Voter participation – Sri Lankan scene and benefitsof external pressure and international networks

September 24, 2017, 10:59 pm 

A paper presented by Prof. S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole Member, Election Commission, Sri Lanka at the 8th Annual Meeting of the Forum of Election Management Bodies of South Asia, 23-27 Sept. 2017, Kabul, Afghanistan on the theme "Election and Dispute Resolutions & No Voter to be Left Behind."

For all of us to defend the institutions we represent is the human condition. Thus, country reports and like documents tend to gloss over the failures of our institutions. This enhances our view of ourselves. However, it is in owning up to these deficiencies that causative factors are resolved or at least ameliorated. None of us has a perfect democracy. We have ideals that we strive to achieve and move towards.

Sri Lanka’s is a multiparty democracy. We have our failures that have impeded our island nation’s progress towards democratic-franchise for all communities. Social, political and economic influences have undermined our democratic ideals. For example, five of our failures are provided below.

1) At independence in 1948, 11% of our population were Tamils of recent Indian origin enjoying the franchise. One of the first acts of Ceylon’s Parliament was to disfranchise them. Voters were left behind.

2) The Sri Lanka Freedom Party under its then leader Sirimavo Bandaranaike, enacted a new constitution in 1972, and used that effectively to extend her term by two years. She also did away with Article 29 of the previous constitution affording protection to minorities. The change made Sri Lanka a very different country from the pluralistic society previously envisioned.

3) In 1982 President J.R. Jayewardene, who had been elected in 1977, with his party commanding a two-thirds parliamentary majority, held a referendum on extending the life of parliament by 6 years without an election. According to the book by Paul Brass,"The December 1982 Referendum saw rigging on a grand scale, with UNP supporters – especially those in the party’s trade union – resorting to ballot stuffing, intimidation, and violence to ensure a UNP victory." Yet, our Department of Elections certified the result.

4) In the 1994 elections, the separatist group, the LTTE, ordered a boycott of the elections. It was understood that anyone who defied the ban would be executed. Thus, only one rival militant group was a key contestant and their members got elected to parliament with as few as 9 votes. We certified the result instead of cancelling it.

5) Perhaps the big success of the Election Department was the Jan. 2015 Presidential Elections. The story is yet to be told fully – and may never be unless the then Election Commissioner and present Chairman of the Election Commission writes a book as he promises to do upon retirement. As the incumbent president seemed to be losing, troops under the command of his brother were moving to the capital city of Colombo, where the nation’s votes were being counted under our watch. The Election Commissioner ordered the police assigned to him to "shoot aiming for the head." The Presidency changed hands peaceably.

The courts have now determined that the Secretary to the outgoing President with the former Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission had defrauded the state of Rs. 600 million to distribute religious clothing to Buddhists just before the 2015 elections. They have each been sentenced to three years in jail with a hefty fine. While it shows the sea change in high-ups being sentenced for the first time, the impunity that pervades Sri Lanka is seen to be difficult to shake off – both, although sentenced to rigorous imprisonment, were found to be "sick" in prison and given luxury quarters in the prison hospital. Curiously, that President in whose cause the fraud was perpetrated making him answerable, has not been touched. It shows that challenging impunity at top is a long process.

However, despite the monumental failures of our democracy, Sri Lanka is moving towards its ideals under international pressure. The President’s Secretary, effectively the Head of the Civil Service, being jailed was unthinkable till recently.

Global Community

We as the people of a country are best off operating in a fraternity of global partners sharing best practices. Examples are forums such as FEMBOSA, and the Commonwealth Electoral Network, as well as international organizations like the UN Human Rights Commission and INGOs like The International Federation of Electoral Systems. Not only do we learn from each other, but such forums bring likeminded partners to put pressure on offending parties and publicise problems. Methods used are often consultative and advisory, as with INGOs that need government permission for presence in a country, and at other times coercive and directly confrontational, as often necessary. Some call the latter colonialism in new forms but for those at the receiving end of a bad government, it is welcome relief.

Thankfully, due to the intervention of India and the political organization of our plantation workers, despite their statelessness all those rendered stateless have been offered Sri Lankan citizenship and their franchise. Thus external inputs are sometimes necessary to make a country do justice to its citizens.

Women’s participation in governance is an area where Sri Lanka fairs poorly with only 5% of our MPs being female. However, there has been a reversal of late. Parliament has enacted laws to force a 25% quota for women in Local Government. There is continued opposition and the Bill was gazetted, passed with substantial modification at the Committee Stage, and is again being modified as this paper is being written.

This sunrise as it were on women’s rights has been because of external criticism and advice. Field trips have been organized for MPs to visit countries that have successfully included women. Training programs have been funded for women encouraging them to be candidates. Foreign leaders have come to canvass our political leaders on this score. They made us do what we should have done by ourselves.

Caste is another frontier where obstacles exist but are not admitted, which makes a solution even more difficult. The agricultural castes dominate and the Executive Prime Minister and later the President have all been agriculturist Sinhalese – except when during a violent insurrection no one wanted to be President. The Northern Provincial Council of 38 has only two of depressed caste origin, while the provincial demography has over 50% from the depressed castes.

Such inequalities are entrenched in the socio-political order. It is a given that Sri Lanka is a Sinhalese Buddhist country where Buddhism is foremost and must be fostered by the state. As a new constitution is being drafted, this clause so inimical to concepts of democracy and an egalitarian order, will be retained, both the President and Prime Minister are on record as having said. Certain flags need to be waved to win elections.

That attitude asserting Buddhism has twisted Sri Lanka’s democratic fabric into a grotesque shape. Towards the end of the civil war with the LTTE in 2009, the UN estimates that over 40,000 Tamil civilians were massacred by the army. Others give a higher figure of over 70,000.The government, on account of pressure from the global community, had in 2014 cosponsored UNHCR Resolution 30/1 promising prosecution of war crimes through a credible transparent processoverseenby international judges.

The problem is that in our communalist polity, Sinhalese soldiers who killed Tamil civilians are national heroes. Punishing the killers is political suicide. Promises of prosecution thus becomea game of double-speakwhere we do not know what or whom to believe. The ruling coalition’s Malik Samarawickrama announced:

"The UNP welcomes the statement of the Cabinet of Ministers, the Prime Minister and the President to use the full force of the law against those causing religious tensions, racial hatred and undermining the efforts at reconciliation since the new government came to power."

(This paper reflects the author’s own views as a Member of the Election Commission and not necessarily those of the Election Commission or the Government of Sri Lanka.)