Photo courtesy of News18
This month marks the second anniversary since former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was ousted in a mass uprising. The 2022 March to July mass protest wave was truly an extraordinary event in Sri Lanka’s political history. People from all walks of life joined the protests that demanded the resignation of the former president. Those who took to the streets will remember the enthusiasm that echoed in the air during the days of aragalaya. Despite hardships such as electricity cuts and fuel queues, there was a sense of solidarity – a certain “belongingness” that the people identified with. This identity stemmed from widespread antipathy among the masses towards the political regime, particularly the Rajapaksa dynasty, which symbolized entrenched power.
The selection of Ranil Wickremesinghe as president following Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s departure and the subsequent crackdown on protests marked the end of the protest wave. How the political landscape has evolved since is inseparable from the impact of the protest movement. In this article I have outline three important political developments in the post-aragalaya era that have influenced politics. In these developments, we see continuation and discontinuation of the themes raised during the aragalaya days.
Disintegration of Rajapaksa(ism)
The collapse of the Rajapaksa hegemonic project is undoubtedly the most striking outcome of the 2022 protests. The Rajapaksa project, which started taking shape in 2005, reached the zenith of its popularity in the aftermath of the end of the civil war in 2009. Politics represented by Rajapaksas, which later was embodied in the SLPP they carved out from the SLFP, can be differentiated from the Chandrika Bandaranaike’s SLFP in several aspects. The association with a militant form of Sinhala nationalism stands out as a notable factor. The Rajapaksas belonged to the periphery of the power elite that dominated politics. Thus, to consolidate power inside the party and in the society at large, the Rajapaksas had to turn towards a more compelling discursive strategy that they found in militant Sinhala nationalism.
The success of the Rajapaksa project lay in the way it established a political frontier at the discourse level between the (Sinhala) people and alien elements that threaten the existence of the Sinhalese nation. This was a transversal message that addressed the sentiments of people across different classes and social layers. The militant Sinhala nationalism the Rajapaksas relied on not only helped them isolate Chandrika Bandaranaike’s influence within their party but also sideline the UNP in national politics.
The nationalist rhetoric of the Rajapaksa project was combined with a paternalistic political network that spread across the country. Welfare measures of the state were connected to this machinery so ordinary people at the grassroots level had to rely on their local SLPP politician to access welfare benefits. Political clientelism was also associated with the emergence of a new generation of political elite at the local level, often linked with illicit activities. Although the Rajapaksas lost power in 2015, their politics remained highly popular among Sinhala constituencies. The 2019 comeback of Rajapaksas through the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the president showed the resilience of the Rajapaksa project.
Nevertheless after the economic crisis and the political upheaval that followed in 2022, it seems that the SLPP has lost its political dominance in the South. The strong sentiment among people that Rajapaksas are responsible for the economic woes – which also was a key theme raised during the 2022 protests – seems to have unraveled the foundations of the once powerful political project, resulting in the loss of its hegemony. The SLPP now has been divided into several rival factions. Most of the senior SLPP MPs having a SLFP background seemed to have abandoned Rajapaksas. In the context of an economic crisis, when people are delving more into bread and butter concerns, militant Sinhala nationalism seems to have lost its former appeal, at least for the moment.
Authoritarian neoliberalism
The decline of the Rajapaksa project as a consequence of the economic crisis and the aragalaya protests has created a power vacuum on the political scene. Although the SLPP lost its popular support during the aragalaya times, the party managed to remain in the government relying on its numerical majority in parliament. The new pact the SLPP entered with Ranil Wickremesinghe therefore indicates another important political development since the 2022 uprising.
President Wickremesinghe negotiated with the IMF for an extended fund facility and began discussions with bilateral and commercial creditors seeking a debt restructuring deal. Consequent to the IMF agreement, the Wickremesinghe presidency has been implementing a series of austerity measures comprising a sharp increase of taxes, withdrawal of electricity and fuel subsidies and privatization of state owned enterprises. The essence of the economic reforms that are carried out has been shifting the burden of the economic crisis onto the urban and rural working poor, lower middle class and other intermediate sections. Since 2022, the poorer people have been going through a humanitarian crisis reflected in the massive increase of poverty, indebtedness, food insecurity and outward migration rates.
This restructuring of the economy according to neo-liberal lines is accompanied by an authoritarian turn in politics. President Wickremesinghe started his term by violently dispersing the protestors occupying the entrance near the Presidential Secretariat on July 22, 2022. This was followed by a wave of repression targeting more active elements of the aragalaya protest movement. After July 2022, in all the instances that organizations such as student unions or trade unions have attempted to take to the streets, demonstrations have been dispersed citing that permission for the protests was not obtained. Even now no street protests are allowed in the Colombo city premises. This is an unprecedented situation in a country that has a long standing democratic tradition of public demonstrations, street marches and collective protests.
As reflected in the decision to postpone the local council elections in March 2023, and ongoing attempts to postpone the presidential elections, the Wickremesinghe presidency has shown its unwillingness to be tested before the public in popular elections. These developments reflect the signs of what contemporary scholars have referred to as authoritarian neo-liberalism. The concept of authoritarian neo-liberalism suggests that political regimes following neo-liberal policies in a time of crisis tend to rely on coercive measures to maintain their dominance rather than public consent. Such political regimes seek to insulate themselves from public contestation to pursue austerity policies.
Stability versus change
The emergence of an authoritarian neo-liberal regime in the aftermath of the 2022 protests, however, has not resolved the question of hegemony in politics. Only a political project that can win over the hearts and minds of the people and that can obtain the allegiance of a larger population across various socio-economic, cultural divisions can sustainably establish itself as a stable political force. In the absence of a hegemonic project, various political projects would compete for dominance and the political environment would normally be characterized by instability and crisis.
From 2005 to 2022, Sri Lanka saw the consolidation of the Rajapaksa hegemonic project that represented a confrontational form of politics, establishing a dividing line between “them” vs “us” and calling for the unification of the (Sinhala) people against the threat of alien elements. The “people” were constructed through a majoritarian discourse and the minorities were depicted as the enemy of the people. The authoritarian neo-liberal regime under the Wickremesinghe presidency does not seem to have the popular appeal or the support the Rajapaksa project once had.
In this context, the post aragalaya political scene has evolved as a three way battle between contending forces. On the one hand, President Wickremesinghe is involved in forming a grand alliance hoping to obtain the backing of the SLPP, SLFP, dissidents of the opposition SJB and parties representing minorities. On the other end, the main opposition party SJB and the resurgent left wing populist NPP have launched competitive campaigns to replace President Wickremesinghe.
All these forces compete within an atmosphere that was defined by the 2022 protests. When looking carefully at the sentiments and expressions that characterized the collective mass consciousness during the 2022 mass protests, we can identify the existence of two parallel logics – reasonings why the people took to the streets. The first can be called the logic of stability. The people were disturbed by the disruptions in day to day life such as electricity cuts and long queues for essentials and wanted a certain type of “normalcy”. Along with this desire for stability, also was the passion to see a change, which we may call the logic of change. People had a feeling that politicians in general are responsible for what happened to the country and how things are done at the top should substantially change. During the aragalaya protests, both these logics existed side by side in the common psyche.
What we see in the aftermath of the aragalaya is the disassociation of these two logics and their evolution in separate paths. This is the third development that deserves our attention. After suspending foreign debt servicing, the Wickremesinghe presidency managed to utilize the foreign reserves to restore the continued supply of essentials albeit at a higher cost. This has created a sense of “normalcy” among certain sections of society particularly the urban middle class sectors. The Wickremesinghe presidency seems to be capitalizing on this sentiment, claiming that it has brought economic stability and recovery. At the same time, the aspiration to see a change coupled with the antipathy towards established politicians and politics also remains a powerful sentiment among the masses.
Among the two opposition parties, the NPP seems to have effectively captured this sentiment by introducing a new political discourse advocating for mobilizing people against the corrupt elite establishment. The call for change is often attacked by politicians of both mainstream parties, warning the people against “political experiments” and calling for the continuation of the status quo rather than seeking a radically new path. The SJB seems to have been caught in a dilemma within this context, stuck in between the two logics without being able to represent either with full conviction. On the one hand, as a party that embraces the neo-liberal economic reforms of President Wickremesinghe, the SJB is compelled to adhere to the argument that those reforms have brought stability, at least to some extent. Furthermore, as a part of the larger political establishment, it also plays in defense concerning anti-establishment arguments. On the other hand, as a party of the opposition it cannot proceed without addressing the oppositional, anti-status quo sentiment that has become strong, especially among the popular classes in society.
Whatever the positions these political parties have taken, the next presidential elections are likely to be a contest between the logic of stability and the logic of change that emanated from the aragalaya protests; which logic prevails will determine the political future of Sri Lanka.