election. Others questioned how the recall of a handful of ambassadors was made to appear as the most urgent matter before the nation and as an illustration of the Government’s commitment to ‘good governance’. Elsewhere, it was made the topic of viral and largely uninformed commentary in the public domain on the country’s foreign policy.

The Foreign Ministry was caught in-between and seemed to soften the blow to reduce the toxicity of the related discourse—diplomatic language is, after all, what they are honed in—suggesting the envoys were asked to ‘conclude’ their terms and were not recalled. Those persons included retired public servants, diplomats and retired military top brass who had made useful contributions to the nation in their respective professions.

A number of issues remain. These embassies will soon be ‘headless’ until their replacements are confirmed after elaborate procedures both domestically and in those capitals. This will go well into 2025. Moreover, not all political appointees are miserable failures, and conversely, not all career diplomats have been hotshots in foreign postings. The Foreign Ministry itself has a dearth of diplomats to both send abroad and serve at home. The ruling party will, therefore, have to put in its own ‘political appointees’ and there must be plenty eyeing these posts with zero diplomatic experience themselves.

The wiser move would have been to first identify the ‘doers’ and keep them in-situ for the present, while recalling the kith and kin of politicians only, many of them serving in lower positions in these missions. It is a fact that Sri Lanka’s embassies abroad were packed with relatives of government politicians in the past, which ruined what ought to be a professional service. Former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar corrected the imbalance of the career diplomats to political appointees ratio, and the Ranil Wickremesinghe Presidency increased the ratio to a record high in favour of career diplomats counting retired and serving foreign service personnel.

The ‘politburo’ needs to look deeper into this national malady and the larger issues at stake than at scoring political points. With the ‘political appointees’ now out of the way, the foreign service comes under the limelight and needs to rapidly acquire what it takes to deliver in the future 21st-century diplomacy.

With the enormous expectations of the country’s interactions with the rest of the world for its economic recovery, the need of the hour is not the public mauling of Sri Lanka’s diplomatic representation, but that it reflects confidence and stability in foreign capitals.