Review of World Affairs

• Sri Lanka’s Parliamentary Elections
• America’s Transition to Radicalism

By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

Sri Lanka’s President’s Party Achieves Two-Thirds Parliamentary Majority

The party of Sri Lanka’s new Marxist-leaning President Anura Kumara Dissanayake won a decisive two-thirds majority in parliament, providing a strong mandate for his programme for economic revival (Associated Press/AP).

Dissanayake’s National People’s Power Party (NPP) won 159 of the 225 seats, according to the Election Commission.

The Samagi Jana Balawegaya or United People’s Power Party (UPP), led by opposition leader Sajith Premadasa had 40 seats and was in second place.

The election comes at a decisive time for Sri Lankans, as the Indian Ocean island nation is struggling to emerge from the worst economic crisis in its history, having declared bankruptcy after defaulting on its external debt in 2022.

The substantial margin of victory will enable Dissanayake to carry out sweeping reforms, including a campaign promise of a new constitution, without having to rely on other parties.

Dissanayake was elected president on September 21 in a rejection of traditional political parties that have governed the island nation since its independence from British rule in 1948.

Then, he had received just 42 % percent of the votes, fueling questions over his party’s prospects in Thursday’s parliamentary elections.

But the party managed to receive a large increase in support less than two months into his presidency.

The Tamil Dimension

In a major surprise and a big shift in the country’s electoral landscape, his party won the Jaffna district, the heartland of ethnic Hindu Tamils in the north, and many other minority strongholds.

The victory in Jaffna represents a great dent for traditional ethnic Hindu Tamil parties that have dominated the politics of the north since independence.

It is also a major shift in the attitude of Tamils, who have long been suspicious of majority ethnic Buddhist Sinhalese leaders.

Ethnic Tamil rebels fought an unsuccessful civil war in 1983-2009 to create a separate homeland, saying they were being marginalized by governments controlled by Sinhalese.

According to conservative UN estimates, more than 100,000 were killed in that conflict.

The top NPP official Tilvin Silva described the current election victory as “complete and one with political weight,” because voters from all corners of the country voted for a single programme.

He especially thanked Tamil voters in the north for trusting a leader outside their stronghold.

“We have very well understood the weight of this victory. The people have placed immense trust in us and we must keep that trust,” he said (AP).

Veeragathy Thanabalasingham, a Colombo-based political analyst, said northern voters chose the NPP because they were disillusioned with traditional Tamil parties but could not find a local alternative.

“The Tamil parties were divided and contested separately and as a result the Tamil people’s representation is scattered,” he said (AP).

The Electoral System

Of the 225 seats in parliament, 196 were up for grabs under Sri Lanka’s electoral system, which allocates seats in each district among the parties according to the proportion of the votes they get.

The remaining 29 seats – called the national list seats – are allocated to parties and independent groups according to the proportion of the total votes they receive countrywide.

Economic Crisis & IMF Bailout

Sri Lanka is in the middle of a bailout programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with debt restructuring with international creditors nearly complete.

Sri Lanka’s crisis was largely the result of economic mismanagement combined with fallout from the Covid 19 pandemic, which along with militant attacks in 2019 devastated the important tourism industry.

The pandemic also disrupted the flow of remittances from Sri Lankans working abroad.

The government also slashed taxes in 2019, depleting the treasury just as the virus hit.

Foreign exchange reserves plummeted, leaving Sri Lanka unable to pay for imports or defend its currency, the rupee.

Sri Lanka’s economic upheaval led to a political crisis that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign in 2022 – after massive countrywide demonstrations.

Parlaiment then elected Ranil Wickremesinghe to replace him.

The economy stabilized, inflation dropped, the rupee strengthened and foreign reserves increased under Wickremesinghe.

Nonetheless, he lost the election as public dissatisfaction grew over the government’s effort to increase revenue by raising electricity bills and imposing heavy new income taxes on professionals and businesses as part of the government’s efforts to meet IMF conditions.

Mandate for Change

Voters were also drawn by the NPP’s cry for change in the political culture and an end to corruption, because they perceived the parties that ruled Sri Lanka so far had caused the economic collapse.

Dissanayake’s promise to punish members of previous governments accused of corruption and to recover allegedly stolen assets also raised much hope among the people.

The people now hope Dissanayake and his party will use their resounding victory to rebuild the country.

They have been given a strong mandate, and people are hopeful that the NPP will use it to uplift the country from the present pathetic situation.

Trump’s Government Takes Shape

The U.S. elections are now behind us, and the outcome is quite clear.

The Republicans – and more accurately Donald Trump – have been eminently successful and dominate their Democratic opponents. They and Trump will control the White House and both chambers of Congress – the so-called Trifecta.

And thanks to Trump’s first term appointments and the machinations of the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, they also inherit a rightward-leaning, pro-Trump Supreme Court that recently granted presidents broad immunity for their acts in office.

Richard Haass, the former president of The Council on Foreign Relations writes that at least for the next two years (until the mid-term elections) the U.S. will be, for all intents and purposes, a parliamentary system in which most power is concentrated in the hands of one party, a ruling party beholden to a single individual – Trump (“Home & Away”/Transition, Nov.15).

Haass further elucidates that there have been other times in the last century when one party controlled the White House and both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

What preserved democracy in those instances and in the American context were several factors:

• a neutral Supreme Court
• independent-minded members of Congress in both parties
• an active and free press
• individuals of integrity serving in the federal government in high positions; and, above all,
• the character of the occupant of the Oval Office.

The obvious danger now, according to Haass, is that we cannot assume that most of these elements will be present under a second Trump administration.

This is particularly relevant as “Trump is about to assume control of a unified government but a deeply divided country.”

Trump did win the popular vote with 76 million votes, just over half the votes cast, but 73 million Americans preferred Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump’s Electoral College win was significant: 312-226; but a shift of as few as 250,000 votes [out of 150 million] in three swing states would have tilted the result in the other direction.

No doubt, it was a clear-cut win, but despite Trump’s repeated assertions, it was not a landslide, nor a mandate.

Foreign Affairs & National Security

The start of last week provided a modicum of reassurance that perhaps Trump would not govern as he campaigned, as he selected Florida Senator Marco Rubio for Secretary of State and Congressman Mike Waltz for National Security Advisor.

Both candidates are internationalists rather than the isolationists whom many feared Trump would appoint.

Rubio has a good deal of experience from his time in the Senate, including as vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, while Waltz sat on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee and is a veteran who has served in the Pentagon and White House.

Their views on the critical foreign policy issues, fall well within the outlines of what might be termed serious debate, although where they stand on Ukraine is uncertain as they both voted against the most recent tranche of military aid proposed by the Biden administration and opposed by Trump.

Several of the other nominations are anything but reassuring, to put it mildly. Indeed, alarming would not be too strong a word, according to Haass.

Justice Department: The Case of Matt Gaetz

The choice of Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, the chief law enforcement officer in the country, has generally been considered outrageous.

Gaetz resigned his congressional seat, almost certainly to preempt the House Ethics Committee from releasing a report deeply critical of him on claims ranging from sexual misconduct with a minor to drug use. Haass thinks Trump nominated him to pose a loyalty test to Republican senators. However, on the face of it, Gaetz is no better and no worse than his future boss!

Haass conjectures that it is possible Trump figured Gaetz would be rejected as a sacrificial lamb that would distract attention and increase the odds other controversial nominees can get through.

Or it may have been what the nomination appears to be on the surface, an attempt to put someone in charge of the Justice Department to weaponized the legal system against so-called “enemies within”.

Whatever the motive, how the Senate handles the nomination will tell us a lot about whether Republican senators and new Majority Leader John Thune are willing “to place country before party and person.”

Health Portfolio

No less outrageous is the choice of Robert F. Kennedy,Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Actually, reckless might be a better word as Kennedy’s opposition to vaccinations along with his embrace of other radical positions and conspiracy theories would cost countless innocent lives.

Defence

There are serious questions regarding Trump’s choice to head the Department of Defense.

For the last seven years, Pete Hegseth has been a media host at Fox and Friends. That he is an Army veteran is in principle valuable, writes Haass.

The bad news is that he has never managed anything, much less an organization with an US $ Dollar 800 billion budget and close to 3 million employees.

Hegseth seems primarily obsessed with curing the military of what he sees as a “pro-woke” bias at a time when the focus ought to be on introducing new technology into the forces, expanding the military industrial base and making sure the military is capable of deterring multiple adversaries and, if need be, fighting multiple wars.

In addition, there is nothing in his background to suggest he would push back against Trump’s inclination to use the U.S. military to put down domestic protests that could arise over mass deportations or any number of other policies.

[There would then be nothing to distinguish Trump from any tin pot dictator from a Third World country that he so likes to denigrate!].

There are also reports that Trump is planning to purge the military of “woke” generals and admirals by establishing a new board of military personnel that could bypass the Pentagon’s regular promotion system to remove ‘unwelcome’ generals and admirals.

It is hard to imagine Hegseth opposing such an effort. The risk in all this is that the military, one of this country’s most successful institutions and essential to U.S. national security, could lose the trust of the American people along with its professionalism and unity.

[The crux of the matter is that Trump has willfully himself become a grave threat to U.S. national security. Have the American people – with eyes wide open – elected a genuine patriot or a scheming and diabolical quisling  and collaborator?].

Elon Musk, the ‘Jack of All Trades’

The world’s richest man and tech mogul Elon Musk, is something of an unguided missile, according to Haass.

He is to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, a new government agency with broad oversight of all government spending, without ever having served in government: “Rarely has someone so unaccountable and with so many conflicts of interest come to hold such influence.”

‘Enigmatic’ Tulsi Gabbard for Intelligence

Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, is Trump’s choice to be the Director of National Intelligence, which has oversight over all other intelligence agencies.

It is incomprehensible that Trump would choose such a person with absolutely no knowledge or experience of her portfolio.

Perhaps, her professed sympathies for Bashar al-Assad of Syria (whom the U.S. actively opposes) and her tendency to channel the views of Vladimir Putin, made her favourably disposed to Trump, himself an admirer of Putin.

Habringers of Middle East Policy

Trump’s choices that would affect Middle East policy in particular also raise serious issues.

Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, is Trump’s choice to be U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

Unfortunately, his previous comments read like a U.S. green light for Israel to annex Gaza and the West Bank.

Steven Witkoff, is to be Special Envoy to the Middle East. He has no foreign policy experience and is an uncritical backer of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump has thrown his weight completely on the side of Israel.

Haass makes the point that with the exception of Rubio and Waltz, it is impossible to defend Trump’s choices for senior positions.

The candidatures of Gaetz and Kennedy are particularly egregious.

“Missing in all these decisions is any sense that Trump sees himself as the steward of something larger than himself, of a society that happens to be the world’s oldest democracy, one that confronts a far more dangerous world than the one that greeted him eight years ago. Instead of seriousness there is radicalism.”

The U.S. elections did have consequences – many unintended by the voters.

The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com