Politics
Why the yahapalana project failed
by C.A.Chandraprema
When one reads the anguished outpourings of some yahapalanites about the restoration of the Rajapaksas to power, one thing that becomes obvious is that they are blaming everyone and everything else but themselves for their present plight. In reality however, they have only themselves to blame for the failure of their carefully planned and executed project. Viz. the following.
It was never about good governance to begin with
The yahapalana project despite its name was never about good governance. It was a conspiratorial power grab disguised as a campaign for good governance so as to mislead the public. The conspiracy to grab power by the UNP, JVP, TNA, SLMC and other elements took shape originally as an attempt to defeat the Rajapaksa led UPFA government in Parliament in 2007. At that time, there was no talk of yahapalanaya. It was simply a case of using the divisions in Parliament to defeat the UPFA government at the budget that year. If the budget had been defeated, a parliamentary election may have been held and the UPFA may not have been able to obtain a clear majority which would have enabled everyone else to gang up to run the parliamentary government. Thus even as a far back as 2007, the tendency was for everyone else to get together to defeat the Rajapaksas and grab power for themselves. It was only in 2014, that the name yahapalanaya was appended to that project to make it look like a quest for good governance and less like the cynical power grab that it was.
Even though some people portrayed this as a struggle to abolish the executive presidency, once the yahapalana President was elected to power, the rhetoric about abolishing the executive presidency diminished. Towards the end, some yahapalana political parties were saying that the executive presidency should be retained because it gave the minority communities a say and it enabled them to win the presidency by combining the overwhelming majority of the minority vote and a certain proportion of the majority community vote. Yahapalana ministers were openly saying that the presidential election was the easiest election for them to win. In fact after the 2015 parliamentary election, no yahapalana political party wanted to hold any election except the presidential election. So despite the yahapalanaya slogan, what happened in January 2015 was a power grab, a coup pure and simple albeit effected through the ballot.
Over-involvement of foreign parties
Even though what started as an attempted parliamentary coup in 2007 was largely a local affair, foreign parties got involved after the end of the war in 2009. It was the Colombo embassies that insisted that Ranil Wickremasinghe should stand down and make way for a common candidate. The involvement of foreign parties would have brought in money and influence into the project but it proved fatal to the yahapalanites by generating unrealistic expectations of more foreign largess after they come into power. Some ill-conceived actions that the yahapalanites did in expectation of a massive influx of foreign aid to the country following the coup such as stopping all Chinese funded projects and promising massive handouts to the public, finally proved fatal to the yahapalana project.
No plan on what to do after capturing power
Nobody had the foggiest idea as to what they were going to do after they capture power. It was as if a band of illiterate, unwashed pirates had boarded a ship and found it to be full of treasure and damsels. Rapine and the enjoyment of the fruits of power was the only item on the agenda. The UNP for its part, had been so envious of the achievements of the Rajapaksas that their only aim in life was to prove that the Rajapaksas had not done as well as they claimed. They changed the figures published by the Central Bank in a flat footed move to prove that the economy had not grown as fast as claimed under the Rajapaksas. They stopped all work on the projects initiated by the Rajapksas, stored paddy at the Mattala airport and stopped bunkering operations at the Hambantota harbor on the claim that it was making losses. If the UNP had taken over what the Rajapaksas had left and managed it judiciously, the story may have been different. But their inferiority complex over-determined everything else.
Pre-occupation with persecuting the vanquished
To say that the yahapalana government had an obsession with persecuting the Rajapaksas and their followers would be an understatement. An Anti-Corruption Committee was set up under Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe along with a specialized police unit the FCID which existed for the sole purpose of carrying out investigations referred to them by yahapalana politicians. From 2015 till 2019, what the public heard most often from yahapalana politicians was the pledge to put the Rajapaksas behind bars. Even today, many yahapalana leaders think their present plight is because they failed to put the Rajapaksas behind bars and end their political careers. They don’t seem to realize that the public backlash would have been much worse if their schemes had succeeded. The public reacts very negatively to leaders who show themselves to be unhinjed and demented and that is exactly how the yahapalana leaders presented themselves to the public.
Over reliance on lies and deception
From the very beginning, the yahapalana campaign against the Rajapaksas was based on lies and falsehoods. A factor which contributed immensely to the yahapalana campaign of lies and deception was that the decade of Rajapaksa rule was the very period in which social media like facebook made their appearance and the use of smart phones and computers became commonplace. The lies propagated by the yahapalana cabal over the new media took a toll on the Rajapaksa government. The tactics used to manipulate public opinion over such media was new to Sri Lanka at the time. Today however people are more aware of such manipulation. Almost everybody knows now that there are paid internet activists who make posts for a fee. The yahapalanites spent a lot of time and effort on their army of internet activists. Even in the run-up to the presidential election and the just concluded parliamentary election, the posts on all websites were mostly against the Rajapaksas. But the result of the election shows that such tactics do not work any longer. The people now know how to distinguish a fake comment from a genuine one.
Buying votes with handouts
One of the most self destructive acts of the yahapalanites was to buy votes with huge salary increases for government servants and reduction of fuel prices. They lied their way into power at the presidential election but could not hope to repeat that at the parliamentary election. So they followed through with some of the main pledges they had given at the presidential election in order to win the parliamentary election. This was something the yahapalana government never recovered from. Having increased government expenditure and reduced government revenue at the same time, at some point they had to start collecting the money to offset those losses. Thus 2015 became the year of government largesse and 2016 became the year of increased taxes.
The first yahapalana finance minister Ravi Karunanayake became popular when he increased salaries and reduced the price of fuel and certain essential foodstuffs and he became unpopular when taxes were increased to meet that additional expenditure. After he was forced out of the finance ministry, his yahapalana colleagues sold him down the river, claiming credit for the increase in salaries and reduction in the price of fuel while palming off the blame for the increases in taxes on Ravi K. It was every man for himself and may the devil take the hindmost.
Gross economic mismanagement
Gross economic mismanagement led to plummeting growth rates, a plummeting exchange rate, a vast increase of debt as the yahapalana government struggled to meet the costs of all the handouts they gave to get themselves elected. One of the most deleterious effects of yahapalan misrule was the vast increase in foreign currency debt. When no foreign aid was forthcoming from their foreign masters, the yahapalana government resorted to foreign commercial borrowings. Since the market was prepared to give, the yahapalana government took, with all restraint thrown to the winds.
The Central Bank bond scam shows the yahapalana government at its incompetent worst. By what stretch of the imagination did they think they would get away with it, when so many officials of the Central bank saw them doing it? Furthermore, in order to carry out a crooked deal they embarked on a course of action which would drive interest rates upward and have a negative impact on the entire economy. What drove the economy into the ground during the yahapalana years was sheer incompetence and nothing else. All other countries including India, Bangladesh, Germany and the USA were doing very well throughout those years from 2015 to 2019 and only Sri Lanka was going downhill.
Cynical disregard for propriety
The yahapalana government had little or no regard for the optics of what they were doing. They put off the local government elections for three years, regardless of the negative impression that such postponement of elections creates in the minds of the public. In 2017, just as the provincial councils were to stand automatically dissolved, they suddenly brought committee stage amendments to a Bill that had been introduced in Parliament earlier to increase women’s representation in the PCs and changed the system of elections to the provincial councils for no other reason than to avoid holding the elections. So desperate were they to prevent PC elections from being held that when the Attorney General said that the Bill had to be passed with a two thirds majority, the government bargained with the smaller political parties in the corridors of Parliament and agreed to increase the proportional representation quota from 40% to 50%.
Thus the local government elections system which was passed just weeks earlier, has a 40% PR quota while the PC elections system has a 50% PR quota. The system of elections to the local government institutions was also changed by committee stage amendments brought to a Bill that had been introduced in Parliament earlier, to correct some technical errors in the Local Government Elections Act. When President Sirisena dissolved Parliament, instead of taking on the challenge of an election head on, as any self respecting political party would have, the yahapalana government and their partners in the yahapalana opposition went to courts and got the dissolution annulled and hailed that as a triumph for democracy. They were oblivious to the fact that the people were watching all this. The people take a very dim view of the postponement of elections as was seen in 1977. Little wonder that every election held after 2015 was a landslide for the SLPP.
Gross abuse of the minority communities
From the very beginning, the entire yahapalana regime change project was predicated on organizing block votes against the Rajapaksas combining the vast majority of the minority vote with a minority of the majority community vote. The Tamil vote block was organized by giving them unrealistic pledges to the effect that if Sirisena is elected to power all Tamil aspirations will become a reality overnight. This was akin to the TULF slogan of 1977 – If you vote for the TULF today, you will have Eelam tomorrow! Until around 2012, many Muslims were with the Rajapaksa camp and they had to be got out of that marriage and lined up against the Rajapaksas. In 2012, a group of monks were taken to Norway at the expense of the Norwegian government and six months after they returned, an anti-halal movement materialized out of nowhere and transmogrified over time into a generalized anti-Muslim campaign which culminated in the Aluthgama clashes of 2014.
Former JHU activist Asoka Abeygunasekera in his book titled ‘Yuga Peraliya’ on the 2015 regime change project recounted how the JHU had sent Ven Hedigalle Wimalasara Thera into the Bodu Bala Sena to act as Gnanasara Thera’s handler and to get what they wanted done by the BBS. If the Tamil voters were deceived and organised, the Muslim voters were flogged and organized. One strategically taken photograph was used to convince the Muslim voters that Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was in league with the monks formenting anti-Muslim sentiments. The Mulsim political leaders knew fully well what was going on, but for their own parochial interests, they went along with the yahapalana project. The Tamils and Muslims were thus lined up for a power project and used for the purposes of others. Five years later, the end result of all this has been that the majority Sinhalese have consciously lined up to prevent such manipulation.
Lack of proper leadership
All of the above indicates that the yahapalana project did not have proper leadership. It was just a collection of unprincipled opportunists who got together to overthrow a successful government and grab power for themselves. No self respecting political leader would have engaged in the kind of underhand manoeuvers and charlatanism that led to the regime change project of 2015. Once they had grabbed power through various subterfuges, they thought they had discovered the way to remain in power for ever by combining the vast majority of the minority vote with a minority of the majority vote to win presidential elections.
The reason why some yahapalana ministers and leaders went out of their way to insult the Sinhalese and the Buddhists was to show the minority communities that they were with the minorities and against the majority community. When the Easter Sunday bombings took place in such a backdrop, that was the clearest sign to the people that the yahapalana government because of its politics was in no position to deal with any threat coming from within the minority communities or from overseas. The five years of the yahapalana nightmare were by far the blackest chapter in Sri Lankan politics. We may have faced adversity in earlier times due to world crises such as the food and fuel crises of the 1970s or the terrorism of the LTTE and the JVP, but never has the country suffered like this due to bad politics.