President: After you chase us away, why elect us again?

People: After we chase you away, why come again as candidates?

by Rajan Philips

We are into political education by way of presidential questions and answers. The President is asking the questions and the rest of us are free to provide answers as commoner than commonest of people. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa doesn’t see the point in people re-electing the same politicians whom they have defeated before. He is, therefore, according to a Daily Mirror headline news story, urging voters “to look for new people without electing the same set of people.” He is asking the people not to elect the current opposition parties to be government again because they were a failure in office and were defeated in the elections. He goes further, “Even if myself or the ministers in my government don’t meet your expectations, don’t elect the same set of people. Look for new people. This system has to change.” Then some candour, “I don’t know how it could be done but that is the reality.” And finally, the punchline, “Once you chase us away, again you elect us. What’s the point in that ?”

In an interesting coincidence, President Rajapaksa’s quondam military colleague and current MP Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka also made an observation last week that “people do not see the SJB as a party which is capable of running a government though they have got fed up with the present government,” and that “around 50 percent of those who supported and voted for SLPP are frustrated today.” Two contrasting political observations from two former military men. The President makes no mention of the dejection in the SLPP ranks, but is asking the voters to “look for new people if they have grown disenchanted with him. The Field Marshal, on the other hand, is not asking the voters to “look for new people,” but he is telling the SJB and Sajith Premadasa that they have to “woo the dejected SLPP members at the grass roots level,” to reinforce the SJB as an alternative contender.

The short answer to the President’s questions is that defeated politicians are not going away after they are defeated. They keep returning. They nominate themselves to be candidates again and the people are presented with the same poor choices. The fault is not with the people, Mr. President, but with the entrenched political system – politicians, political parties and the process of nominating candidates from the topmost presidential slot to the lowliest Pradeshiya Sabha membership. The President should redirect the question to his own party, the SLPP, even though he is still not a member of that party or any party. And he should redirect it to his own family, and ask, “Once the people have chased us away, why are we standing for re-election? “I don’t know how it could be done but that is the reality,” the President acknowledged.

How it can be done

It is not at all difficult to know how it can be done. Just tell his extended family that they have been in politics for over 50 years and in power for over 15 years. It is time to stand down and make way for “new people”. So, don’t contest the next set of elections – from the local government to the president of the Republic. With this simple instruction, the President could change the whole system, and the reality, in one stroke. Once the Rajapaksas voluntarily stand down, Ranil Wickremesinghe and his entourage, and everyone else who have overstayed their welcome span in politics, will have no excuse but to follow suit. Sri Lanka would have been transformed. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will be hailed as a hero and revered in retirement. Whether the retirement is going to be in Colombo or California, it will make no difference.

There are other more structural (if he wouldn’t mind the jargon) ways of doing it. The simplest would be to bar all elected officials from running for a third consecutive term. So, every elected official can serve two consecutive terms and will have to take a break in the next election, but will not be prevented from running again after the break. That will replenish all elected offices every two years, without preventing experienced politicians returning to service after a break.

He could quite immediately put an end to defeated candidates entering parliament abusing the National List system. He could sponsor and implement new rules for National List nominations: make defeated candidates ineligible for National List placements; set firm candidate criteria for National List nominations – say 60% to be female nominees, and requirements for socially, territorially and professionally diverse representation. As well no individual should be eligible to serve more than two terms in total as a National List MP.

Here are questions that the people may want to ask the President. Will he provide for such term limits and criteria for nominating candidates in the new Constitution? Will he facilitate legislation to make the candidate nomination process in all political parties to be open, transparent and include objectively-positive criteria for nomination as candidates? Will these changes be considered in the working of the OCOL (One Country, One Law) Task Force under the leadership of one of Sri Lanka’s most erudite forensic minds? There’s more. What is the point in presidents pardoning criminals, convicted by courts? What is the point in appointing people put away by the courts as Chairmen of statutory bodies and task forces? What is the point, if any, in the Attorney General pre-emptively protecting people who might be put away by courts, by withdrawing indictments?

The President seems to have given up on the highly touted ‘Gama samaga Pilisandara’ (Conversation with the Village) approach and is now making statements and firing questions from public forums. He is addressing the people of Sri Lanka even from far flung forums – at the UN (New York) and at COP26 (Glasgow). In Glasgow, President Rajapaksa tried to show off as his government’s achievements what are in fact controversial actions on the environmental front. Whoever who is advising the President made him miss an opportunity to join forces with Sri Lanka’s South Asian neighbours like Bangladesh, Maldives and Pakistan to push for global support for economically challenged countries undertaking adaptation measures against immediate effects of climate change – unseasonal and heavy rains, floods, drought, heat, wildfires and rising sea level.

Instead, the President took to boasting that his “Government took firm steps to reduce imports of chemical fertilizer, and strongly encourage organic agriculture.” Then he underwhelmed: “Although this action has been broadly appreciated, it has also met with some criticism and resistance. In addition to chemical fertilizer lobby groups, this resistance has come from farmers who have grown accustomed to overusing fertilizer as an easy means of increasing yields. This is particularly unfortunate considering Sri Lanka’s rich agricultural heritage.” This is quite a characterization of the plight of the country’s farmers devastated by the government’s most ill-advised and sudden switch to organic agriculture. Not to mention the soaring food prices and the scare food scarcity. As for Sri Lanka’s rich agricultural heritage, it is useful to keep in mind ancient agricultural heritage cannot feed the 21st century population of even tens of millions in small countries like Sri Lanka.

Parliament & Courts to the rescue

We have no way of knowing what prompted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to shift gears from Gama samaga Pilisandara to the Socratic method of posing probing questions. But it is not difficult to see that the next national elections are already on his mind. He is getting resigned to the possibility that the next one will not be as smooth as the last one. It could be worse. People may not like him and his ministers. He seems equanimous about not being elected. But he is more concerned that people should not elect the opposition parties to be elected to form the next government. He is asking the voters, “look for new people.” ‘New’ as in anyone who is not at all associated with the present government and the last government. Does that mean the Rajapaksa scions are ruled out? That will be really going new.

It tells you something that someone like President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, with no previous background in politics, should be thinking about the next election which is still more than half the term away. The bigger question for the people now is to how to get through life in the next year or two, and what help can they expect from the government and the President. The President telling the voters to “look for new people,” might suggest that he is subliminally giving up on himself. Where will the people then turn to? In the current system of government, with the country collapsing under weight of presidential failure, the people can as a first resort turn for help to the two branches of state, namely, the legislature and the courts. Put another way, it is up to these two branches of the state to rescue the nation. But are they up to it?

In the last few months, the courts have become the last bastion of sanity. Hopefully, they would stay that way for ever and ever. However, while courts can be bold and valiant, they can only step in to reverse bad decisions of the government often after the fact and after much damage has been done. They cannot pro-actively direct a government on matters of policy and execution. That role falls on the shoulders of parliament that includes all of cabinet except its head. The question for parliament, and all its MPS, is whether over the next three years the current parliament can stop being a rubber stamp for the executive. Not so much as a counter to the executive branch, but to contain its excesses and guide its actions. It is a tall ask of the current parliament. But the alternatives to the country are grimmer and worse.

To be clear, parliament cannot perform this containment role with its traditional government/opposition divide. And this divide has not been bridged in any meaningful way even after 40 years of executive presidency. Parliament has not evolved to be compatible with the presidential system in the manner of the US Congress and its system of Committees. That such an evolution would take place in Sri Lanka was certainly the ‘technical’ expectation of President Jayewardene, the architect of the presidential parliamentary system. We learn that from AJ Wilson’s monograph on Sri Lanka’s Gaullist Constitution.

But politically JRJ did everything to scuttle any prospect of a cross-party alliance emerging in parliament to counterbalance the executive presidency. Against his own expectations, the first Executive President began the tradition of subordinating parliament to the executive. He initiated and facilitated the unseemly practice of getting crossovers from opposition to become government ministers. MPs would crossover from the opposition to government to become ministers without losing their opposition party membership (thanks to a misguided Supreme Court ruling in the 20th century). There are no crossovers now mainly because the government has a super majority and doesn’t need any new turncoats.

At the same time, there are ‘eruptions’ within the government and the question is whether there can be alignments between the erupting government MPs and the lackluster opposition MPs on specific issues that are now critical to the country and the people. The idea of alignments on real issues is not to bring down the government as in the old parliamentary system, but to establish a counterbalance to the misfiring executive presidency. In the current situation, the onus might be on those government MPs and Ministers who assembled at Solis Hall as People’s Council, to establish a parliamentary council with cross-party participation and assert the constitutional right of the legislature to counterbalance the executive. As I said, it is a tall ask. The alternatives are worse.