Asian
Human Rights Commission
AHRC Publications - Human Rights SOLIDARITY - December 2000 Volume 10 No. 12
AHRC - Human Rights SOLIDARITY - December 2000 Volume 10 No. 12 - The Parliamentary Elections The Violent Business of Politics
SRI LANKA
The Parliamentary Elections
The Violent Business of Politics
Bruce Van Voorhis
[Ed. Note: The following article is based on the reflections of an election monitor sent by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) to observe Sri Lanka's parliamentary elections at the invitation of the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL), a regional election monitoring group in Bangkok, Thailand, and two election monitoring organisations in Sri Lanka, the People's Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) and the Movement for Free and Fair Elections (MFFE). The author spent a week in the country, visiting 13 polling stations in the Kurunegala District on election day. The names of the victims of election-related violence have been withheld for their protection.]
On Oct. 10, 2000, millions of Sri
Lankans went to almost 10,000 polling stations scattered throughout the country's 22 electoral districts to mark their ballots for candidates to represent them in the nation's Parliament. At stake was 225 seats-196 seats directly elected by the people through a voting system based on proportional representation and 29 seats chosen from national party lists based on the party's percentage of the vote nationwide. The declared winner of the election was the ruling People's Alliance (PA) with 107 seats-six seats shy of a majority-followed by the United National Party (UNP) with 89 seats and the People's Liberation Front or Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) with 10 seats. After negotiating with other parties, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga and the PA were able to form a new government with the help of the five seats of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and the four seats of the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), a Tamil party, and the country's 11th Parliament assembled for the first time on Oct. 18. However, in observing the country's election, it quickly becomes obvious that the election process is as important as the election results in Sri Lanka.
At first glance, an inventory of election-related statistics indicate that Sri Lanka now has a vibrant democracy: more than 5,000 candidates from 29 political parties and 99 independent groups contested the election-the most candidates in the country's history-and about 75 percent of the country's more than 12 million registered voters cast their ballot in a nation of nearly 19 million. This is a level of competition and participation that would gratify the world's most mature democracies.
Unfortunately, these figures belie the true state of democracy in Sri Lanka today, for the two months of campaigning that began after Parliament was dissolved on Aug. 18 were punctuated with 73 election-related murders-seven on election day itself-and other numerous reports of intimidation and violence. Four days before the election the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) said that it had received 1,404 reports of violence of which 51 percent were attributed to the ruling PA. In a separate report at the end of September, the organisation observed that, of the complaints filed against the PA, 18.6 percent of the accusations were made by PA members themselves. This latter revelation is a reflection of the preferential voting system in Sri Lanka in which voters are first asked to select a party and secondly to write the names of their preferred three candidates. After a party has been declared a winner in a district, then the candidate with the most votes from that party is awarded the first seat for that district. This system creates competition not only between political parties, but also among them, and thus explains why candidates from the same political party would seek to intimidate their own party members.
In addition to these accounts of violence, there were other irregularities on election day: ballot boxes were stuffed, voters and polling agents representing the various political parties in the polling stations were impersonated and ballot boxes and polling cards were stolen, etc. To this enumeration of election improprieties can be added the attempts of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to disrupt and sabotage the election. In short, it can be said that violence permeates the present political culture of Sri Lanka. Based on its prevalence, it appears, in fact, that violence is a campaign strategy of far too many candidates that is employed to intimidate their opponents and voters.
Prior to the election in Kurunegala District, for instance, election monitors learned that 225 packets of polling cards that voters present at the polling station before they vote were stolen from the postman by three men on Sept. 29 in Thekka Kellai, a teak plantation. Because each packet contains a different number of polling cards, it is impossible to know how many polling cards were actually taken.
Other incidents reported to the monitors in Kurunegala District, however, were more violent. With a mixture of fear and tears in his eyes, one shopkeeper explained how his restaurant was destroyed by a group of men in seven vehicles on Oct. 5. The shopkeeper, a supporter of the opposition UNP, said that one of the attackers was the bodyguard of the provincial council minister who is also a candidate of the ruling party, the PA. Witnesses said that the vehicles belonged to the national minister of health and indigenous medicine, Jayaratne Herath. The police, however, refused to put the name of the candidate's bodyguard and the license plate numbers of the vehicles in the official complaint. This was the second time that the man's shop had been attacked during the campaign.
Another UNP supporter with a bandage over his upper lip and fear evident in his eyes as well told election monitors that a man in a provincial council member's jeep came to his home in the Polgahawela area of the district in the middle of the night on Sept. 26 and threatened his elderly mother with a gun and smashed his television as well as intimidated him. Later, on Oct. 5, Chaminda Herath, a PA member of the provincial council, returned and attacked the victim with an iron bar, striking his upper lip and breaking two of his teeth. Unidentified attackers also tried to burn down his home and shop on Sept. 9, he said, and another UNP supporter was attacked outside of his shop.
The most violent incident just prior to the election in Kurunegala District, however, occurred on the night of Oct. 7 when two men came to the home of Lal Ranasingh and shot him in front of his house. Although there is some dispute about whether Ranasingh was killed as the result of a business dispute or for his political activities, he was an UNP activist who had helped organise the party's polling agents for the election and had spoken at many political rallies during the provincial council elections the previous year.
From post-election reports, it appears that much, if not most, of the country's election-related violence occurred in the Kandy District, however. One international observer in the Pathadumbara area of the district summarised her overall impression of election day by saying that 'large numbers of polling cards were taken, votes were falsely cast, people were prevented from voting, there was a great deal of threats and intimidation, polling officers seemed either frightened or ill at ease, there were gangs going to polling stations throughout the day and most voters felt that their basic right to vote had been violated.'
She reported seeing many vehicles with supporters wearing T-shirts with the picture of the deputy defence minister, Anurudda Ratwatte, and blue caps-the party colour of the PA-with 'Anurudda One' in Singhalese. These gangs, she said, roamed throughout the election area during the day taking polling cards and using them to cast fraudulent votes. At one polling station, men in blue caps were preventing voters from casting their ballots, she said. Many polling stations, she noted, only had PA polling agents; and when there were polling agents from other parties present, she said there was some evidence to suggest that they were being impersonated by someone from another political party. One senior presiding officer (SPO) at a polling station, she added, said that he and other election officials had been threatened and told that gangs would come to their homes and kill their spouses and children.
Similar practices took part in another area of the Kandy District-Nawalepitiya. An international monitor in summing up her observations during election day in this area said that 'polling cards were snatched, UNP polling agents were threatened by armed thugs in their homes or chased away from the polling stations early in the morning and voters were intimidated while standing in queues to vote.' She added that there was not even an attempt to hide some of the fraudulent practices, such as the distribution by PA supporters of presumably stolen polling cards at the gate of one polling station. Moreover, most government buses running between the tea estates were covered with PA posters, she said, while no UNP posters were to be seen in this previously UNP stronghold. In addition, the UNP office had been closed after it had been attacked and seriously damaged a month before the election on Sept. 10.
After the election, the elections commissioner annulled the election results in 22 polling centres in six districts in the South-13 of which were in Kandy-and 91 polling stations in the divisions of Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu in the war zone in Jaffna District in the North. However, the elections commissioner, Dayananda Dissanayake, said that he would not hold a by-election in Kandy as he maintained that the approximately 16,000 votes believed to be fraudulently cast in the district would not seriously affect the final results. He also decided not to hold another election in Jaffna because of the ongoing lack of security in the district that would continue to negate a stable environ-ment for voting. Overall, Dissanayake said that the election was free and fair.
CMEV, however, disputes this conclusion and says that votes in 47 additional polling places where more than 9,000 votes were stuffed into ballot boxes were not annulled. The organisation says that the elections commissioner should annul all votes in any polling centre where cases of ballot-stuffing are proven.
As for voting in Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu in Jaffna District, CMEV says that it understands that the 91 polling centres were to be clustered in two locations for security reasons but that these two voting centres were, in fact, not open. Thus, the elections commissioner, CMEV claims, annulled votes from 91 polling stations with 108,000 registered voters that were not open. Moreover, a Tamil party, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), has threatened to challenge the Jaffna District election results in court as it claims that more votes were cast than registered voters in the district. The party also says that voting began at 9:00 p.m. on Oct. 9-12 hours before the polls opened-on Delft Island, an area controlled by the EPDP.
Although most of the violence and fraudulent practices during the campaign and on election day were attributed to the PA, this appears to be more a reflection of the privileges of being the ruling party in power than an indication of an overabundance of evil elements in the PA or a plethora of saints in the UNP, for the UNP when it held power at the national level for 17 years prior to 1994 was known for using the same violent methods and vote rigging. Now, some people said, they were the targets of their own unethical and illegal tactics.
One political actor has largely been left out of the discussion above, however-the LTTE. In Sri Lanka, it must be noted, of course, that all elections in the country since 1983 have been conducted in the midst of a civil war, thus, making it very difficult for candidates to campaign and for voters to go to the polls in the areas most affected by the war in the North and the East. Because the LTTE does not recognise the legitimacy of any government or elected officials in the area that it seeks for an independent Tamil homeland in these parts of the island, it has consistently attempted to disrupt any kind of political activity initiated by government officials in Colombo, including elections, in especially the North and the East. The parliamentary elections in 2000 were no exception to this unwritten policy. On Sept. 10, two Tamil candidates of the PA, Sezhian Perinbanaya and Manoharan Pillai, were murdered in Batticaloa District, and Baithullah, a candidate for the SLMC running under the banner of the PA, was killed by a suicide bomber along with 18 others just after a campaign rally in the town of Muttur in the district of Trincomalee several weeks later on Oct. 2.
All of this violence, whether committed by the LTTE or politicians in the South of the island, must be condemned, of course. One must recognise, however, that the political motivations behind the use of violence by the LTTE and southern politicians has different purposes. For the LTTE, the death and destruction that it generates is driven by its political and ideological goals and the use of war that it employs in its hope to achieve them. For politicians of the South though, violence is utilised as a means to get elected to public office.
Without seeking to minimise the violence perpetuated by the LTTE, this latter use of violence deserves further discussion; for in observing Sri Lanka's elections, one begins to feel that the motivation of most of the country's politicians, regardless of political party, is not to serve the people of their districts and their interests but to get elected in order to enrich themselves through their national positions of power and influence. Elections, in effect, become a means to acquire wealth, and thus, politicians see elections as an investment. The electoral mandate to them becomes a license to use the State for their own economic advantage. In this process, politics in Sri Lanka becomes a business. To gain access to these 'business opportunities,' i.e., to get elected, politicians invest in the elections by hiring an army of 'supporters' to try to ensure their victory. Indeed, it is said that some of the 'supporters' are army deserters who cannot earn a living because of their illegal status, and consequently, they use their military skills to support the electoral efforts of politicians. If successful, both the candidate and their 'supporters' will economically benefit in some way, and their social status in the community will rise as people will attempt to forge a good relationship with them and they will become people from whom favours are sought.
Based on this analysis, the political system in Sri Lanka appears to be a feudal type of democracy in which each politician gains control of their constituency through the use of a gang of thugs and the people are dependent on the politician for the economic benefits that the area receives from the government.
There is also the issue of the militarisation of society. Violence associated with the election and violence related to the civil war begin to become mutually reinforcing. Each creates and adds to an environment in which violence becomes almost accepted as a part of daily life. The militarisation of society also reinforces the rationale for procuring arms and thus contributes to the arms trade. Some Sri Lankans believe that many of Sri Lanka's elected officials are involved in selling weapons or making money in some way from the war, which then becomes another profit making opportunity if they are successfully elected. If this allegation is true, then it is doubtful that the country's civil war that has already dragged on for 17 years will end soon as long as politicians in Colombo benefit from its continuation.
Even if this last allegation is false, it will still be very difficult for any government in Sri Lanka to resolve the civil war and poverty that is sadly evident throughout the country as long as politicians in Colombo view violence and fraudulent practices as an acceptable means to get elected. How, for instance, can Colombo-based politicians resolve the war when they have used violence to get elected? How can the politicians of the South propose a democratic and just solution for the North and East when there is so much blood on the campaign trail? How can poverty be eradicated or even simply reduced as long as politics is seen as a means to enrich oneself? Until the violent business of politics in Sri Lanka ends, there is no end in sight to the suffering that the island's people, both Tamils and Singhalese, will have to continue to endure. The first step in terminating this bloodstained chapter in Sri Lanka's history is for Colombo's politicians to transform themselves from self-serving leeches of the State to representatives of the people and to gain this honourable position through means that are fair and non-violent.
Lastly, some people make the argument that violence has always been a part of Sri Lankan elections and that, consequently, there is nothing much to say about this most recent election. This argument implies though that Sri Lankans are not capable of having really free and fair elections. This, in turn, implies that bad leaders are all that the people deserve. If this is so, poverty and war will, of course, only persist. However, to choose their representatives through a free and a fair election is everyone's right. Those who resort to violence deprive the people as a whole of this basic human right. Some day the people themselves will have to resolve this contradiction; but given the acuteness of the war and the depth of poverty that exists, that day needs to be sooner rather than later.
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Last updated December 05, 2000 04:49 PM.
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