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Political Violence Returns to Sri Lanka Ahead of Presidential Election

As the vote has grown too competitive for analysts to call, acts of politically motivated violence have increased, ranging from intimidation to outright assault.
Photo via Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters

As Sri Lanka prepares to go to the polls for its presidential election on Thursday, rights groups and observers are warning of an upsurge in violence on the island nation, which is not long removed from a bloody, 25-year civil war.

Elections were originally set for 2017, but in October incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa rescheduled them for this month. For weeks it had appeared as though he would coast to victory, as he did in 2010, buoyed by lingering support from the country's Sinhalese Buddhist majority that rejoiced at the 2009 defeat of the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam, a rebel group also known as the Tamil Tigers.

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But his health minister, Maithripala Sirisena, defected in November to lead a united opposition that included two dozen other defections from the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA), led by Rajapaksa's Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), of which Sirisena had served as general secretary. The moves upended the government overnight and turned the election into one of Sri Lanka's closest ever.

As the vote has grown too competitive for analysts to call — some polls have Sirisena leading — acts of politically motivated violence have increased ahead of the election. The Center for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV), a non-partisan Colombo-based organization, has documented at least 420 incidents during campaigning, ranging from intimidation to outright assault and destruction of personal property.

The CMEV reports that in the majority of cases during the election season, "the perpetrators are identified as coming from the ruling party." On Tuesday, the organization accused SLFP supporters of violating campaign law. The police, they said, had effectively ignored those violations.

'There is concern that there will be threats and intimidation by police and the other organs of the state.'

On Sunday, unknown assailants left a pair of severed dogs' heads outside the homes of two human rights activists. That evening, three pro-opposition supporters were shot in the central mountain town of Kahawatta as they set up a stage for Sirisena to speak. After the incident, a court in nearby Pelmadulla ordered the arrest of Premalal Jayasekara, an MP and member of the SLFP, along with two other officials in connection with the shooting.

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Election commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya, who has exhibited independence from Rajapaksa, condemned the violence.

"If we fail to curb the attacks carried out on election rallies, we will have to recall another poll in those areas," Deshapriya said Monday, noting "Sri Lankan politics has deteriorated." The commissioner cited state-owned media outlets and threatened to revoke their right to broadcast election results if they continued to air government propaganda.

Concerns over free polls are also mounting in the north and east, traditionally home to the country's sizable Tamil minority. Since the war ended in 2009, the Sri Lankan military has remained in the region effectively as an occupying force — an element of what Tamils regard as the colonization of their homeland.

This week, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued calls for the government to ensure safety for voters and to keep its hands out of ballot boxes. In late December, the UPFA heavily criticized United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after he expressed his "strong expectation" that the government would guarantee "peaceful and credible" elections.

"The worst-case scenario is where the military actively interferes and says there is a security situation," Alan Keenan, Sri Lanka analyst at the International Crisis Group, told VICE News.

"There's no question there's been a massive misuse of state resources," Keenan continued. "There's already evidence that the military has been involved in campaigning, building stages and sending out campaign materials for the Rajapaksa regime. How far they'll go on the actual election day or afterwards remains unclear."

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The UN estimates that as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed during the waning months of the war, predominantly by government shelling. Rajapaksa has repeatedly said he will not cooperate with an inquiry established by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate both government and Tiger conduct during the war. Sirisena has also pledged to not cooperate.

Sri Lanka's president doesn't want the UN investigating war crimes in his country. Read more here.

The question of the war crimes inquiry, however, has been overshadowed during the campaign by concerns over the cost of living and allegations that Rajapaksa's family continues to consolidate its hold on the country's economy, receive kickbacks, and exert dynastic rule over Sri Lanka. Since taking office, Rajapaksa has done away with term limits, consolidated power in the hands of the president, and stacked the Supreme Court with allies.

Two of Rajapaksa's brothers hold high-level appointments in his government. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former computer systems administrator who has US citizenship and oversaw the military campaign against the Tigers, is defense minister; Basil Rajapaksa is minister of economic development and oversees billions in investment funds. It has been estimated that Mahinda, Gotabaya, and Basil together control roughly 70 percent of Sri Lanka's budget.

Another of Mahinda Rajapaksa's brothers, Chamal, is speaker of the parliament, and Mahinda's son, Namal, is an MP and rising star in the SLFP.

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As Rajapaksa cocooned himself within an inner circle, members of his own party — notably Sirisena — found themselves on the outside, looking on powerlessly as decision-making ran along blood lines.

Capitalists in Sri Lanka and abroad are wary of taking sides in the election, but in private have grown exasperated with endemic corruption, according to Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives and co-convenor of the CMEV.

"If you talk to business people and foreign investors, they will point out that you can't really initiate any kind of economic enterprise without one of the family members on board," Saravanamuttu told VICE News.

Saravanamuttu added that the "relative collapse of the rule of law" and the weakening of journalistic freedom led local officials to conclude that corrupt dealings with the regime were the only way to advance their careers.

On December 30, the Tamil National Alliance, the country's largest umbrella Tamil party, called on its followers to support Sirisena in the election. Despite Sirisena's former status as a prominent official in the ruling government and his popularity with the Sinhala Buddhist majority, party leaders said that a vote for him was the only way to avert "Sri Lanka's inexorable move towards dictatorship and totalitarianism, with the Executive President becoming, in effect, the sole repository of all powers of governance."

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Sri Lanka has for centuries been a mixture of ethnic and religious groups. Today, Muslims and Tamils make up some 25 percent of the electorate.

Rajapaksa's support of extremist Buddhist groups — including the Bodu Bala Sena who have fomented ethnic riots in recent years — has angered and estranged the Muslim population. The country's largest Muslim political party, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, pulled out of the government last month and cast their lot with the opposition.

Combined with Sirisena's appeal among rural Sinhalese voters fed up with endemic corruption, observers say that the electoral math may well not add up for Rajapaksa this time around.

Keenan believes Rajapaksa's gambit to exert ideological and political power through Buddhist-power groups might have backfired, a result he has only considered recently. Indeed, the Bodu Bala Sena has mostly restricted itself to acerbic press conferences in recent months — perhaps at the government's instruction.

Meet the violent Buddhists starting riots in Sri Lanka. Read more here.

Since 2013, the UN estimates that more than 350 "violent attacks" have targeted members of the country's Muslim minority, while 150 took place against the smaller Christian population in Sri Lanka.

"Muslims have been so deeply alienated by the government's support of these militant groups and the impunity with which they attacked and even killed Muslims," Keenan said. "Muslim parties had to play catch up with their voters if they weren't to lose their credibility entirely."

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"BBS and others have been quiet, but there are worries that in the post-election period they could come back to life if Rajapaksa wins, or they could be a useful thuggish element if he loses," he added.

Sirisena has promised to end corruption and do away with the powerful "executive presidency" introduced in the 1980s, which Rajapaksa has taken full advantage of. He has not said he will support political devolution in Tamil areas, however, something leaders there have long pushed for.

"He is seen as very sober citizen, someone with a certain sincerity," said Saravanamuttu.

Rajapaksa has brushed aside accusations of corruption and chauvinism, and even recently campaigned in the northern Tamil stronghold of Jaffna, where he urged residents to cast votes for "the devil you know."

Since taking power, Rajapaksa has overseen a diplomatic shift away from India, preferring closer ties with China. Beijing provided $4.8 billion in aid to Sri Lanka between 2005 and 2012, nearly all of it in the form of below-market-rate loans. The Chinese money flow has quickened over the last two years, reaching some $2.18 billion. Unlike financing in grant form, the loans allow the regime to exert complete control over the funds. The regime often chooses to funnel the money right back to China in the form of infrastructure contracts — but not before skimming it, charge critics.

In September, construction began on a Chinese-financed $1.4 billion "port city" in Colombo. China Harbour Engineering Corporation, already responsible for building a giant port in Rajapaksa's hometown of Hambantota — fittingly named Magampura Mahinda Rajapaksa Port — is expected to reclaim more than 200 hectares of land and complete construction of the complex by 2022.

No incumbent has ever been defeated in an election in Sri Lanka. Kennan says there is fear that, in the event of a Sirisena win, Rajapaksa could claim the right to finish the remaining two years of his term or challenge the vote at the Supreme Court, a body led by his former attorney general.

Saravanamuttu noted that CEMV will have about 4,500 election monitors spread through the country at polling sites on January 8 to document any interference that may occur.

"There is concern that there will be threats and intimidation by police and the other organs of the state," he said.

As for whether this will be a free and fair election, Saravanamutti said this "depends on the extent to which the Rajapaksa regime will allow the process to unfold and not try to intervene."

Follow Samuel Oakford on Twitter: @samueloakford