1 week Ago By Firstpost
For the third time in a row, Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha became the first foreign dignitary to call on Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, AKD, after the ruling Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna-National People’s Power (JVP-NPP) created electoral history by sweeping the parliamentary elections ordered by him after coming to power. Earlier, Jha became the first one to be received by AKD as president-elect, and later, after he was sworn in, he reiterated the long and continuing ties between the two civilisations, nations, their peoples, and their governments, not necessarily in that order. ‘As a fellow democracy, India welcomes the mandate and remains committed to further strengthening bilateral ties for the benefit of our peoples,’ the Indian High Commission tweeted after the meeting this time.
It was again a reiteration of the known Indian position in bilateral relations with Sri Lanka and all other South Asian neighbours, word, deed and action. As may be recalled, External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar had said as much while visiting Sri Lanka in the midst of the unprecedented economic crisis in 2021. He said that New Delhi would do what it takes to help the people of Sri Lanka, under the circumstances.
As may be recalled, subsequent weeks and months saw India expending $4 billion worth of assistance, both by way of food, fuel, and medicines that were in short supply at the time, leading to long queues, and also made dollars available to Sri Lanka when it was scarce in the country. To date, no single entity, whether governments or international financial institutions, has extended such funds and facilities as India has done—and without strings. China and the US and other nations have been measuring every penny they give and stop with a few pennies at a time.
In the end, the IMF’s ‘bailout package’, as it is known, comprises $2.9 billion, much less than India’s near-impromptu $4 billion assistance, that too arrived at after a lot of calculations and a lot more of consultations and contradictions. Even this package is paid out in tranches of a few hundred million at a time, after visiting IMF teams had convinced themselves that the host government had implemented the austerity-cum-revenue-earning measures that they had forced upon the latter.
Sri Lanka is due for a review meeting in preparation for the third payout by the IMF, and the consultations got delayed because of the current elections. The IMF, the last resort of a failing economy, put forward a host of conditions that had the effect of making the then government unpopular nearer home, owing to the externally imposed increases in taxes and tariffs, which pushed up prices even more than during the period of scarcity and the consequent people’s protest that went by the name ‘Aragalaya’, or ‘struggle’ in the local majority lingo, Sinhala. If Aragayala caused the ‘democratic’ and dramatic exit of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2022, the IMF intervention was a factor in the crushing electoral defeat of successor President Ranil Wickremesinghe in this year’s election that AKD won.
Dragging the feet That the bilateral bonhomie between the two South Asian neighbours has continued through three governments in two years, including the present one, is a record in itself. Through this period, the Indian government, the public sector, and also the private sector have been investing in the Sri Lankan economy, while other nations, their governments, and investors have been still dragging their feet. Then, there are the series of agreements and MoUs signed between the two governments, aimed at India and Indians helping to boost the Sri Lankan economy in multiple ways, from investments to tourism and more.
The long list of agreements, both before and after the Aragalaya, includes Indian investments, both from the government and the private sector, in Sri Lanka’s energy sector, both fuel-based and green energy. The aim is to make Sri Lanka self-sufficient on the all-important energy front, which is among the basic inputs for economic development, job creation, and also revenue and income generation. Some of these projects, including the massive investments in the vintage ‘oil tank farms’ in the eastern port town of Trincomalee, as and when completed, would help Sri Lanka have substantial dollar income from exporting fossil fuel stored in these massive tanks that require repairs and refurbishments.
As may be recalled, it was a vicious cycle for Sri Lanka, as a shortage of dollars in 2022 meant an inability to import fuel, which together hit the nation in every which way. Then, there are green energy projects in the nation’s North, in which India’s private sector Adani group is involved, both in terms of investments and a related controversy that is now before the Sri Lankan Supreme Court. Before becoming president, Dissanayake was also among the politicians who had talked about the nation’s ‘energy sovereignty’.
At one stage in the parliamentary poll campaign, he reportedly declared that they would scrap the Adani green energy power deal, as litigants in the Supreme Court have also talked about transparency and power-purchase price issues. The last time the Supreme Court heard the matter after Dissanayake had taken over, heading a three-member cabinet, which included him as well, the government told the Supreme Court that they would have to wait until after the parliamentary polls, when alone an expanded cabinet could be formed, to discuss and decide on the matter. Independent of the Adani dispute, the Indian state sector is committed to investing in green energy in Sri Lanka’s East.
Then, there are also projects and programmes for promoting more and more Indian tourists visiting Sri Lanka, thus bringing in more dollars and more business to the local hospitality, readymade garment, and such other industries. In the social sector, Indian housing schemes across Sri Lanka’s multi-ethnic canvas are both popular and purposeful. India is also involved in funding education and healthcare, starting with the emergency ambulance service, which was an innovation in the island nation.
Crown jewel There is more to it, and the list only keeps expanding. Yet, the crown jewel of it all, if it can be called so, is the proposal for a land bridge connecting the two nations. Yes, there are reservations to that too in Sri Lanka, as an archaic and uneducated view still exists that ‘India will end up annexing the island nation as one more of its states/provinces’.
However, the present-day JVP’s leaders, just as the ideologues at the height of the Asian tsunami of end-2004, conceded that the island nation had nothing to fear from New Delhi. The Indian soldiers with their naval vessels and IAF aircraft left the way they came immediately after the rescue and rehabilitation measures for which they were sent within hours of the calamity and returned home as they came, bag and baggage. It had been the case on earlier occasions, too.
Today, in the contemporary context, compared to the time when Colombo came up with the idea in 2003, a land bridge of the kind would link Sri Lanka not just to the South Indian markets but also the entire Eurasian landmass, with great prospects for trade relations with every country therein. Traversing the bridge across the seas will be a tourist attraction in itself. Critics of the land bridge in Sri Lanka—there is none in India, independent of ideological differences within the nation’s polity, like anywhere—are either mischievous or ignorant or both.
In fact, it was not they but Chief Minister Jayalalithaa of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu who had expressed strong reservations about the land bridge when first proposed. At the time, she feared, and rightly so, the way the LTTE could sabotage the project under construction or misuse the bridge for their nefarious ends. However, it was Sri Lanka’s parliamentary elections in 2004, followed by the presidential poll in 2005, that ended the discourse.
Inexperienced, unexposed In the parliamentary elections, the rivals showed little enthusiasm or commitment, owing to an early conclusion that the people would give the President’s party a supportive majority, as has been the case in the past. The JVP-NPP, as the ruling combine is known, won 159 of 225 seats, with 150 being the cut-off for a two-thirds majority. It was a figure that even JVP strategists did not count on; they would have been satisfied with a comfortable simple majority, with the cut-off at 113.
Pollsters and pundits had predicted the figure at around 130. Such a massive lead, from a three-member, three-per cent vote-share performance in the previous parliamentary elections in 2020, became possible only because the rivals, starting with former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, kept on taunting the new rulers as inexperienced and unexposed in the art of administration. He even (mockingly?) offered to guide the government if approached.
He might have had his commendable economic recovery in mind, but given his public image as an ‘ignorant and arrogant’ politician, it ended up as a negative message. It was also the case with the main opposition led by Sajith Premadasa, the first run-up in the presidential poll, only weeks earlier. An additional but tactical cause for his Samagi Jana Balawegaya’s (SJB) poor showing was the denial of Tamil votes to the SJB after those parties that had supported his presidential candidate or those that had voted from the Tamil areas were now contesting on their own.
The SJB vote share thus came down to 17 per cent from 32 per cent, with a tally of 40 seats. Wickremesinghe’s United National Party-led New Democratic Front, the latter created for this election, polled 4.5 per cent with five seats.
The migration of votes to the JVP-NPP camp is visible. End of ethnic politics? The other interesting aspect of this election is the ready acceptance that the Tamil voters in the North and the East had for the JVP-NPP combine, but only after the Sinhala-Buddhist majority in the South voted to make Dissanayake president. No, it does not imply the end of ethnic politics in the Tamil areas but was only a strong message from the Tamil voters to their eternally bickering political class that had made their so-called ‘Tamil nationalist agenda’ a farcical front to indulge in an unending ego clash.
The JVP-NPP opening its parliamentary account from the Tamil North, which comprises the electoral districts of Jaffna and Kilinochchi, was a foregone conclusion, precisely for the same reason. But even they might not have been prepared for bagging three of six seats in the prestigious Jaffna district elections. It included a bonus seat, as is the wont, for the party coming on the top of the vote-share card, which began showing up as news of the counting rolled over from one polling division to another.
The JVP-NPP also won two seats in the adjoining Vanni electoral district, also in the North, against the expected one (owing to the presence of a substantial Sinhala population). The real shocker for the Tamils, though not at all unexpected, was the poor performance of the old warhorse in Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK). Though the party won the highest number of eight seats for any Tamil party, the traditional northern citadel of ethnic politics gave the party only two seats.
This can mean that the ethnic equilibrium within the party can shift from the North to the East, which has both contemporary historic references, dating back to the split within the LTTE and even before it, post-Independence. Already, sane voices have emerged for all Tamil parties to come together and factions within the ITAK to bury the hatchet. It has little chance to occur immediately.
The fact is that with this election, many of the war-era Tamil leaders have fallen by the wayside. One of the non-LTTE militant leaders, TELO’s Selvam Adaikalanathan is the loner from the past who has made it to the Parliament this time. Despite known blessings from the Catholic Church—he is one of them, like many voters along the coastal areas—Selvam won with the lowest ‘preference vote share’ of 5,000-plus.
Voices in the South, especially pro-JVP-NPP, have begun talking about ethnic peace and cooperation from now on. Parallel voices in the North have modified this script to argue that the JVP-NPP can now hope to be dispassionate in their approach to the ethnic issue, unlike through the past decades, where it also became a launch pad for their anti-India posturing. It is not easy, though.
Their main vote bank is among the Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian constituency, which they cannot afford to upset, let alone antagonise. With substantial representation from the Tamil constituency, the ruling combine can now turn the tables on the ethnic rivals, including those in the Diaspora, arguing that the mandate is not for what the Tamil polity had been demanding (‘unacceptable’?) but what the JVP-NPP has been having in mind. However, the topic would acquire some relevance only when the new government comes up with ideas for a new Constitution, as has been promised ahead of the presidential poll.
As the co-author of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord that facilitated the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, which in turn promised power-sharing, India may have had a moral role to impress upon the Colombo Government, now as earlier, to give the Tamils their due, but within a united Sri Lanka. It has been India’s line throughout. But in the changed circumstances, also of the JVP winning a majority of seats in the Tamil North, New Delhi’s role in the matter may have become more limited than it already was, but the Tamil factions would not want to accept it, though they also know that they are to blame.
The other Indian concern relates to the ‘China factor’, where, as a presidential candidate visiting India on New Delhi’s invitation, he reiterated his party’s position that India’s concerns were real and jelled with those of his nation—and would have to be addressed, after all. The key to such an approach will be known when, after completing his cabinet-making process, President Dissanayake commences his overseas interactions. The question is, will Dissanayake choose India as the maiden destination, as has been the tradition in bilateral relations? In recent times, Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu, this time last year, and Nepal’s Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli, around now, have both chosen China instead.
Muizzu, however, began with Turkey and followed it up with his maiden state visit, which was to China. As is argued, neither leader received the invitation from New Delhi even when they were ready to travel. That is saying something, though not all.
The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst and Political Commentator. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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