In Sri Lanka, the rule of law has been replaced by the law of the rulers.
The Uva Provincial Council election, held during the first week of August, marked the formal advent of the next generation of the ruling Rajapakse family into Sri Lankan politics. Shashindra Rajapakse, the new chief minister of Uva, is a nephew of President Mahinda Rajapakse, the son of the president's older brother Chamal, the minister of irrigation and water management and ports and aviation. The manner of young Rajapakse's political elevation was as portentous as the deed itself. In an unprecedented move, the former chief minister of Uva, the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) veteran Vijith Vijithamuni de Soyza, was denied nomination, thus clearing the way for the presidential nephew's appointment. De Soyza was said to have been incensed about the unceremonious ousting, but neither he nor any other SLFP senior dared to speak out against the move. That silence is symbolic of the stranglehold the Rajapakses have over the SLFP and the government today.
Post-war Sri Lanka is in a state of flux. If Sri Lanka had had a strong opposition capable of winning elections, and a government less intent on preserving and enhancing its power, the country could have ambled along as a competitive multiparty democracy, perhaps in a less flawed and more vibrant state than during the war years. But with nearly all power now concentrated in the hands of a family nursing a dynastic project, and an opposition habituated to snatching electoral defeat from the jaws of victory, Sri Lanka may be denied such a normal future.
The outcome of the Uva election was a foregone conclusion. The government is still immensely popular among the Sinhalese due to its victory over the LTTE; the lacklustre leadership of Ranil Wickremesinghe, meanwhile, has rendered the opposition United National Party (UNP) incapable of mounting an effective electoral challenge to the regime. Yet the Rajapakse administration used the full might of the Lankan state to win the election, pouring in money and men, and saturating this peripheral province with circuses and promises. For more than a month, politicians and officials flocked to Uva, clogging its roads and overflowing its sparse accommodations, industrious in their display of loyalty to the Rajapakses. Within this gargantuan campaign, the focus was naturally on the presidential nephew, to ensure for him an unsurpassable performance. The dynastic project needed an outstanding victory, not only by the ruling party but also by the Rajapakse scion.