Sri Lanka: fairy-tale ending?

You could write a heart-warming fairy tale about the turbulent events in the island nation of Sri Lanka the past two months. It would involve a conniving president who abruptly and illegally dismisses the elected prime minister and replaces him with a corrupt and blood-soaked former despot who was the president’s old boss.

The despot, now claiming to be the real prime minister, tries to strengthen his position by offering members of parliament jobs as ministers in his new government. If enough accept, he would have a majority and could claim to be sort of legitimate. But most of the MPs turn down the political bribes on offer, and parliament twice votes to reject his claims.

Finally, after 50 days of chaos, the judges of the Supreme Court say the president has acted illegally and the ex-despot can’t claim that he is prime minister. At this point the despot resigns and the president grudgingly “reappoints” the legitimate prime minister. Virtue triumphs, and joy is unconfined. Maybe they even live happily ever after. It’s an engaging tale, but in the real world the historical and social context that surrounds the events changes the tone of everything.

Sri Lanka is only 10 years away from the end of a brutal civil war and the “despot” is the man who won it by being more brutal than anybody else: Mahinda Rajapaksa. The war was about race and religion. Most of Sri Lanka’s people speak the Sinhalese language and are Buddhist. A minority, millions strong, concentrated in the north and east, speak Tamil and are mostly Hindu (with a significant Christian minority).

Tamils have been in Sri Lanka for at least 2 000 years, but the Buddhist majority tends to see them as alien. Buddhist intolerance towards non-Buddhist minorities is not unique to Sri Lanka, as the Rohingya minority in Burma can readily attest, but in Sri Lanka the Tamil minority was big enough to fight back. It did so, starting in 1987, in a guerilla and terrorist war that sought an independent Tamil state.

Up to 100 000 people died in the war, which ended with an orgy of killing (40 000) in the final five months of battles in 2009. Rajapaksa was the president who directed those battles, in which Tamils trying to surrender were often killed, and he emerged as a national hero. With his populist, nationalist style making him a favourite with the Sinhalese masses, he seemed set for a very long run in power.

His government continued to torture and “disappear” opponents, and his family grew rich from corrupt deals. But in 2015, a Cabinet minister, Maithripila Sirisena, defected from government, ran against him for the presidency – and won.

To his credit, Rajapaksa accepted his defeat. Sirisena found a new ally in Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose business-friendly United National Party had won a majority in parliament, and appointed him as prime minister. The key issue that broke the alliance was trade: Sirisena preferred to make deals with China, Wickremesinghe with nearby India.

On October 25 Sirisena sacked Wickremesinghe (illegally) and appointed Rajapaksa. Rajapaksa couldn’t get enough members of parliament to switch sides. They voted twice to remove Rajapaksa, so Sirisena dismissed parliament and called new elections. That was illegal too, and last week, the Supreme Court ruled Sirisena could not dissolve parliament.

Rajapaksa resigned, and on Monday an angry Sirisena grudgingly swore Wickremesinghe back in as prime minister. An encouraging outcome, but of course the story is never really over.

Sirisena can constitutionally dismiss the parliament 15 months from now, and Rajapaksa may well win the next election. The fairy tale is to be preferred …

William Saunderson-Meyer is on leave. His column will return on January 5.

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