Sri Lanka 2013-2017: The Economist Intelligence Unit’s forecast

It is always a healthy practice to test one’s propositions and preoccupations against those of a more objective outsider, especially one with a reputation for lucid professional assessment.

Karl Marx famously called The Economist (London) the most intelligent defender of capitalism. A product from the stables of The Economist, intended for insiders in decision making circles the world over, is the Economist Intelligence Unit’s regular reports.

Apart from these briefing papers, the EIU produces important Country Reports. The latest EIU Country Report on Sri Lanka (January 2013) which contains the forecast for 2013-2017 must thus be widely studied, but it will please neither Government nor Opposition.

This is because in its analytical lucidity, it goes against the received wisdom of both the incumbent regime as well as the Opposition. It points to strengths and weaknesses in the current dispensation which indicate that both Government and Opposition strategists and propagandists are off the mark. None of which surprises me.

The report clearly states that President Rajapaksa is widely expected to win the presidential elections of November 2015, just as the UPFA is tipped to remain in office until the election of April 2016: “Mahinda Rajapaksa will remain president until the next election, due in 2015. He will be the favourite to win the contest, owing to forecast continued rapid economic growth in the next few years and the advantages of incumbency. The United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) Government is not expected to face any significant parliamentary challenge during the remainder of its six-year term (which ends in 2016), given the unusually large size of its majority.”

The removal of term limits is mentioned but not as a factor which transforms the country from a democracy into anything fundamentally different, still less its polar opposite. The impeachment, the expanding role of the armed forces, etc. are remarked upon, but seen as a problem of style of governance and stresses on and challenges to a democracy, rather than signalling the end of one.

“Mr. Rajapaksa runs a highly personalised, populist administration. His position was strengthened in 2010 by a constitutional amendment that increased the president’s powers and reduced checks on his office while simultaneously removing the term limit for the presidency.”

Serious problem areas projected for the period 2013-2017 are those of continued ethnic fissure, the failure of ethnic reconciliation, ‘anti-Tamil social discrimination’ – all stemming from the disinclination to devolve power even to the extent of the 13th Amendment – and the Government’s aggression towards journalists and civil society critics.

“Although the LTTE has been defeated, splits in Sri Lankan society are unlikely to be healed in the forecast period. The UPFA has claimed that it will address Tamil grievances by devolving more power to the island’s provinces, but Mr. Rajapaksa’s bias towards a centralised style of leadership make it doubtful that much progress will be made on this front. In recent months there has been growing speculation that the administration will seek to abolish the system of provincial councils, established by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Although the government remains reticent about its plans in this regard, abolishing the provincial councils could deal a further blow to prospects for reconciliation between the island’s various ethnic groups, which has been predicated on the devolution of power… Anti-Tamil discrimination will remain a major social problem…There are concerns about the role of the military in the economic and political life of Tamil-majority areas, particularly in the north.

“Critics of the Government or the President in the media, civil society and abroad will continue to face an aggressive response by the authorities. Many journalists have been physically attacked, and media outlets that have criticised Rajapaksa’s administration have been forced to close.”

Good news for the Government and bad news for the Opposition come also in the form of a basically optimistic economic assessment, which projects a steady growth rate (6.6%) considerably below that of Government propaganda but well above the catastrophist readings of critics.

The serious criticism of the present dispensation, and it really is serious, comes in a twice stated conclusion that: “The growing influence of the small clique surrounding Mr. Rajapaksa and led by members of his family threatens to undermine Sri Lanka’s long-term institutional stability.”

Quite obviously this conclusion will infuriate the Government. Ironically it will also irk the Opposition and the Government’s critics among the commentariat. The Government will be angered by what the EIU’s criticism says, while the Oppositional ideologues will be incensed by what it does not say. According to the EIU’s diagnosis the problem is not primarily President Rajapaksa, with or without term limits.

This assessment is borne out by my own close encounters of a third kind with and within the regime and the State.

The EIU’s surgically targeted critical assessment will not satisfy the critics of the Government, ranging from those who would cry genocide and call for international accountability, to those who irrationally see him following in the footsteps of Prabhakaran or Hitler, or alternating between these role models or striving to imitate them both.   

However, the EIU’s precise diagnosis of the source of systemic instability is the most objective and accurate that I have yet read. It also corresponds to the discontent felt in the state itself and society at large. It is what can cause a spider web of cracks throughout the system someday.

An intelligent and effective Opposition would have homed in on that precise target. It has the virtue of truth as well as constituting the weak link, the Achilles Heel of the regime. (Dr. Wickrema Weerasooriya did as much in 1976-’77). Yet, in its hatred, prejudice, fear and hysteria, the Opposition will go instead for the ‘hard target’ and continue to alienate itself from the people.

The EIU country report unerringly identifies, as the Oppositional ideologues are unable or unwilling to, the most fundamental reason for President Rajapaksa’s popularity: “The president, Mahinda Rajapaksa of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), is idolised as the man who in May 2009 defeated the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, Tamil Tigers)…”

So long as the strategists and ideologues of the Opposition remain blind to that essential truth, refuse acknowledge the legitimacy of that mass sentiment, lack self-critical reflection about being stranded on the other side of that equation, fail to realise the imperative need to deny the regime the monopoly of that factor and do not radically revise its leadership profile so as to be competitive on that patriotic terrain, the Sri Lankan polity will never regain its balance and attain a healthy equilibrium.