Sri Lankas deepening political crisis: Not losing

an opportunity to lose another opportunity

Image courtesy Asian Mirror

PROF. JAYADEVA UYANGODA on 07/02/2017

Is the Yahapalanaya (good

governance) regime jointly led President
Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremasinghe
slowly abandoning its political reform
commitments made during the Presidential and
Parliamentary elections of 2015? Are the
government leaders working towards their own
political downfall, leaving the space for the
return to illiberal and authoritarian
politics? Are our President and the Prime
Minister proving the point often being made by
the cynics that Sri Lankan leaders will hardly
lose an opportunity to lose an opportunity for
peace building and political reforms? These are
questions any vigilant observer of Sri Lankas
current politics will not hesitate to ask. Many
may even provide answers in the affirmative.
There are three components in the
yahapalanaya governments reform agenda,
peace building, democratization and state
reform. Each of these now appears to be no
longer in the governments list of policy
priorities. In fact, one begins to wonder
whether the government has any policy priority
at all. There are indications all around that the
Sirisena-Wickremasinghe government is now
caught up with an ever sharpening crisis of
governance. As a supporter of the government
commented the other day, there has to be
governance to begin with, before it to be good
or bad. The government seems to be opting for
a two- fold response to its crisis of governance:
moving towards illiberal governance and
embracing ethnic majoritarian populism. All
this at the expense of its political raison detre
political reform agenda.
The peace-building component of the reform
agenda has once again reached a stage of
stalemate. The governments reconciliation and
constitutional reform initiatives have been
facing repeated road blocs and setbacks. In a
way, this is an old story reproduced anew.
However, the story has a new content and
material for new conclusions. It also offers
some new issues to deeply worry about.
Sri Lanka provides a case study of retreat from
liberal to illiberal peace building, and then
transition from illiberal to liberal peace
building. It is also a case study of contradictions
within, limits of, and alternatives to, liberal as
well as illiberal peace building. The complex
politics of peace building with unanticipated
twists and turns is a theme that this caste study
will enable us to highlight.
Peace Building
The present phase of Sri Lankas peace building
began in 2015. It constituted a window of
opportunity for a transition from illiberal peace
to a stable form of post-illiberal peace in Sri
Lanka. That political opening had been made
possible largely by the struggles carried out by
a broad coalition of opposition political parties
and social movements for democracy, human
rights, minority rights and peace amidst.
Meanwhile, Sri Lankas democratic and peace
communities had in 2014 began to join a
campaign for a regime change on the
assumption that closer cooperation between a
right-wing liberal opposition party and left-
liberal civil society movements would play an
agential role to advance and implement a
substantive political reform programme. That
vision included justice to the ethnic minorities
in the form of a new peace package. The
regime change did occur, yet the reform
programme and the peace project began to
move in the direction of a political stalemate.
At present, there are no significant signs of the
deadlock being broken. Nor is there a sustained
public discussion as to how best the stalemate
could be overcome at both at political policy
levels. There is also reluctance among the
official circles to acknowledge that there is a
stalemate and that if it remains unaddressed
the entire reform agenda can be in jeopardy.
Amidst uncertain progress, the peace-building
process has also assumed the character of
being one of minor victories, the latest minor
victory being the passing of the Office of the
Missing Persons (OMP) law in parliament.
Meanwhile, the governments political capacity
to implement the more substantive
components of the peace building agenda, such
as transitional justice and constitutional reform,
during the second half of its term, is not likely
to be improved. It is simple political logic that in
an electoral democracy where the political
pendulum swings rapidly, what a government
fails to do during the first half of its tenure will
find place only in the policy manifesto for the
next election.
Peace Building Conundrum
Thus, we have before us a peculiar conundrum
let us call it peace building conundrum that
has been built over several years and
sharpened once again during the past two and
half years. In other words, Sri Lankas peace
building project is slowly returning to the
drawing board, once again. To resolve the
conundrum in the battleground of politics, a
two-fold programme of action is required from
the government. The first is restoring stability
of the peace building process. The second is re-
forging a broad political consensus for
reform. Unless an effective way out is crafted
and its execution begins within the coming few
months, Sri Lanka might run the danger of
relapsing into the cycle of illiberal politics and
illiberal peace. Already, the broad contours of
returning to an illiberal consensus have begun
to appear in the horizon with the sharpening of
ethnic and social tension.
Against unacknowledged setbacks and slow
progress, how can we characterize the present
stage of Sri Lankas post-war peace building?
The concept of passive peace seems to
capture its nature and limits. The defining
feature of Sri Lankas present stage of passive
peace is the continuation of the condition of
the absence of war and war-related violence,
without an effective process of reconciliation,
transitional justice and state reform. It is a
condition the basic premise of which has
initially been laid out by the unilateral military
victory to the state in 2009. That premise still
remains intact, although it should have by now
been altered. In fact, the alteration of that
basic premise was a key assumption in the
Geneva Resolution of 2015, which Sri Lanka co-
sponsored.
Passive peace is also a condition that endures,
and reproduces itself, in the absence of any
major non-military, that is political, steps being
taken to address the causes for war and
violence, outside the framework of war. Thus,
Sri Lankas record of the passive peace
continues to be one of piecemeal
improvements and minor victories.
Feeble Democracy
The condition of passive peace also constitutes
a tentative and unstable phase of the long
process of Sri Lankas ethnic conflict. It is
unstable because, as I have already suggested,
relapsing to illiberal peace and hard
authoritarianism along with a new regime
change is a possibility that cannot be ruled out.
The return to authoritarianism and the
restoration of mono-ethnic state form by
democratic means is quite possible, particularly
after accumulated popular discontent with the
experience of what has become clear now
namely, disenchantment with a weak/feeble
democratic regime. I use the phrase feeble
democratic regime to characterize a specific
stage of Sri Lankas contemporary political
change. It is an impersonal heuristic devise. It is
actually the antonym to a robust democratic
regime.
Sri Lankas present stage of feeble democracy is
a peculiar political phenomenon. It combines
two contradictory drives; (a) the willingness to
make a clear break from the pre-existing
authoritarianism and illiberal peace by means
of building a new political consensus for
reform, and (b) the reformist regimes
incapacity to consolidate the democratic gains
by completing its own agenda for transition.
The governments reform agenda is stuck
halfway, and finds itself not being championed
enough to be able to move forward. A weak or
feeble democratic regime with a record of
unfulfilled transition pledges is likely to run the
risk of generating its own negation,
authoritarianism and illiberal peace. In a
context where, as it is in Sri Lanka today,
political choices before the electorate are
limited and creative alternatives are not visible
in the horizon, promoting many forms of
illiberal politics has already become attractive
in the political market place.
The government leaders are not unaware of
these negative possibilities of passive peace
and feeble democratic governance; yet they are
unable to move forward to establish positive
peace and robust democracy. Such a move
requires a sound analysis of the mid-term crisis
of the government. The government does not
seem to have the intellectual capacity for such
a serious political self-analysis. Some of its
leaders seem to privilege populist
demagoguery over sober introspection. That
itself is a feature of a feeble democratic regime.
In other words, the government seems to be
living with the crisis, as if the crisis itself is a
part of, to use a contemporary clich, the new
normalcy. Why is this peculiar normalization
tendency in a regime with so much reformist
potential? That is the question of the questions
which analysts of Sri Lankas current politics
seem to debate these days.
As concerned and worried watchers of Sri
Lankan politics, and also as students of
comparative politics, we can only construct
explanations in terms of larger structural
factors that hamper Sri Lankas current agenda
of peace building and democratic consolidation.
Seeking an explanation, there are few more
questions that constitute the larger problem.
They are questions that arise from Sri Lankas
specific political context in which the agenda of
peace building has assumed a particularly
complex character. Can an ethnic civil war that
has ended in a unilateral military victory to the
state be amenable to a post-war peace
settlement in which ethnic hierarchies and
inequalities of power are not acknowledged
and reproduced? Isnt the international role of
the peace process, which has facilitated the
current peace-building initiative, losing its
steam, giving greater autonomy to the
domestic political actors to institutionalize a
new policy option of deferral? Isnt regime
change with a reformist promise an insufficient
condition for designing and advancing a
substantive and transformative political
agenda? And, is Sri Lankas peace building
process one of a series of many setbacks and a
few minor victories with no major events of
political or policy breakthrough? Isnt it the
case that Sri Lankas has already lost, and lost
irretrievably, its moment of peace and
reconciliation through a macro reform project
and grand political consensus?
Inadequacy of Regime Change
Answers to these questions at one level are
quite simple. They are easily discernible to
those who follow Sri Lankas political news
even over a month. At another level, the
answers are rather complex. Taking the second
option, I propose the following proposition for
consideration: a mere regime change is not
adequate to institutionalize a fair ethnic peace
that can offer justice to the minority
communities, while leading the majority ethnic
community along a path of accommodation
and reconciliation with its fellow ethnic
communities. Nor can a mere regime change
lead to a political reform process that alters the
majoritarian and militarized structures of the
post-war state.
These difficulties arise from the fact that the
civil war and its aftermath has further rigidified
the unreformability dynamics of the Sri Lankan
state in such a way that a reformist regime
change is only a necessary, but not a sufficient,
condition for any substantive breakthrough for
peace building and political reform.
The condition of feeble democracy is the other
component of the conundrum. This warrants a
little more reflection. Why is it that the post-
civil war and post-authoritarian Sri Lanka has
produced a feeble democracy, despite a clear
shift of popular political allegiance from military
triumphalism, majoritarianism and the politics
of possible transition to autocracy? Why has
the regime change did not produce a robust
democracy? This is also where we need to
think about, from a comparative perspective,
how the ways in which the civil war ends may
provides incentives or disincentives to liberal as
well as community-driven peace building. One
point that warrants some sober reflection is the
way in which Sri Lankas civil war ended has
impacted on the countries different forms of
political psychology among diverse class and
ethnic segments.
Particularly crucial is the political psychology of
the ruling elites. Of course, Sri Lankas political
elites are a heterogeneous social entity. They
have two major organized camps, vying for
political power. The impact of the protracted
war and the war victory to the state has
reinforced in the political psychology of one
camp a consciousness of ethnic domination.
The political form of this model of ethnic
domination is one similar to a possible modern
version of internal colonialism in which
citizenship is organized on the basis of
hierarchy of rights, group obedience to the
state, and moral inequality. The previous
governments thinking and action with regard
to the ethnic conflict was an extension of this
political psychology of a reinvented and soft
version of internal colonialism. The other
faction of the political elite managed to resist
the temptation of sharing the worldview of soft
internal colonialism. Being out of power for a
relatively long period, the right-wing opposition
could maintain a critical distance from the state
type, which was being built as a new
hegemonic force, with a renewal of its
repressive vigour.
That is how this faction, despite its right-wing
credentials, could reintroduce to the countrys
political agenda a programme of state reform
and peace building, in alliance with a broad
coalition of political forces. That coalition
included the Tamil parties who represented the
political interests of the vanquished. Even then,
its resolve to take the reform agenda forward
became tentative within a few months of its
leaders becoming the new managers of the
post-civil war Sri Lankan state which had
become doubly unreformable. It realizes the
need for reform, and uses it for electoral
political gains; but is afraid, and therefore
hesitant, to take the reform agenda forward.
Pretense of Reform
Meanwhile, the reform agenda presupposed,
whether one acknowledged it or not, the
dismantling of some structures of the national
security state, radical restructuring of how the
state power is distributed and shared, and
moral empowering of the victims of war. These
basic and elementary assumptions were there
even in the rather mild recommendations of
the Lessons Learned and the Reconciliation
Commission (LLRC) Report of 2011. Eventually,
and before long, the promise of state reform
turned itself into a pretense of state reform and
the promise of peace building into a pretense
of peace building. The challenge centers on the
question whether altering the structures of a
triumphalist state is possible by a political
coalition which has (a) not been a direct party
to the final phase of the war, (b) not come to
power through an immediate crisis of the state
generated by the war, and (c) has only a
transitory commitment to state reform.
This transition of reform promise into pretense
has a bright side too. It seems to have so far
saved the day for Sri Lankas democracy.
Ironically, the pretense of state reform has a
clear functionalist merit. Thus, the feeble
democracy with pretense to reforms is a
tolerable best Sri Lanka can inherit at the
present moment of unmanaged uncertainties
and instabilities. It is also the bearable out of all
the bad political choices actually, there are
only two, available. There is no gainsaying
the fact that it is the prevailing weak and feeble
democracy that also stands as a buffer between
the unreformed state and the disenchanted
ethnic minorities. It is also the weak democracy
that stands between Sri Lankas passive peace
and illiberal peace. The immediate intellectual
challenge before reform -oriented
constituencies of the regime, before they get
further isolated, is to craft a political strategy
and path that could transform the present
feeble democracy into a robust democracy and
the passive peace to transformative peace.
Lack of Ideas
The last point I just made enables me to
highlight another theme, the question of the
lack of transformative ideas, a theme relevant
to our discussion. Sri Lankas weak democracy
is also characterized by the absence of a body
of transformative political thought that can act
as a mediatory link between the government
and the ethnic communities, who look at the
state reform and peace building through
diverse and sometimes incompatible prisms of
hope and suspicion. While the Tamil
community seeks regional autonomy, justice
and political equality, the Muslim community
too seeks similar goals, with political
guarantees of equality with the Tamil
community. It has given rise to an argument
for a relationship of non-domination in inter-
minority relations in power sharing in the
periphery. Meanwhile, the sections of the
majority Sinhalese community are still diffident
and indeed suspicious about state reforms and
peace building, because of the apprehension
that only minorities will stand to gain. As Sri
Lankas experience repeatedly reminds us,
peace building in an ethnically plural society
after a protracted civil war requires political
and moral guarantees to all ethnic
communities. Such guarantees should
constitute a regime of political insurance that
no community was going to be the losers and
each community will gain.
Moreover, in order to enable the ethnic
communities and the citizens schooled in
strong identity politics, they should have access
to a vision for a shared political future. That
requires a transformative ideology grounded on
a set of normative commitments such freedom,
justice, equality, non-domination, freedom
form fear, and peace. They should be common
to all citizens irrespective of their
communitarian allegiances. Such a strong
normative framework is essential in order to
manage and counter the zero-sum expectations
from any peace and political settlement. Then
only could the political leadership have the
intellectual confidence to prepare the society
for the kind of radical changes that their reform
agenda presupposed.
However, Sri Lankas peace building and state
reform processes have not yet been backed by
a strong, effective and persuasive counter
narrative, capable of defending its claims,
arguments and visions. The past three years
show the rather debilitating impact which the
absence of a body of transformative political
thought has had on the leadership of the
reformist regime. In crucial moments, leaders
of the government have either remained silent
or provided unconvincing and half-hearted
answers, revealing self-doubts about their own
commitments to reform. The controversy on
hybrid courts is a key example. The debate was
over- politicized by opponents. Issues were
distorted. The moment when the oppositions
old school lawyers with a nineteenth century
mindset, invoked the old Austinian argument of
national sovereignty the governments key
representatives went on the defensive.
Without convictions of its own, the government
lost the debate. There are many other
examples, major and minor, too. The point that
requires reiteration is the following: peace
building and political reform in the aftermath of
an ethnic civil war is not possible unless the
reformist political leadership also gives
leadership to a sustained and spirited struggle
for ideas. Peace building in Sri Lanka is not only
about negotiations and pacts among lawyers
from the government and Tamil and Muslim
political parties. It is not mainly about pledging
to implement UNHRC resolutions and then
repeatedly asking for postponement of
deadlines for reaching the agreed goals. It is
also about preparing all Sri Lankas citizens to
accept a new political order in which ethnicity-
based nationalisms are not exclusivist, ethnic
diversity is an inherent asset, multiculturalism
is not a threat, peace is a normative virtue
which all ethnic cultures could cherish and from
which all will benefit. It will also convince the
citizens that the best future for Sri Lanka is one
in which all ethnic and cultural communities,
whether big or small, live as moral and political
equals.
Shadow State
Why, then, is this reluctance to move forward
with conviction and determination on the part
of a reformist regime that commanded popular
support, international good will and the
advantage of the historical moment? There can
be several answers to this difficult question. I
wish to propose the thesis of the shadow state
in order to shed some light on this issue.
Stated briefly, this hypothesis goes as follows:
During the past four decades of secessionist
war, the JVP rebellion, counterinsurgency
warfare and political violence, a parallel
structure of state power slowly emerged in Sri
Lanka, claiming some measure of autonomy
from the elected government. After 2005
regime change, that parallel structure grew
rapidly and became fused with the civilian
government, acquiring a significant degree of
space and influence within the formal state
structure. The regime change of 2014-15
temporarily altered the balance of power at the
level of the state, forcing the old coalition of
the parallel power to retreat. However, the
networking between the parallel state and the
leaders of the old regime continued. It has
during the past two years developed itself into
a shadow state, acquiring the capacity to
paralyze the reformist initiatives of the
successor regime. The ways in which the
leaders of the present government seem to
handle the shadow state probably has many
facets. Inaction in the peace building,
reconciliation and constitutional reform fronts
is only one.
Meanwhile, those who are knowledgeable
about the recent setbacks to the
implementation of many of governments
policy promises have expressed concerned
about the role of the deep state. There is no
question that political leaders who mange the
state are quite aware of the very complex
challenge of dealing with the shadow state.
From an analytical perspective, Sri Lankas
shadow state structure has two circles. The first
circle consists of those civilian leaders out of
power. Because it is they who built up the
foundations and structures of the security-
emergency state, they have a stake in
preserving the national security state. There is
also apolitical economy logic to their interest in
preserving the national security state
structure. This is a theme that requires
extensive, therefore separate, discussion. The
second circle consists of those officials and
businessmen who were partners and
functionaries in the formal and informal
structures of the war machine, the national
security complex and the support structures of
the hard authoritarian regime. While some of
them continue to occupy key decision-making
positions in the state structure in spheres that
are directly connected with the peace building
and state reform processes, others continue to
be key players in the economic sphere.
This issue allows us to revisit a question which
we have already discussed: Has regime change
been an adequate condition for peace building
in Sri Lanka? This is where even a brief look at
the comparative experience might come to our
help. In almost all cases where internationally
mediated and liberal peace-building projects
have experienced some success, there have
been two preconditions that ensured their
relative or incomplete success. The first is that
the peace-building agenda has been integral to
a bi-partisan peace process in which the state
and the rebels or the two principal parties
to civil war have participated as morally equal
partners. The second is that the peace-building
project was not a mere electoral promise of a
political party, but an integral part of a larger
project of political transformation involving the
reconstitution of the state and re-organizing
the nations power structures in a fundamental
way. Regime change, as occurred in 2014-15 in
Sri Lanka was a historical necessity. However,
the change it has brought about has not
touched the war-regime of state power in any
seriously reformist manner.
Conclusion
The discussion developed in the analysis
presented above points to three major
conclusions.
First, Sri Lanka is losing its reformist peace-
building moment, opened up in 2015 in a
political condition marked by a feeble
democracy and passive peace. In this condition,
peace building and political reform agendas
have been pushed into a phase of minor gains,
and not major policy initiatives. What Sri Lanka
seems to have articulated at present is a non-
reformist, piecemeal and minimalist peace
building programme.
The second conclusion is that Sri Lanka is also
running the risk of relapsing into the cycle of
illiberal peace and political counter-reforms.
The third is that the Sri Lanka has allowed
another reform moment to slip away. It is not
politically easy to retrieve a slipped
opportunity. Tragically, its retrieval may
require another phase of setbacks, defeats and
struggles.
One implication of these to conclusions is that
the historical agenda of a reformist, democratic
and pluralistic peace building in Sri Lanka has
also shifted itself away from governments,
political parties and electoral coalitions. It has
to be reclaimed by a multiplicity of new social
movements on the ground that is not subjected
to the constraints and inabilities that the
political parties and reformist governments fail
to transcend. However, the social initiatives for
peace building will have to pay a heavy political
price. They cannot be agents for state reform,
which is a key component of peace building.
They can only initiate peace building from
below, with community level praxis for
solidarity, understanding, empathy, and moral
justice while resisting the pressures of a hostile
state and ethnic entrepreneurs.
Meanwhile, the political argument for
democracy, peace, human rights, justice and
equality in short, political emancipation
needs to be sustained with its periodic renewal
and reinvention. The survival and continuity of
the critical and democratic political
consciousness in society is the best antidote for
all forms of illiberalism that seem to gather
momentum these days. That perhaps is the
only enduring and credible peace building
practice available in Sri Lanka at present.
Posted by Thavam
Image courtesy Asian Mirror
PROF. JAYADEVA UYANGODA on 07/02/2017

Is the Yahapalanaya (good governance) regime jointly

led President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremasinghe slowly abandoning its
political reform commitments made during the Presidential and Parliamentary
elections of 2015? Are the government leaders working towards their own
political downfall, leaving the space for the return to illiberal and authoritarian
politics? Are our President and the Prime Minister proving the point often being
made by the cynics that Sri Lankan leaders will hardly lose an opportunity to lose
an opportunity for peace building and political reforms? These are questions any
vigilant observer of Sri Lankas current politics will not hesitate to ask. Many may
even provide answers in the affirmative.
There are three components in the yahapalanaya governments reform agenda,
peace building, democratization and state reform. Each of these now appears to
be no longer in the governments list of policy priorities. In fact, one begins to
wonder whether the government has any policy priority at all. There are
indications all around that the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe government is now
caught up with an ever sharpening crisis of governance. As a supporter of the
government commented the other day, there has to be governance to begin with,
before it to be good or bad. The government seems to be opting for a two- fold
response to its crisis of governance: moving towards illiberal governance and
embracing ethnic majoritarian populism. All this at the expense of its political
raison detre political reform agenda.
The peace-building component of the reform agenda has once again reached a
stage of stalemate. The governments reconciliation and constitutional reform
initiatives have been facing repeated road blocs and setbacks. In a way, this is an
old story reproduced anew. However, the story has a new content and material
for new conclusions. It also offers some new issues to deeply worry about.
Sri Lanka provides a case study of retreat from liberal to illiberal peace building,
and then transition from illiberal to liberal peace building. It is also a case study of
contradictions within, limits of, and alternatives to, liberal as well as illiberal
peace building. The complex politics of peace building with unanticipated twists
and turns is a theme that this caste study will enable us to highlight.
Peace Building
The present phase of Sri Lankas peace building began in 2015. It constituted a
window of opportunity for a transition from illiberal peace to a stable form of
post-illiberal peace in Sri Lanka. That political opening had been made possible
largely by the struggles carried out by a broad coalition of opposition political
parties and social movements for democracy, human rights, minority rights and
peace amidst. Meanwhile, Sri Lankas democratic and peace communities had in
2014 began to join a campaign for a regime change on the assumption that closer
cooperation between a right-wing liberal opposition party and left-liberal civil
society movements would play an agential role to advance and implement a
substantive political reform programme. That vision included justice to the ethnic
minorities in the form of a new peace package. The regime change did occur, yet
the reform programme and the peace project began to move in the direction of a
political stalemate. At present, there are no significant signs of the deadlock being
broken. Nor is there a sustained public discussion as to how best the stalemate
could be overcome at both at political policy levels. There is also reluctance
among the official circles to acknowledge that there is a stalemate and that if it
remains unaddressed the entire reform agenda can be in jeopardy.
Amidst uncertain progress, the peace-building process has also assumed the
character of being one of minor victories, the latest minor victory being the
passing of the Office of the Missing Persons (OMP) law in parliament. Meanwhile,
the governments political capacity to implement the more substantive
components of the peace building agenda, such as transitional justice and
constitutional reform, during the second half of its term, is not likely to be
improved. It is simple political logic that in an electoral democracy where the
political pendulum swings rapidly, what a government fails to do during the first
half of its tenure will find place only in the policy manifesto for the next election.
Peace Building Conundrum
Thus, we have before us a peculiar conundrum let us call it peace building
conundrum that has been built over several years and sharpened once again
during the past two and half years. In other words, Sri Lankas peace building
project is slowly returning to the drawing board, once again. To resolve the
conundrum in the battleground of politics, a two-fold programme of action is
required from the government. The first is restoring stability of the peace building
process. The second is re-forging a broad political consensus for reform. Unless
an effective way out is crafted and its execution begins within the coming few
months, Sri Lanka might run the danger of relapsing into the cycle of illiberal
politics and illiberal peace. Already, the broad contours of returning to an
illiberal consensus have begun to appear in the horizon with the sharpening of
ethnic and social tension.
Against unacknowledged setbacks and slow progress, how can we characterize
the present stage of Sri Lankas post-war peace building? The concept of passive
peace seems to capture its nature and limits. The defining feature of Sri Lankas
present stage of passive peace is the continuation of the condition of the absence
of war and war-related violence, without an effective process of reconciliation,
transitional justice and state reform. It is a condition the basic premise of which
has initially been laid out by the unilateral military victory to the state in 2009.
That premise still remains intact, although it should have by now been altered. In
fact, the alteration of that basic premise was a key assumption in the Geneva
Resolution of 2015, which Sri Lanka co-sponsored.
Passive peace is also a condition that endures, and reproduces itself, in the
absence of any major non-military, that is political, steps being taken to address
the causes for war and violence, outside the framework of war. Thus, Sri Lankas
record of the passive peace continues to be one of piecemeal improvements and
minor victories.
Feeble Democracy
The condition of passive peace also constitutes a tentative and unstable phase of
the long process of Sri Lankas ethnic conflict. It is unstable because, as I have
already suggested, relapsing to illiberal peace and hard authoritarianism along
with a new regime change is a possibility that cannot be ruled out. The return to
authoritarianism and the restoration of mono-ethnic state form by democratic
means is quite possible, particularly after accumulated popular discontent with
the experience of what has become clear now namely, disenchantment with a
weak/feeble democratic regime. I use the phrase feeble democratic regime to
characterize a specific stage of Sri Lankas contemporary political change. It is an
impersonal heuristic devise. It is actually the antonym to a robust democratic
regime.
Sri Lankas present stage of feeble democracy is a peculiar political phenomenon.
It combines two contradictory drives; (a) the willingness to make a clear break
from the pre-existing authoritarianism and illiberal peace by means of building a
new political consensus for reform, and (b) the reformist regimes incapacity to
consolidate the democratic gains by completing its own agenda for transition. The
governments reform agenda is stuck halfway, and finds itself not being
championed enough to be able to move forward. A weak or feeble democratic
regime with a record of unfulfilled transition pledges is likely to run the risk of
generating its own negation, authoritarianism and illiberal peace. In a context
where, as it is in Sri Lanka today, political choices before the electorate are limited
and creative alternatives are not visible in the horizon, promoting many forms of
illiberal politics has already become attractive in the political market place.
The government leaders are not unaware of these negative possibilities of passive
peace and feeble democratic governance; yet they are unable to move forward to
establish positive peace and robust democracy. Such a move requires a sound
analysis of the mid-term crisis of the government. The government does not
seem to have the intellectual capacity for such a serious political self-analysis.
Some of its leaders seem to privilege populist demagoguery over sober
introspection. That itself is a feature of a feeble democratic regime. In other
words, the government seems to be living with the crisis, as if the crisis itself is a
part of, to use a contemporary clich, the new normalcy. Why is this peculiar
normalization tendency in a regime with so much reformist potential? That is the
question of the questions which analysts of Sri Lankas current politics seem to
debate these days.
As concerned and worried watchers of Sri Lankan politics, and also as students of
comparative politics, we can only construct explanations in terms of larger
structural factors that hamper Sri Lankas current agenda of peace building and
democratic consolidation. Seeking an explanation, there are few more questions
that constitute the larger problem. They are questions that arise from Sri Lankas
specific political context in which the agenda of peace building has assumed a
particularly complex character. Can an ethnic civil war that has ended in a
unilateral military victory to the state be amenable to a post-war peace
settlement in which ethnic hierarchies and inequalities of power are not
acknowledged and reproduced? Isnt the international role of the peace process,
which has facilitated the current peace-building initiative, losing its steam, giving
greater autonomy to the domestic political actors to institutionalize a new policy
option of deferral? Isnt regime change with a reformist promise an insufficient
condition for designing and advancing a substantive and transformative political
agenda? And, is Sri Lankas peace building process one of a series of many
setbacks and a few minor victories with no major events of political or policy
breakthrough? Isnt it the case that Sri Lankas has already lost, and lost
irretrievably, its moment of peace and reconciliation through a macro reform
project and grand political consensus?
Inadequacy of Regime Change
Answers to these questions at one level are quite simple. They are easily
discernible to those who follow Sri Lankas political news even over a month. At
another level, the answers are rather complex. Taking the second option, I
propose the following proposition for consideration: a mere regime change is not
adequate to institutionalize a fair ethnic peace that can offer justice to the
minority communities, while leading the majority ethnic community along a path
of accommodation and reconciliation with its fellow ethnic communities. Nor can
a mere regime change lead to a political reform process that alters the
majoritarian and militarized structures of the post-war state.
These difficulties arise from the fact that the civil war and its aftermath has
further rigidified the unreformability dynamics of the Sri Lankan state in such a
way that a reformist regime change is only a necessary, but not a sufficient,
condition for any substantive breakthrough for peace building and political
reform.
The condition of feeble democracy is the other component of the
conundrum. This warrants a little more reflection. Why is it that the post-civil war
and post-authoritarian Sri Lanka has produced a feeble democracy, despite a clear
shift of popular political allegiance from military triumphalism, majoritarianism
and the politics of possible transition to autocracy? Why has the regime change
did not produce a robust democracy? This is also where we need to think about,
from a comparative perspective, how the ways in which the civil war ends may
provides incentives or disincentives to liberal as well as community-driven peace
building. One point that warrants some sober reflection is the way in which Sri
Lankas civil war ended has impacted on the countries different forms of political
psychology among diverse class and ethnic segments.
Particularly crucial is the political psychology of the ruling elites. Of course, Sri
Lankas political elites are a heterogeneous social entity. They have two major
organized camps, vying for political power. The impact of the protracted war and
the war victory to the state has reinforced in the political psychology of one camp
a consciousness of ethnic domination. The political form of this model of ethnic
domination is one similar to a possible modern version of internal colonialism in
which citizenship is organized on the basis of hierarchy of rights, group obedience
to the state, and moral inequality. The previous governments thinking and action
with regard to the ethnic conflict was an extension of this political psychology of a
reinvented and soft version of internal colonialism. The other faction of the
political elite managed to resist the temptation of sharing the worldview of soft
internal colonialism. Being out of power for a relatively long period, the right-wing
opposition could maintain a critical distance from the state type, which was being
built as a new hegemonic force, with a renewal of its repressive vigour.
That is how this faction, despite its right-wing credentials, could reintroduce to
the countrys political agenda a programme of state reform and peace building, in
alliance with a broad coalition of political forces. That coalition included the Tamil
parties who represented the political interests of the vanquished. Even then, its
resolve to take the reform agenda forward became tentative within a few months
of its leaders becoming the new managers of the post-civil war Sri Lankan state
which had become doubly unreformable. It realizes the need for reform, and
uses it for electoral political gains; but is afraid, and therefore hesitant, to take
the reform agenda forward.
Pretense of Reform
Meanwhile, the reform agenda presupposed, whether one acknowledged it or
not, the dismantling of some structures of the national security state, radical
restructuring of how the state power is distributed and shared, and moral
empowering of the victims of war. These basic and elementary assumptions were
there even in the rather mild recommendations of the Lessons Learned and the
Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) Report of 2011. Eventually, and before long, the
promise of state reform turned itself into a pretense of state reform and the
promise of peace building into a pretense of peace building. The challenge
centers on the question whether altering the structures of a triumphalist state is
possible by a political coalition which has (a) not been a direct party to the final
phase of the war, (b) not come to power through an immediate crisis of the state
generated by the war, and (c) has only a transitory commitment to state reform.
This transition of reform promise into pretense has a bright side too. It seems to
have so far saved the day for Sri Lankas democracy. Ironically, the pretense of
state reform has a clear functionalist merit. Thus, the feeble democracy with
pretense to reforms is a tolerable best Sri Lanka can inherit at the present
moment of unmanaged uncertainties and instabilities. It is also the bearable out
of all the bad political choices actually, there are only two, available. There
is no gainsaying the fact that it is the prevailing weak and feeble democracy that
also stands as a buffer between the unreformed state and the disenchanted
ethnic minorities. It is also the weak democracy that stands between Sri Lankas
passive peace and illiberal peace. The immediate intellectual challenge before
reform -oriented constituencies of the regime, before they get further isolated, is
to craft a political strategy and path that could transform the present feeble
democracy into a robust democracy and the passive peace to transformative
peace.
Lack of Ideas
The last point I just made enables me to highlight another theme, the question of
the lack of transformative ideas, a theme relevant to our discussion. Sri Lankas
weak democracy is also characterized by the absence of a body of transformative
political thought that can act as a mediatory link between the government and
the ethnic communities, who look at the state reform and peace building through
diverse and sometimes incompatible prisms of hope and suspicion. While the
Tamil community seeks regional autonomy, justice and political equality, the
Muslim community too seeks similar goals, with political guarantees of equality
with the Tamil community. It has given rise to an argument for a relationship of
non-domination in inter-minority relations in power sharing in the periphery.
Meanwhile, the sections of the majority Sinhalese community are still diffident
and indeed suspicious about state reforms and peace building, because of the
apprehension that only minorities will stand to gain. As Sri Lankas experience
repeatedly reminds us, peace building in an ethnically plural society after a
protracted civil war requires political and moral guarantees to all ethnic
communities. Such guarantees should constitute a regime of political insurance
that no community was going to be the losers and each community will gain.
Moreover, in order to enable the ethnic communities and the citizens schooled in
strong identity politics, they should have access to a vision for a shared political
future. That requires a transformative ideology grounded on a set of normative
commitments such freedom, justice, equality, non-domination, freedom form
fear, and peace. They should be common to all citizens irrespective of their
communitarian allegiances. Such a strong normative framework is essential in
order to manage and counter the zero-sum expectations from any peace and
political settlement. Then only could the political leadership have the intellectual
confidence to prepare the society for the kind of radical changes that their reform
agenda presupposed.
However, Sri Lankas peace building and state reform processes have not yet been
backed by a strong, effective and persuasive counter narrative, capable of
defending its claims, arguments and visions. The past three years show the rather
debilitating impact which the absence of a body of transformative political
thought has had on the leadership of the reformist regime. In crucial moments,
leaders of the government have either remained silent or provided unconvincing
and half-hearted answers, revealing self-doubts about their own commitments to
reform. The controversy on hybrid courts is a key example. The debate was over-
politicized by opponents. Issues were distorted. The moment when the
oppositions old school lawyers with a nineteenth century mindset, invoked the
old Austinian argument of national sovereignty the governments key
representatives went on the defensive.
Without convictions of its own, the government lost the debate. There are many
other examples, major and minor, too. The point that requires reiteration is the
following: peace building and political reform in the aftermath of an ethnic civil
war is not possible unless the reformist political leadership also gives leadership
to a sustained and spirited struggle for ideas. Peace building in Sri Lanka is not
only about negotiations and pacts among lawyers from the government and Tamil
and Muslim political parties. It is not mainly about pledging to implement UNHRC
resolutions and then repeatedly asking for postponement of deadlines for
reaching the agreed goals. It is also about preparing all Sri Lankas citizens to
accept a new political order in which ethnicity-based nationalisms are not
exclusivist, ethnic diversity is an inherent asset, multiculturalism is not a threat,
peace is a normative virtue which all ethnic cultures could cherish and from which
all will benefit. It will also convince the citizens that the best future for Sri Lanka is
one in which all ethnic and cultural communities, whether big or small, live as
moral and political equals.
Shadow State
Why, then, is this reluctance to move forward with conviction and determination
on the part of a reformist regime that commanded popular support, international
good will and the advantage of the historical moment? There can be several
answers to this difficult question. I wish to propose the thesis of the shadow state
in order to shed some light on this issue.
Stated briefly, this hypothesis goes as follows: During the past four decades of
secessionist war, the JVP rebellion, counterinsurgency warfare and political
violence, a parallel structure of state power slowly emerged in Sri Lanka, claiming
some measure of autonomy from the elected government. After 2005 regime
change, that parallel structure grew rapidly and became fused with the civilian
government, acquiring a significant degree of space and influence within the
formal state structure. The regime change of 2014-15 temporarily altered the
balance of power at the level of the state, forcing the old coalition of the parallel
power to retreat. However, the networking between the parallel state and the
leaders of the old regime continued. It has during the past two years developed
itself into a shadow state, acquiring the capacity to paralyze the reformist
initiatives of the successor regime. The ways in which the leaders of the present
government seem to handle the shadow state probably has many facets. Inaction
in the peace building, reconciliation and constitutional reform fronts is only one.
Meanwhile, those who are knowledgeable about the recent setbacks to the
implementation of many of governments policy promises have expressed
concerned about the role of the deep state. There is no question that political
leaders who mange the state are quite aware of the very complex challenge of
dealing with the shadow state.
From an analytical perspective, Sri Lankas shadow state structure has two circles.
The first circle consists of those civilian leaders out of power. Because it is they
who built up the foundations and structures of the security-emergency state, they
have a stake in preserving the national security state. There is also apolitical
economy logic to their interest in preserving the national security state
structure. This is a theme that requires extensive, therefore separate, discussion.
The second circle consists of those officials and businessmen who were partners
and functionaries in the formal and informal structures of the war machine, the
national security complex and the support structures of the hard authoritarian
regime. While some of them continue to occupy key decision-making positions in
the state structure in spheres that are directly connected with the peace building
and state reform processes, others continue to be key players in the economic
sphere.
This issue allows us to revisit a question which we have already discussed: Has
regime change been an adequate condition for peace building in Sri Lanka? This is
where even a brief look at the comparative experience might come to our help. In
almost all cases where internationally mediated and liberal peace-building
projects have experienced some success, there have been two preconditions that
ensured their relative or incomplete success. The first is that the peace-building
agenda has been integral to a bi-partisan peace process in which the state and the
rebels or the two principal parties to civil war have participated as morally
equal partners. The second is that the peace-building project was not a mere
electoral promise of a political party, but an integral part of a larger project of
political transformation involving the reconstitution of the state and re-organizing
the nations power structures in a fundamental way. Regime change, as occurred
in 2014-15 in Sri Lanka was a historical necessity. However, the change it has
brought about has not touched the war-regime of state power in any seriously
reformist manner.
Conclusion
The discussion developed in the analysis presented above points to three major
conclusions.
First, Sri Lanka is losing its reformist peace-building moment, opened up in 2015
in a political condition marked by a feeble democracy and passive peace. In this
condition, peace building and political reform agendas have been pushed into a
phase of minor gains, and not major policy initiatives. What Sri Lanka seems to
have articulated at present is a non-reformist, piecemeal and minimalist peace
building programme.
The second conclusion is that Sri Lanka is also running the risk of relapsing into
the cycle of illiberal peace and political counter-reforms.
The third is that the Sri Lanka has allowed another reform moment to slip away. It
is not politically easy to retrieve a slipped opportunity. Tragically, its retrieval may
require another phase of setbacks, defeats and struggles.
One implication of these to conclusions is that the historical agenda of a
reformist, democratic and pluralistic peace building in Sri Lanka has also shifted
itself away from governments, political parties and electoral coalitions. It has to
be reclaimed by a multiplicity of new social movements on the ground that is not
subjected to the constraints and inabilities that the political parties and reformist
governments fail to transcend. However, the social initiatives for peace building
will have to pay a heavy political price. They cannot be agents for state reform,
which is a key component of peace building. They can only initiate peace building
from below, with community level praxis for solidarity, understanding, empathy,
and moral justice while resisting the pressures of a hostile state and ethnic
entrepreneurs.
Meanwhile, the political argument for democracy, peace, human rights, justice
and equality in short, political emancipation needs to be sustained with its
periodic renewal and reinvention. The survival and continuity of the critical and
democratic political consciousness in society is the best antidote for all forms of
illiberalism that seem to gather momentum these days. That perhaps is the only
enduring and credible peace building practice available in Sri Lanka at present.
Posted by Thavam