The MR-GR-BR triangle and the Gotabaya presidency

Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s biggest asset was also the ruling party’s, Basil Rajapaksa’s and the Rajapaksa clan’s biggest asset: Mahinda Rajapaksa. MR’s personality and historic achievement. President GR had the perfect chance to activate that asset, but he blew it, not by accident but by choice

Given the mounting domestic political contradictions of his own creation, and the diplomatic crises which he could have attenuated but has exacerbated, President Gotabaya appears to be plugging the gap by cultivating an unprecedented systemic affinity, if not affiliation, with China’s Leader, Government and ruling Communist Party. This is confirmed in a thought-provoking piece in these pages by China’s Ambassador in Colombo:

“In their recent phone conversation, President Gotabaya expressed once again his strong willingness to learn from Communist Party of China on its governance experience…President Xi Jinping made positive response to his Sri Lankan counterpart and agreed that China and Sri Lanka should learn from each other at the system and governance levels…” (A phone conversation piloting a new voyage | Daily FT – http://www.ft.lk/columns/A-phone-conversation-piloting-a-new-voyage/4-716429)

While the Chinese system and governance experience are impressive and admirable, they are historically evolved (the Chinese Revolution) and have no commonality, proximity or relevance to Sri Lanka because China’s is not a multi-party competitive electoral democracy as is Sri Lanka’s, and the ‘governance experience’ of the Communist Party of China is based on a political monopoly unlike in the case of Sri Lanka’s governing party.

New voyage

So, where is the “new voyage” taking us? Is President GR telegraphing that Sri Lanka on his watch hopes to replace, by evolution, osmosis or dramatic diktat, its democratic multi-party system of governance, the oldest in Asia and indeed Afro-Asia, with one such as that of China, where the ruling party maintains its rulership in permanence?

That this new voyage is well underway is evidenced by the shift in norms and the conversion to the Chinese ideological values, in the discourse of our top officialdom, most transparently in the recent remarks of Secretary/Foreign Affairs, Retd. Admiral Jayanath Colombage, who says:

“…Adm. Colombage also brought up human rights issues, which China has been criticised by the West. “What is the use of human rights when you don’t have right to life? The most important thing that any government should do is to ensure that the right to life is enshrined for people.” He said Xinjiang’s security and development are a great achievement for the region.” (Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary responds to Western criticism on China – CGTN – https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-04-14/Sri-Lankan-Foreign-Secretary-responds-to-Western-criticism-on-China-ZrCX94tHj2/index.html)

Doesn’t President GR know that a fundamental definitional difference between political systems, one which leads to different classification of types, cannot be mixed up and that such a classic ‘category error’ would, in practice, cause severe dysfunctions leading to systemic crises?

Doesn’t he also know that crossing the systemic firewall could set in motion a process of systemic reclassification of his presidency, the regime and Sri Lanka itself, by the USA, India, NATO, EU, and the Quad?

The Chinese Ambassador to Sri Lanka also reveals that “…the two Presidents had two times of extensive and in-depth phone conversations, reaching broad consensus, and strategically guiding the future development of our bilateral relations.” (Ibid)

Of course, any bilateral relationship cannot be guided unilaterally, and that is more so when there is a yawning asymmetry of power. However, the relationship of any country, including Sri Lanka, with another, can be ‘strategically guided’ only by the given country, based upon its national interest, perceptions of threat etc. Sri Lanka’s strategic calculus, which includes an assessment of how our relations with certain of our friends may affect the relations with certain other friends, must be undertaken by Sri Lanka, not “strategically guided” by conversations with any one of our friends.

Politics and President GR

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa would have been far better off had the “strategic guidance” in all matters of politics and statecraft come from conversations with ex-President Mahinda (than with President Xi).

When Yahapalanaya was riding high and Gotabaya Rajapaksa was at his most vulnerable, Wijeyadasa went on TV and spoke in Parliament defending his refusal to go along with the attempt to jail the decorated war veteran. Thus, the allegedly abusive phone call (hitherto uncontradicted) is ironic as well as instructive in what it reveals. 

It is also symptomatic of several things. Firstly, that things are not going well. When they are, such embarrassing explosions do not occur, and certainly not when the person you are berating is someone who stuck his neck out for you when you were in trouble. Secondly, that though President Gotabaya had the unmatched advantage of being Mahinda Rajapaksa’s younger brother when running for office, he has the disadvantage that whatever he does while in office, especially in terms of conduct, interaction and communication, is instantly, spontaneously, even unconsciously compared with Mahinda Rajapaksa. 

It is true that President GR feels himself under pressure, but that again is a situation largely of his own making. His problem was not that he sought to be President. That was a perfectly legitimate aspiration. His problem is that every time he came to a crossroads as to what that presidency would be like, he always took the wrong turning when he had a correct one to take.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s biggest asset was also the ruling party’s, Basil Rajapaksa’s and the Rajapaksa clan’s biggest asset: Mahinda Rajapaksa. MR’s personality and historic achievement. President GR had the perfect chance to activate that asset, but he blew it, not by accident but by choice. That chance was during the necessary re-set of the flabby 19th Amendment and the introduction of the 20th Amendment. He could have permitted a version of the 20th Amendment which gave a fair share of power to Asia’s most experienced political figure outside of Mahathir Mohamed, but he didn’t, and chose to monopolise power instead. 

It is not only Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa he deprived of a measure of political power; it is also the Parliament which is preponderantly comprised of the ruling coalition. If MR had more power he could persuade and manage the MPs, and if the Parliament and Cabinet had more power than they do now, he wouldn’t have had to. 

President GR compounded his blunder concerning the specific form and content of the 20th Amendment, by placing his ex-military and ViyathMaga-Eliya cohort in everything from top administrative posts to governorships. With the model unable to deliver at the grassroots, the Government MPs became restive. Patronage alone does not work when they feel the ground begin to shift under them. The Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe affair, or more significantly, the dissent of Ven. Muruththettuwe Ananda Thero, are but symptoms of an avoidable crisis created by President GR. 

How did President Gotabaya get to this point? Given the Buddha’s focus on the causative chain, it is necessary to go back a few years. 

There was a wartime Gotabaya Rajapaksa who was very different from the GR of the postwar period, especially the MR second term. Here’s the evidence, from August 2008:

“In his nationally televised dialogue with audiences in several areas on Tuesday August 19th, President Mahinda Rajapaksa, speaking in Sinhala to largely Sinhala rural crowds, pledged to hold elections to the Northern Provincial Council within a year of its liberation just as he had held election to the Eastern Provincial Council. He added that he was considering elections to the local authorities in Jaffna very much earlier. 

“Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Defence Secretary, had already indicated the goal in his response to The Times online, stressing the need to privilege a common Sri Lankan identity over and above our separate ethnic identities, allowing for devolution of power, and reiterating the President’s commitment to it.” (Dayan Jayatilleka, Defence and Devolution – Groundviews)

Between August 2008 and the war’s end Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa had undergone a conversion. 

GR’s choices

Gotabaya Rajapaksa had a choice of two types of Presidency, based on two projects of candidacy. This is similar to the choices faced by President Trump: he could either have been a John McCain or the Far-Right ultranationalist with autocratic impulses that he chose to actually became. The same went for candidate GR. 

The first GR project was in 2012. Its evidence was the inaccurately entitled book ‘Gota’s War’ by CA Chandraprema. When the book came out at a launch at which Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga was the keynote speaker, I cautioned in my columns and on TV shows that “if it’s Gota’s War, it’ll be Gota’s war crimes”. Sadly, that prediction came true.

Earlier this year, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, wrote in Just Security that GR as Secretary/Defence had gifted a copy of the book to a high-ranking South African Minister, who in turn had passed the copy to Navi Pillay. She wrote that the book and GR’s ownership of it as demonstrated by his gesture proved GR’s responsibility for everything that happened.

What is interesting to the analyst is that Model-1 of the GR candidacy project, that of 2012 (‘Gota’s War’), coincides with the emergence of the Islamophobic Bodu Bala Sena. Eventually, Secretary/Defence GR spoke positively of the BBS and its views, not merely at the opening of the BBS academy but also in an interview given to the Daily Mirror. So, we may term Model-1 of the GR candidacy, that of an Alt-Right personality cult. 

The GR candidacy Model-1 was based on exactly the premise that animates the competing pro-BR faction of the ruling party. That premise is that GR or BR – depending on which faction you are talking to, or rather, is trying to convince you—was the real “strategist” and driver of the MR success in wartime and the postwar economic recovery. Also stated already in 2011-2012 by these lobbyists was that MR’s time had come and gone and it was time for succession. 

The factional struggle between the siblings was proving dysfunctional as the end of the second term was within sight, which is why MR intervened with the disastrous 18th Amendment which enabled him to run for the third time. He lost, and the Yahapalana reimposition of term limits removed the limits on the ambitions of the GR and BR factions. 

With MR knocked out of the presidential race, the Gotabaya Rajapaksa candidacy project arose again, but it wasn’t as the same Alt-Right personality cult of Gota’s War. The concrete situation was one in which Basil Rajapaksa was rightly or wrongly held responsible among the pro-MR MPs for the 2015 defeat; a charge that was assisted by his swift departure for the US. On the other hand, the Alt-Right project was crippled by the firm conviction of the MPs and MR himself, that the Bodu Bala Sena and other similar organisations had wittingly or unwittingly shattered the SLFP’s Muslim support.

GR candidacy Mark-2 arose in this conjuncture. A candidate who could swing the overwhelming bulk of the Sinhala voters was necessary because the minorities had voted for the UNP. With his profile as a war veteran and Secretary/Defence, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was the most logical choice.

However, he was not meant to be, nor needed to be, an Alt-Right candidate. The UNP’s suicidal moves such as the 2015 Geneva resolution and the non-unitary (‘orumittanadu’) Constitution project guaranteed a sufficient Sinhala swing to win comfortably. This was proved by the shattering victory of the newly-emergent SLPP, led by Mahinda Rajapaksa and organised by Basil Rajapaksa, in February 2018. That was on a populist-nationalist platform quite consonant with the SLFP’s traditions and MR’s (very slightly) left-of-centre moderate nationalism. From Nugegoda February 2015 through Galle Face May 2017 to the Local Authorities Election of February 2018 and the MR-MS interlude of late 2018, it was one recognisable populist paradigm.

That was the platform that GR was meant to stand on, and represent. All he had to do was to be to MR what Raul Castro was to Fidel, after the latter was unable to lead because of serious ill-health. GR needed to be a managerial President, with MR deciding the political, ideological and strategic line. 

The 20th Amendment wrecked that chance, but that 20th Amendment as it stands is the Constitutional expression of the first model (‘Gota’s War’ 2012) of the GR candidacy. Though the Local Government Elections of February 2018 had proved that an Alt-Right ticket was unnecessary for victory, the Far-Right reasserted itself powerfully somewhere in 2018 and took over the candidacy on a wave of Islamophobia in 2019, which originated in 2012. 

In place of a Prime Ministership which would have accorded the correct weightage to MR, we have a BR-GR convergence. If MR expected BR to balance GR while he would himself hold things at the middle and keep things on a pragmatic path, he has been outmanoeuvred.

What BR brings to the table is what Sirisena Cooray brought to the equation with Ranasinghe Premadasa: organisation, management, tactics. GR is military-centric, BR is party-centric, but MR, like Premadasa before him, was always people-centric. Today he cannot contribute by functioning as elder statesman because he has been divested of political real-estate by the 20th Amendment, the shape and form of which was driven by the militarist-ultranationalist GR cult. 

The UN High Commissioners for Human Rights used to quote President Mahinda Rajapaksa, but never to condemn him for what he said; only to criticise him for not doing what he said. This time around, there are quotes from President Gotabaya Rajapaksa which are used as evidence against him and Sri Lanka today. 

D.B.S. Jeyaraj illustrates a piece on the late Archbishop Rayappu Joseph with several photographs, one of which is of the controversial Archbishop with President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the other with Secretary/Defence Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Everyone is smiling, but the body language in the two pictures is a study in contrasts. 

Lessons from China 

The success of the Chinese model was because Deng opened up the economy. He did what JRJ and Ronnie de Mel had done in 1977. President Gotabaya is now hoping to do a China by doing exactly the opposite of what Deng Xiaoping (and J.R. Jayewardene before him) did. He is shutting down the Open Economy while displacing it, albeit in an extreme version, to the Port City. 

China eliminated extreme poverty and has kept its middle classes in modern consumerism through the Deng model, while the GR administration has heightened poverty and impoverished the middle classes by closing the economy according to the Sirimavo Bandaranaike-N.M. Perera model.

Addressing the Boao summit this week, President Xi rightly warned against economic “de-coupling”. President GR’s import ban is one of decoupling as a general rule, with a solitary exception i.e., decoupling from the rest of the world economy, while recoupling only with China (e.g., the Port City).

The bitterest irony of them all is that the Port City is exactly the model of ‘foreign concessions’ i.e., concessions to foreign powers in the cities of China, especially on the coast, that caused waves of rebellions, starting with the Boxer Rebellion, moving through the May 4th Movement and culminating in the Communist Party-led Revolution of Mao, who referred to the foreign spheres of influence carved out in China as “semi-colonial”.

President GR’s model has rejected what China adopted, and has adopted what China rejected and rebelled against.