Is ‘Sri Lanka Spring’ in the making?

• Sri Lanka is in the throes of an economic crisis, which is far more acute than the pre-Arab Spring autocracies in the Middle East. Long queues for basic necessities in our new normal have more in common with the Soviet Union at its collapse than anywhere in the Middle East
• The government is also facing a deficit in public trust, courtesy of its  mismanagement of the economic crisis and fattening of the rent-seeking  cronies amidst the public suffering

In recent memory, corrupt and dynastic regimes have fallen not because their citizenry became conscious of democracy overnight, or developed a special alluring for civic rights. But because, the people became poorer, hungrier and angrier. 

Economic shocks were the primary catalyst. Rising food prices, soaring fuel cost, currency depreciation and unemployment created a potent cocktail of pent up public anger. As the economy squeezed on the average folks, the opulence of the regime connected elites and rent-seeking oligarchy became ever more conspicuous. The sense of relative deprivation is a far more potent ingredient for popular revolt than the deprivation itself.  

Ailing despots in the Middle East sought to sugar-coat the excesses and abuses of their regimes in part by dolling out extensive food and fuel subsidies, which was possible as long as the petrodollars were piling up in the treasury. When the oil price crashed, much of that façade shattered. 

 
In January 2011, Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, killed himself after he was harassed by city authorities, triggering street protests in Tunisia. Demonstrations soon enveloped the region and toppled dynastic and autocratic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and threatened the survival of fellow autocracies across the region. Rulers in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Morocco and Algeria etc., while holding tight to their security apparatus, also financed a new wave of free goodies and subsidies to soothe the enraged masses. Syria exploded in a blood-curding civil war. 

Food riots - a catalyst for regime change in the 80s. 

Once omnipotent dictators like Indonesia’s Suharto was ousted by the mass riots in the wake of the East Asian economic crisis in 1997.  China’s all-powerful Communist leaders maintain strategic stocks of Pork not to upset the apple cart. Recent research has suggested fuel price rise, which triggers the economy-wide price shocks are now far more consequential in provoking large scale protests.  

Early this year, Kazakhstan erupted in street protests after the government scrapped a fuel subsidy. The rulers in Astana (now Nur Sultan, renamed after the late autocrat) sought the deployment of Russian troops to fight a resultant palace coup.   

Sri Lanka is in the throes of an economic crisis, which is far more acute than the pre-Arab Spring autocracies in the Middle East. Long queues for basic necessities in our new normal have more in common with the Soviet Union at its collapse than anywhere in the Middle East.   

The decimation of the livelihood of the farming community, numbering around 1.8 million by an overnight presidential degree has much in common with Uganda’s Idi Amin (who on a whim expelled Uganda’s Indian community, bringing the economy to the ground).  

The government is also facing a deficit in public trust, courtesy of its mismanagement of the economic crisis and fattening of the rent-seeking cronies amidst the public suffering. The collective sense of despondency has now erupted in mass outrage. Demography that overwhelmingly voted Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and later the ‘Pohottuwa’ to power are the worst affected.   

The loudest calls for the president and his siblings to ‘resign and go to America’ are coming from a constituency that was once beholden to him. Anti-government vigils dot Colombo every night. Petrol sheds are over-pouring with the collective public anger. Farmers are despondent. The masses of Sri Lanka are a tinder box. The country could well erupt in a ‘Sri Lankan spring’. From Suharto to Mubarak, Corrupt familial rules have unravelled in infamy and chaos before collective outrage. 

What is holding back ‘Sri Lankan spring’?  

Like it or not, there is one notable difference between Sri Lanka and most countries that saw the government changes through street protests. Sri Lanka has been a functional electoral democracy. Gotabaya Rajapaksa is elected through competitive elections (leaders in the Middle East at best won sham elections. Electoral democracy is a cushion against extra-judicial overthrow of the regime. However, the incumbent has accumulated

untrammelled power at the expense of the independent institutions of the state through the 20th Amendment, that was tailor made to his whims and fancies. Such actions have effectively compromised the legitimacy of his office. He appears at best a hybrid leader, much like Mubarak or Suharto.   

However, the constitutional provisions also limit the chances for regime change through snap elections. The next presidential election can only be held after four and-a-half-years into the incumbent’s term. Since the president is unlikely to resign in grace, nor is a Parliament, of which his party commands near 2/3rd majority, likely to impeach him, Sri Lankans are doomed to stick with him for two-and-a-half years, at least. 

 
There is another concern over the regime change through street protests. That can set a precedent, effectively displacing the elections and limiting the room for the usual bipartisan and consultative approach in Parliament. Bangladesh under its two funding widows, Sheikh Hasina and Begum Kalida Zia was a case in point where political differences were routinely settled in the streets leading to mass paralysis until Sheik Hasina ran circles around her arch nemesis and incapacitated her. 

 
Sri Lanka, nonetheless, has an advantage over the Middle Eastern post Arab Spring states, many of which were soon trapped in internecine infighting like in Libya and Yemen or returned to the grip of strongmen, like in Egypt.  
None of those countries, where participatory democracy had been suppressed by the strongmen, had a functional alternative. The only country that succeeded in the democratic transition was Tunisia, only to be strangulated later by the country’s president who has now dissolved Parliament and is now ruling the country by decree.   
Sri Lanka being a duopoly can have a smoother political transition, though, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, which might claim for a lion’s share of any government, is equipped to navigate the country through the current turbulent times is yet to be seen.