Hello, everyone. Good morning, afternoon or evening, and welcome to this edition of Notes from South Asia. You can find all the articles in the series here (along with my other diaries).
Part of Indian Administered Kashmir went to the polls on 18 Sep 2024. The people there are disenchanted but also think elections may be the only way to get statehood and some agency back. Afghan women from the world over gathered in Tirana, Albania to declare their freedom and to discuss the way forward. And Sri Lanka is going to the polls on 21st Sep 2024.
Let us read about all this news and more in this edition.
India
Kashmir: The Despair and Hope of Vote
The Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir—now downgraded to Union Territory—went to the polls for the first time in ten years. The first phase of the assembly elections—to the union territory legislature—was held on 18 Sep. What does it mean for the people of the region? Aakash Hassan and Hannah Ellis-Peterson report for the Guardian.
Voters in the state described the upcoming polls as an opportunity to finally get back their voice, after years of having their democratic rights silenced. The Modi government had resisted holding the polls but it was finally mandated by the supreme court earlier this year, with a September deadline.
The BJP had initially claimed they would “sweep” the election yet widespread resentment has left them contesting less than a third of the 90 assembly seats, mostly focused in the only Hindu-majority area of Jammu, and they are expected to win fewer than in the 2014 polls.
Kashmir is a disputed region between Indian and Pakistan and the people of Kashmir. In 1948, the Hindu king of the region—imposed by British and with no connection to the land—acceded to India thanks to some hand twisting and a Pakistan supported rebellion (or invasion. Both claims are made.) There was a war between India and Pakistan and the valley was split between the two countries. So, when we refer to Kashmir in the context of India it is the Indian Union Territory of Kashmir or Indian Administered Kashmir.
Historically, Kashmiris have reason to be wary of local elections. The region has been disputed between India and Pakistan since 1947, when the two countries gained their independence, and three wars have been fought over it. Each side currently governs part of it while China controls a portion in the east.
It was in 1987 that the Indian government, fearful of the sensitive region falling into the hands of those sympathetic to Pakistan, was accused of meddling in Kashmir’s elections to prevent pro-independence candidates from taking power. In response, a coalition of popular parties boycotted the elections. Several leaders crossed the border into Pakistan, where they went on to launch an armed revolt against India. It plunged the region into waves of violence and militancy from the 1990s onwards that continue to this day.
This time, however, the election has not been met with calls for boycotts, even by separatist and terrorist outfits. Instead, candidates from a multitude of parties, including those who favour greater independence for Kashmir, are taking part and many believe it could be the highest turnout in years. Political rallies have been packed, with many people turning up to demand that family members detained under authoritarian laws since 2019’s crackdown are released.
Kashmiris have indeed been voting in record numbers. They did so in the recent parliamentary elections that ended in June and they did so in the recently concluded phase I of assembly elections. While BJP is claiming that the increased voter turnout is a result of their policies, the people are coming out to vote to fight against BJP by any means they can find.
Yet on the ground in the villages and towns, another narrative has been playing out. Many fear that the Modi government is trying to change the Muslim-majority demography of Kashmir, after changes brought in after 2019 allowed outsiders to buy property and invest in the region for the first time.
Many also argue that the promised investment and prosperity have yet to materialise, with opponents alleging unemployment remains at a 45-year-high. The Modi government’s claims to have crushed the militancy and brought peace to the region have been undermined by a recent surge in attacks – carried out by a new tranche of highly trained militants purportedly from Pakistan – which have killed almost 200 security personnel and over 350 civilians since 2020.
“On the one hand, Modi has been treating the higher voter turnout as a referendum for his decisions of 2019, but on the other hand, local parties also see it as a vote against his policies,” says Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a Kashmiri political analyst.
“People feel that by voting they may finally be able to put up some barriers to the onslaught that has been unleashed upon them since 2019.”
Mohammad Rafiq, 45, a shopkeeper in the town of Bijbehara, was among those intending to vote for the first time, to send a direct message to the Modi government. In the autumn of 1993, his brother was among the 51 civilians who were killed by India’s border security force after they opened fire on protesters.
“When I saw the bloodied body of my brother, I promised that day to myself that I would never participate in these sham elections,” said Rafiq. “But now there is such a major assault on our identity that I am going to vote to keep the BJP away.”
The elections follow a delimitation exercise (delineating new electoral constituencies) that was marked by prejudices and party preferences. Latief U Zaman Deva reports for the Kashmir Times.
These movements were often in direct opposition to the secular ethos painstakingly built by Pandit Nehru and his colleagues.
Not content with the increasing foothold of Hindutva in J&K, the 2022 Delimitation Commission, backed by the BJP, resorted to gerrymandering. This redistricting process increased the number of Hindu-majority assembly segments from 25 to 31, further enhancing Hindu representation in Jammu and Kashmir.
Additionally, three more segments were altered, resulting in a 50:50, which now allows Hindus, who make up 28.80% of the population, to hold 34.44% of the seats in the 90-member assembly. If the three altered seats are considered, this minority community will hold 37.77% of the seats.
The representation of Muslims in Jammu Division, who form 34.21% of the population, has significantly dropped. Through gerrymandering, Muslim-majority constituencies have been reduced from 12 to 9, and their representation has plummeted from 32.43% to 20.93%.
Further complicating the political landscape, the Lieutenant Governor (LG) will nominate five candidates (two women, two migrants, and one representative of refugees from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir).
This move has the potential to subvert the popular mandate unless rules are introduced ensuring their nomination is based on recommendations by the elected members of the Legislative Assembly. In a truly democratic setup, the LG should act on the advice of the cabinet.
The addition of five nominated members will increase the assembly’s strength from 90 to 95, with clear efforts to disproportionately benefit one particular community. This could result in 39 seats to the minority group in the 95-member assembly, compared to their legitimate share of 29 seats.
Kashmir valley, which has 95% Muslim population, has also faced similar gerrymandering.
Even the Valley Division has not been spared, as attempts have been made to increase the population of Scheduled Tribes (STs) in specific constituencies. This move disregards principles of geographical contiguity, year-round connectivity, and the aspirations of the local people.
It has led to the exclusion of non-ST majority villages from certain constituencies, creating new problems for the inhabitants of surrounding areas.
Of the nine assembly segments with the highest percentage of ST populations, only two fall in the Valley—one each in the districts of Ganderbal and Bandipora.
However, through cunning redistricting, the Kokernag-Larnoo constituency has been reconfigured for reservation, leaving significant problems for surrounding segments.
Readers will note the stark intra-district variations in the population assigned to each constituency, which lack any logical basis.
Factors such as terrain difficulty, linguistic and ethnic concerns, poor connectivity, and geographical isolation were largely ignored, despite their importance in determining constituency boundaries.
Following the dismemberment of the State of J&K and the abrogation of Article 370, many citizens hoped to extract “democratic revenge.”
However, when the opportunity arose, they became disillusioned by the disunity within opposition ranks, leading to multi-cornered contests in most constituencies.
In India, there are constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes (formerly untouchable caste groups or Dalits) and Scheduled Tribes (Adivasis or Tribals) proportionate to their population. In these constituencies, only a person of that background may stand for election. This may disencfranchise some Muslim citizens if it is done with the intent to gerrymander. There are Muslim STs in Kashmir but from what I understand there has also been attempts by the BJP government to assign ST status to some Hindu minoritised groups.
The Phase I saw 59% turn out. Numan Bhat and Mehroob Mushtaq report for Kashmir Times.
ANANTNAG: The first phase of Jammu and Kashmir’s assembly elections, on September 18, saw a 58.85% voter turnout (recorded at 6 PM), the highest in seven recent elections. Voting occurred peacefully across 24 seats in seven districts, with only minor incidents reported.
An official handout of the Election Commission of India (ECI) said that there was 59 percent voting in the first phase of polling in J&K.
As I said, Kashmiris are intent on voting BJP out and regaining statehood and special status.
“J&K Polls: What the Historic Voter Turnout in Kashmir Means for the Region”: Toufiq Rashid writes for the Wire.
In 2014, I saw a young man walking with the help of crutches, almost dragging himself up the stairs, into a polling station which had no ramp for people with disabilities.
While someone with a physical disability casting their vote was no novelty, what was noteworthy was that the man had lost his leg in a firing during a protest in the 2010 summer agitation.
Losing a limb in an ‘anti-India’ agitation and casting his vote in an election process as a citizen of India a few years later seemed like a stark paradox. He said the sentiments for azadi (freedom) differed from the need to have a local representative of their choice, who would solve the problems of “bijli, sadak and paani (electricity, roads and water)“. “The two,” he insisted, “need not be mixed”. [...]
After decades, the voting in Kashmir is also a political statement. It is a message to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre that the events of August 5, 2019, and everything that followed, was not acceptable. A large section of the people are participating in the election process primarily to vote against the BJP and its policies on Kashmir. For some, the election process is seen by Kashmiris as a legal means of registering their protest.
The historic voter turnout of 58.46% in Kashmir during the Lok Sabha elections was seen as the first step in this direction, and the current assembly elections seem to have further strengthened this sentiment.
On Wednesday, nearly 59% of 2.3 million voters in 24 of its 90 constituencies cast their franchise in the first phase of the polls. For the first time in the last three decades, elections are being held without any calls of boycott.
Kashmiris are of course against BJP. What is interesting is that people of Jammu (and Ladakh though they are now separated from J&K and are not holding elections) are also shifting away from BJP because they are seeing BJP pushing a demographic change to the detriment of locals. I suppose we will see post elections whether there is an actual shift.
Adani’s Marketing Department?
Supriya Sharma & Ayushi Tiwari report for the Scroll about the inter linkage between Modi’s foreign policy and Adani’s gains.
The Kenyan high court last week suspended a proposed deal that would have given the Adani Group rights to run the Nairobi airport for 30 years – its first airport venture outside India. The court order is a setback to the group’s plans to expand its global footprint.
Notably, this expansion has closely followed in the footsteps of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s diplomatic engagements. Most Adani projects outside India, whether in the neighbourhood or further afield, were announced within months of Modi visiting the country or meeting its head of state, Scroll’s analysis shows.
The Kenyan prime minister, for instance, visited New Delhi in December 2023. Three months later, in March, the Adani Group submitted a proposal to upgrade and expand the Nairobi airport. In June, the Kenyan authorities changed the national aviation policy and approved an airport investment plan.
After whistleblower documents brought this to light, the Kenyan Human Rights Commission and the bar association filed a legal challenge, arguing that “leasing a strategic and profitable national airport to a private entity is irrational”, more so because it was being done in secrecy, without any competitive bidding. The High Court temporarily halted the proposed deal on September 9.
As questions were raised in the Kenyan Parliament and criticism mounted on social media, a government advisor said no contract had been awarded to Adani for the airport but the group has been granted concessions worth $1.3 billion to construct high-voltage power lines in Kenya.
The furore in Kenya comes at a time when the interim government in Bangladesh has said it was reviewing a power purchase agreement with Adani, which is widely seen as being tilted in favour of the conglomerate. This deal, too, followed in the wake of Modi’s diplomacy.
The same thing happened with Sri Lanka too you might remember. Modi has made India the marketing arm of Adani.
Hindu Nationalism and Caste Politics in the US
Andrew Cockburn writes for the Harper’s Magazine about the Hindutva Lobby and how they managed to stop the anti-caste legislation in California in its track. All they needed to do was Newsom apparently.
Despite furious opposition from leading figures in California’s Hindu tech community—such as Asha Jadeja Motwani, widow of the engineer who helped craft the original Google search algorithm—by September the measure had passed both House and Senate with overwhelming bipartisan majorities and was sent to Governor Gavin Newsom for his signature. While Newsom deliberated, Dalit activists, led by Soundararajan, waged a monthlong hunger strike outside the state legislature. Then, in October, Newsom announced that he was vetoing the bill. It was unnecessary, he claimed, because any discrimination was already covered by existing civil-rights laws.
Newsom’s decision took many by surprise, but others knew better. A month earlier, the ambitious governor, widely considered a future Democratic presidential candidate, flew to Chicago, where Joe Biden’s campaign had convened major donors for a meeting of the Biden Victory Fund PAC. Among them was Ramesh Kapur, a wealthy Massachusetts entrepreneur, whose voice and checkbook carry weight in the firmament of Democratic Party fundraising. In Chicago, Kapur made it clear to Newsom that he faced an important choice: if he ever hoped to secure Kapur’s support, he had better make the right decision on the caste bill. Kapur was hoping to encourage competition between Newsom and Kamala Harris, whose mother was Indian. “I raised money for her when she ran for the Senate and the presidency,” Kapur told me. (His goal, he said, is to elect the first Indian-American president—“hopefully before I get reincarnated!”) “If you want to be our next president,” Kapur bluntly informed the governor, “veto the bill.”
Newsom received an equally unequivocal message from Ajay Jain Bhutoria, another major Biden fundraiser who had served as deputy finance chair of the Democratic Party. “We used very strong words,” Bhutoria, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, later recounted on Twitter,
telling him that definitely he has a bright future in national politics . . . But at the same time, if there’s a mistake made on his side, he loses the support of the community. And I think he got the message very loud and clear.
The ultimatum was decisive. Kapur said that Newsom emailed him three hours before going public: “I’m going to veto it.” Newsom’s move dashed the hopes of all who had fought for the bill, but it seems likely to reap him rich rewards. “Now that he has made that decision, he has become the champion of the Hindu cause,” Kapur told me over the phone from California, where he was busy organizing the first in a series of fundraisers for the governor in Silicon Valley, Chicago, and New Jersey. “Newsom is hot in the Indian-American community!”
Hindu nationalists are as embedded in the Democratic party campaign machinery as Republican. Please remember that. They have shifted their focus from Newsom to Harris and have told the campaign that Hindu votes can make up for them losing Muslim votes.
“We can make the difference!” Kapur exclaimed, brandishing a state-by-state breakdown of Hindu and Muslim populations to show that his fellow Hindus could deliver votes as well as money. Muslims outnumber Hindus in America, 3.5 million to 2.5 million. But in key swing states, the numbers Kapur presented to me, drawn mostly from 2014 data, almost balance out: Pennsylvania is home to 130,000 Hindus and 150,000 Muslims. In Georgia, the state’s 172,000 Hindus outnumber its 123,000 Muslims, while the 110,000 Hindus in Michigan provide some counterweight, Kapur implied, to the quarter million Muslims, many of whom are outraged by the Biden Administration’s support for Israel. In Nevada, Hindus outnumber Muslims by almost three to one, while in Virginia, Hindus have an edge of 200,000 to just under 170,000. During the 2021 Virginia governor’s race, both the Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, and the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, paid attention to this voter pool and dutifully visited Hindu temples, but Youngkin reportedly made the stronger impression—he “listened deeply” to their concerns, as American Hindu Coalition chairman Shekhar Tiwari put it, especially their complaints about local schools’ efforts to promote diversity by modifying admissions policies at their expense. And Youngkin was not the first Republican to cultivate and enjoy Hindu support. In 2015, the Chicago billionaire industrialist Shalabh Kumar set up the Republican Hindu Coalition, which describes itself as “modeled after the highly successful Republican Jewish Coalition”; Steve Bannon was an honorary co-chair of the group. Kumar and his wife poured money into Trump’s 2016 election campaign, which was making major media buys in swing states. Trump even recorded a message in Hindi.
85% of Muslims voted for Biden while it was only 75% for Hindus (and all they get in return is Islamophobic comments, which is likely to worsen post 2024). But apparently because Harris is Indian American and may support Hindu Nationalism (so these folks will demand), they are going all out for her.
I imagine the Hindus are no more monolithic than Muslim and of course their views on caste or religion may not necessarily be the same as the Modi affiliated folks’. Last we checked, Indian Americans actually supported anti-caste legislation by a slim majority (54%, I think. Affirmative action had more support at 66%). I don’t know if propaganda changed that since the survey.
Hmm…. I tried to find a survey from 2020 where I read that but instead I found a 2024 survey on AAPI based on which they have got some information on Indian Americans. There has been a 5% shift to Republicans among Indian Americans.
- Over half of Indian American voters (55%) identify as Democrat or lean Democrat (vs. 59% in 2020). (2024 and 2020 Asian American Voter Surveys)
- Just over 1 in 4 Indian American voters (26%) identify as Republican or lean Republican (vs. 21% in 2020). (2024 and 2020 Asian American Voter Surveys)
- 25% of Indian American voters identify as an independent (vs. 28% in 2020). When excluding those who lean toward either the Democratic or Republican Party, 15% are pure independents. (2024 and 2020 Asian American Voter Surveys)
But no increase in support for Trump. However, there is a decrease in support for Biden and Harris (I imagine because of anti-immigration stances as well as Palestine).
- If the election were held today, nearly half of Indian American voters (46%) indicated they would vote for Joe Biden, down nearly 20 percentage points from 2020 (65%). (2024 and 2020 Asian American Voter Surveys)
- ***Note: this survey was conducted before Joe Biden left the presidential race on July 21
- Only 29% of Indian American voters indicated they would vote for Donald Trump, which remained stable from 2020 (28%). (2024 and 2020 Asian American Voter Surveys)
- Favorability of Vice President Kamala Harris:
- Half of Indian American voters (54%) have a favorable opinion of Kamala Harris (vs. 62% in 2022)
- 38% of Indian American voters have an unfavorable opinion of Kamala Harris (vs. 28% in 2022)
- And 8% of Indian American voters say they haven’t heard of or don’t know enough about Kamala Harris (vs. 10% in 2022)
- Source: 2024 and 2022 Asian American Voter Surveys
I am guessing this will make the Democratic party more supportive of Hindu nationalism and Modi and BJP not less.
Afghanistan
The Afghan women in the diaspora held a summit in Tirana, Albania. Annie Kelly reports from Tirana for the Guardian.
In the garden of a hotel on the outskirts of Tirana, Albania, a group of Afghan women are singing, arms raised or slung around each other’s shoulders. Some are crying as they embrace friends or former colleagues they have not seen since the Taliban swept to power in August 2021 and began systematically stripping away the rights and freedoms of 14 million Afghan women and girls.
Watching them is Fawzia Koofi, the former Afghan MP now living in exile in the UK, who has worked for more than two years to bring over 130 Afghan women together for the All Afghan Women summit in Tirana.
For most of the that time, Koofi and her co-organisers at Women for Afghanistan struggled to find the summit a home, with successive governments refusing to play host.
“It was really important to us to try to find a Muslim-majority country close to Afghanistan to host this summit and it was very disappointing that so many refused to do so,” says Koofi. Turkey and the UAE were among governments who either refused to host the summit or simply did not respond to Koofi’s request.
The summit is an attempt to allow Afghan women to get their voices back into international conversations about the future of their homeland and the fight for women’s rights.
The past few months has seen a slow creep of normalisation begin to define countries’ diplomatic relations with the Taliban, with women’s voices largely absent from the conversation.
“If women’s voices are not heard, then their rights will not be respected,” says Koofi. “There is strength in numbers and we are here to find unity and speak with one voice.”
The CNA, an Albanian publication, reports on former MP Kofi’s words (the Guardian spells her name as Koofi).
The former MP also gave a message to women.
"It's been 3 years since our girls don't go to school, since our sisters don't do their homework in offices because of the various laws that have been implemented. The last blow is the law that was approved a few days ago, was implemented by the relevant ministry.
The fear of Afghan women is that they have to wear the burqa. Afghan women will not be sacrificed, we will be champions of our communities. We will work in different communities", she said.
The former MP also gave a message to women.
"War is war. We are before the war. They have tried for us not to be like that, you have the responsibility, you have to work together and you have to understand the principles, the principle of cooperation. Having different mentalities, different points of view, different views, again we have to have a common opinion and idea and we have to reflect. This is a request that is made to respect us who live in Afghanistan", declared Feuzia Kofi./ CNA
Eliza Meller reports for TVP World, a polish publication, on an Afghan campaigner who has made Poland her home post Taliban take over. She attended the Afghan Women’s summit: Taliban has ‘destroyed a generation,’ says Afghan campaigner in Poland
On a grey morning, as floods were devastating large swathes of southwestern Poland, a small but popular Afghan restaurant, tucked away in a shopping center in the north of Warsaw, rolled up its sleeves to prepare 100 meals for those displaced by the disaster.
The owner of the restaurant, Nilofar Ayoubi, who has been living in Poland for three years, didn’t bat an eyelid over the decision, because she “know[s] what it’s like to need help,” she said.
Nilofar, her husband and three children fled Afghanistan with just two backpacks when the Islamist militant Taliban seized power in August 2021. Nilofar was helped by a Polish journalist, Michał Żakowski, who had contacted her for an interview for his show on Radio 357 just a day before the fall of Kabul.
That same day, when he understood that she was on a death list and the Taliban was already looking for her, he contacted everyone he could to evacuate her and her family on the next plane to Poland.
Through the vapors of fluffy Afghan rice in the Warsaw restaurant emerges a woman who has endured much for her commitment to help people in need.
Nilofar, 28, is one of Afghanistan’s first and youngest female entrepreneurs to own several businesses, including two clothing companies, Maria Clothing and Maria Bride, which gave work to hundreds of women.
She is also a journalist and a prominent figure in the Afghan women’s rights movement, having founded the Women’s Political Participation Network, an advocacy organization for female engagement in politics. She often works with the EU and UN on Afghan women’s rights initiatives.
It is therefore unsurprising that a few days ago she attended a historic summit held in Albania and attended by around 140 people, discussing the future of women’s rights in Afghanistan.
Not on the subject but immigrants do so much for a community and yet are treated with so much hate and suspicion. No less in Europe both West and East than in the US.
Lindsey Hilsum reports on the Afghan Women’s Summit for Channel 4.
A handful have managed to attend despite still living in Afghanistan. “I listen to the younger generation and try and give them hope,” said one, who wouldn’t show her face on camera. “I remind them the first time the Taliban were in power they were thrown out. It’s going to happen again. You will go back to school. I try to improve their morale.”
But morale is low. A women’s rights activist in Kabul sent us a message:
“Women have reached a point where they no longer have a reason to live, and every day we witness women taking their own lives in the remote areas and villages,” she said.
Families dare not publicise such tragedies for fear of attracting the Taliban’s attention. “The women are buried in corners secretly. A profound sense of hopelessness has engulfed Afghanistan.”
Things are dire in Afghanistan and we need to do the best we can for them.
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is conducting their presidential elections tomorrow, 21st Sep 2024. Meera Srinivasan reports for the Hindu about the elections.
Sri Lanka will go to the polls on September 21 and the campaign has intensified with barely a week left. The election marks the first opportunity citizens will have to choose their leader, after they ousted former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, at the height of a crushing economic downturn two years ago. The crisis, which triggered unprecedented mass protests, was the worst the island nation has seen since Independence in 1948. Besides booting out Mr. Gotabaya, the Janatha Aragalaya (Sinhala term for people’s struggle) sought to shake up the country’s establishment with a loud cry for “system change”. After Mr. Gotabaya fled the country and quit office, senior politician Ranil Wickremesinghe took his place through a parliamentary vote that he won with the support of the Rajapaksas’ party, which still holds a majority in the legislature.
She says Sri Lanka’s electoral landscape has changed significantly in the last few days.
Sri Lanka’s political and electoral landscape has seen significant reconfiguration over the last few years.
The once formidable Rajapaksas, who dominated the country’s politics for nearly two decades, are out of focus this election. The country’s two traditional parties — the centre-left Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the centre-right United National Party (UNP) — have been decimated, and now exist only in their rump, remnants, and records of history. Their breakaway formations have sought to detach themselves from the parent parties while drawing from their bases.
Outside the SLFP-UNP domain, the National People’s Power Alliance (NPP), led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP or People’s Liberation Front), has emerged as a prominent third front challenging the old political order.
In contrast to previous presidential elections, which were marked by a bipolar political contest, next weekend’s poll is principally a three-cornered race.
While two are establishment candidates, the third is from the left.
Who are the frontrunners?
A record 39 presidential aspirants filed nominations for the September 21 election. One passed away and 38 are still in the race. Of these, incumbent Mr. Wickremesinghe, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa, and yet another Opposition politician Anura Kumara Dissanayake are seen to be in the lead.
Which political camps do they represent?
Although President Wickremesinghe was backed by the Rajapaksas’ Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP or People’s Front that the Rajapaksas carved out of the SLFP they were originally part of) during the last two years, and still leads the UNP, he is running as an independent candidate.
Mr. Premadasa is contesting from the main Opposition party, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB or United People’s Front that broke away from the UNP). Mr. Dissanayake has been fielded by the NPP. The Alliance is a broad social coalition whose chief constituent is the JVP, a party with Marxist-Leninist origins that has led two armed insurrections of Sinhalese youth against the state in the 1970s and 1980s.
Additionally, Namal Rajapaksa, Hambantota legislator and son of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa is running from the SLPP.
Pasan Jayasinghe writes for the Daily FT about the contest.
It was always going to come to this. The first Sri Lankan election in generations where even a remotely leftist party stood a chance of winning was always going to end with an almighty Red Scare. So it is that the presidential campaign of National People’s Power (NPP) candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) is inspiring lurid visions of an impending violent, dystopian regime, splayed across news and social media. This is the prophecy of the Sri Lankan elite establishment, a select cross section of the country’s businesspeople, policymakers, professionals, journalists and academics who have been proximate to state power, especially in the last two years. Scrutiny of them and their crescendoing hysteria reveals much about how power and privilege work in Sri Lanka, and what happens when their wielders are threatened.
He says that there has been a mythmaking and elite consensus around Wikremesinghe.
The pre-election Red Scare is the culmination of a two-year-long project by the elite establishment to sustain the regime of Ranil Wickremesinghe. This project is founded on a number of myths which rewrite recent history, chief among them the idea that the Aragalaya suddenly turned violent due to its ‘infiltration’ by the NPP’s lynchpin party the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and other leftists. This myth, just like the one that Wickremesinghe stepped in to become Prime Minister then President “when no one else would”, only serves the elite establishment’s attempts to justify and sanitise Wickremesinghe’s power-hungry scheming.
Wickremesinghe was the only person shameless enough to accept Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s offer to become Prime Minister without any conditions. Likewise, the question of violence only became a problem after Wickremesinghe used the Aragalaya to manoeuvre himself to the Presidency. As always for elites, the spectre of left wing violence is more serious than actual right wing violence. Thus, NPP politicians standing on the banks of the Diyawanna is apparently far more alarming than the security forces ruthlessly dismantling GotaGoGama and brutalising its inhabitants on the very same day Wickremesinghe was selected as President by Parliament.
In the mythologisation of Wickremesinghe, we are further meant to forget that he has presided over a striking series of rights violations and undemocratic measures. Recounted partially and briefly: arbitrarily detaining multiple Aragalaya activists; violently repressing numerous protests by student and trade unions; passing the Bureau of Rehabilitation Act and Online Safety Act; deliberately preventing scheduled local authorities elections; continuing to obstruct memorialisation events by Tamils; and the ongoing Sinhala colonisation of the north and east.
As Wickremesinghe completed his transformation from supposed champion of liberal democracy to illiberal autocrat, establishment elites, especially the self-styled liberals among them, found themselves tongue tied about these issues for more than two years. If Ranil Wickremesinghe violates a human right, does a Sri Lankan liberal make a sound?
The piece contends that neoliberals are rallying around Wikremesinghe to arrest a leftward shift by means of a red scare.
And finally, Meera Srinivasan reports for the Hindu that Tamils find little to hope for in this election.
Sri Lanka’s northern Tamil voters are torn this presidential election, between a candidate who may win, and one who will certainly lose.
While some are backing one of the frontrunners among the Sinhalese candidates, others have decided to support a Tamil candidate. Every voter knows well that “Tamil common candidate” P. Ariyanethiran — fielded jointly by some political and civil society groups based in the island nation’s north and east — cannot win, given the numeric reality of Sri Lanka’s electoral map. The Sinhalese majority make up around 75 % of the country that was torn apart by bitter ethnic conflict between the two communities. All the same, many Tamil voters see him personifying their grievances.
“After the civil war ended in 2009, our people hoped that even if their political rights were denied, they could live with some security and dignity. Listening to our [Tamil] political leadership, they backed different candidates in past elections. What did we gain?” asks Fr. Santhiyogu Marcus, President of the Mannar Citizens Committee, an influential civil society group in the coastal district.
It is an altered landscape and that has brought divisions.
“Ariyanethiran is not seen as an individual who will win this contest, but as someone who is a symbol of our identity and struggles,” Fr. Marcus observes. Many acknowledge his bleak electoral prospects but say they will back him nevertheless, to deliver a “strong message” to the southern political establishment and the international community. On the other hand, critics of the move term it “political suicide”. Abandoning pragmatic negotiation with the southern leadership would further isolate Tamils and weaken their bargaining power, they contend.
Fifteen years after the civil war ended, after claiming several tens of thousands of civilian lives, Tamils in the north and east are unable to live in peace. Their lands are systematically grabbed by state agencies, their call for truth and justice over alleged war crimes remain, the whereabouts of scores of forcibly missing persons are unknown, a just political solution is elusive, and the war-battered economy has not created decent jobs or livelihoods.
In this context, sections see backing the Tamil candidate as a way of airing their frustration – not just with the national leadership, but also with their own, deeply divided Tamil political leadership. “Tamil leaders are showing us that they cannot be united in this struggle. The parties have split and there are so many splinter groups. They have weakened our position so much,” says K. Rajachandran, leader of a Jaffna-based fisheries cooperative. “So, we want to tell our Tamil politicians, even if you can’t stand united, the Tamil people will come together behind this common candidate.”
I don’t see much hope either.
That is it for today. Until next Friday, everyone. Stay safe. Be well. Take care.
May our politics gain freedom from corruption, ethnonationalism and majoritarianism, and our societies from anti-immigrant sentiments.