The Giant Slayer

Until recently, anyone who put up a stiff resistance to Sri Lanka’s powerful outgoing President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, would end up in jail. In the 2010 presidential election, General Sarath Fonseka, the former loyalist who had commandeered the forces that crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), had unsuccessfully tried to oust Rajapaksa. There was little reason to believe that Rajapaksa, who had ruled Sri Lanka with an iron grip since 2005, would lose an election. Rajapaksa had consulted Sumanadasa Abeygunawardena, an astrologer whom he had started to rely on heavily, and the stargazer is reported to have told him that he foresaw “a big victory” for him—not just for a third but also a fourth term—because of his “great inborn power”. Rajapaksa called for polls two years ahead of schedule, and on the astrologer’s advice, signed the decree on the auspicious date of 20 November. That same evening, Rajapaksa had dinner with a loyalist, his health minister Maithripala Sirisena. The next day, to Rajapaksa’s surprise, the opposition parties had come together to announce a common candidate. It was Sirisena, the low-profile minister with whom he had shared dinner the earlier night. On many occasions during the election campaign, Rajapaksa would famously say, “He ate hoppers (rice pancakes) with me the previous night and stabbed me in the back the next morning.”

Sirisena wasn’t overreaching himself as many others thought, but the low-key minister had quietly formulated a game plan. The 63-year-old Sirisena, who has the image of a hardworking and honest leader, hails from Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka’s North Central Province. He entered politics in his school days when he joined the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). When he was 19 years old, Sirisena was arrested and jailed for a year-and-a- half on the suspicion of having been part of an insurrection led by Marxists. He returned to politics after his release and first entered parliament in 1989. Despite going on to become a high ranking minister in the Rajapaksa administration, Sirisena was known to shun the limelight. The last time his name made it to the international press was in 2008 when he survived an assassination attempt by an LTTE suicide bomber.

During the course of the recent election, Sirisena was able to successfully bring together and lead an opposition with disparate ideological positions— which includes parties that have admitted to and apologised for the ill-treatment of the Tamil minority in the past and others who refute that Tamil civilians died in the final bombardments of the civil war despite the evidence—and present himself as an alternative to the increasingly authoritarian Rajapaksa. The probity of Sirisena, who does not smoke or drink or even wear a suit, was propped up as a contrast to the incumbent, whose regime had come to be known for corruption and nepotism. Sirisena pledged to investigate allegations of war crimes in 2009, reduce the powers of the president and strengthen the institutions of the judiciary and parliament, impose checks on the executive, and fight corruption. He was able to gather the votes of the country’s ethnic and religious minorities who had felt increasingly marginalised by Rajapaksa’s policies, while also securing the votes of the conservative Sinhala-majority rural constituency.

Since Rajapaksa’s shock defeat, the astrologer Abeygunawardena has been keeping a low profile. He has lost the bungalow he was given, apart from his limousine and seat on the board of a state-run bank. He was quoted in media reports as saying that even all of Nostradamus’ predictions have not come true. As Abeygunawardena told an AFP reporter, “The opponent’s horoscope is more powerful than that of our sir.”

Sir, of course, may not be amused.

LTTEMahinda RajapaksaSri Lanka