Victors, if the election shenanigans in the south are any barometer, violently differ on how to share the spoils of war. Unsurprisingly, the war and the LTTE are still alive in the election campaigns in the south. Those who championed victory against the LTTE are projected as superior and better fit for political office than those who did not. The nostrums of national security gloss over concerns regarding IDPs. Promises of development abound, usually without any real basis in economics. Promises of systemic political change, anchored to various pronouncements by the Executive, are also paraded, again without any real sincerity – minority grievances in the south, after all, remain secondary to concerns about post-war economic recovery.

However, this is the first election in the south – the bedrock of the SLFP and its allies – conducted without the glue of war to bind them to a common purpose and enemy. The result is petty bickering, outrageous sexism and high incidents of violence against fellow candidates, usually reserved for those from competing political agencies. Outsiders interested in regime change are advised to observe these trends.

Fissures in the regime

This fissure in what seemed like an impregnable regime during the war occurred independently of any impetus from the international community, NGOs or independent media. Rather, it is a reflection of the essential nature of our party politics and electoral system, where course-correction eventually checks the worst authoritarianism. Without any all-engulfing effort like war to attract support in the south, the maintenance of hegemony becomes increasingly difficult. The regime, deeply cognisant and fearful of this growing disintegration of the party, will seek to contain it through the methods it knows best – favouritism, nepotism, party political manipulation, and, if the family future is threatened or thwarted, violence.

The end of war was a lost opportunity for the establishment of a different and more progressive political culture. Internationally, our hydra-headed post-war foreign policy is about as nuanced and strategic as petulantly giving the West the middle-finger. Domestically, our policies of post-war reconciliation, constitutional reform and development are a mess. Ricocheting from the bizarre to the outrageous, the government’s policies and practices – from police brutality to corruption – are out in the open.

There is already a shift in media and editorials that were supportive of the war. The tired worldview that defines people as patriots or traitors, and the other pedestrian piffle this government loves to wallow in, has quickly diminished the government’s political capital. It was useful in war-time. It is useless in peacetime.

Tanzania’s lesson

Instead, we could have learnt from a significant failure in Africa – President Julius Nyerere and his experiment in one-party democratic socialism in Tanzania. As the economist Paul Collier notes in his latest book, Wars, Guns And Votes, Nyerere’s political leadership built a sense of national identity without resorting to the idea of an enemy to build this identity: “Indeed, he emphasised a Pan-African as well as national identity,” Collier writes.

Nyerere’s experiment in socialism was a failure, and in 1985 Nyerere publicly admitted his failure and stepped down from office, the first African head of state to voluntarily do so. And yet his enduring legacy, in a region riven by violent, identity-based conflict, is a country that enjoys a high degree of social and political cohesion and peace.

The Chinese model

Or we could learn from China. Zhang Pengjun, one of the key negotiators of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), was a polymath – diplomat, scholar, poet, playwright, Broadway producer and opera singer. He noted that differences in philosophy and ideology did not impede securing and protecting human rights. Who is of the same mind in the Rajapakse regime, despite their avowed affinity to China? The economic prosperity the new China enjoys is not because of socialism and the revolutionary struggle against capitalism. It is because of economic liberalisation and participation in a global compact of nations.

India offers very different lessons about identity formation, economic development and multi-lateral diplomacy, no less compelling. Is our government interested in studying and learning from these and other post-conflict models of social cohesion, economic development and international engagement? There is no evidence that it is.

Amongst a tragic collection of similar examples, the Prime Minister’s audacious reference to Monica Lewinsky in a derogatory attack on Hillary Clinton, and his repeated assertion at the Asia Society in New York that the ICRC was harbouring LTTE terrorists, suggest that asinine policies and statements are, far from a source of embarrassment, a matter of pride for the government.

Who ultimately benefits?

Ergo, cui bono? Therefore, who stands to gain?  The international pro-LTTE lobby for starters, and the pro-Eelam parties in Sri Lanka. The bungling of post-war policy-making by the government, its lack of a long-term strategy to address the challenges of peace-building and, above all, its incarceration of over a quarter of a million IDPs in hellish conditions, gives succour to international campaigns supporting violent secessionism in Sri Lanka. This government is pathologically unable to think beyond its own self-preservation and aggrandisement.

Despite all this, the regime will win the Southern Provincial Council elections and go on to win the presidential election next year. The EU may find that the manic frenzy of activity over the probable non-extension of GSP+ is useful for holding the government accountable for what it has promised regarding the resettlement of IDPs, democratic governance and human rights. Unless there is damning evidence from US Department of Defence satellite imagery, evidence of war crimes within Sri Lanka will be limited to the sort of partial narratives recently broadcast and published in the British media.

None of this registers domestically, or was an issue in the elections conducted yesterday. The significant violence of the SLFP and its partners in the lead up to the election signifies greater violence to come, especially as memories of victory fade. During a general election, this will result in internecine violence that costs lives. This loss of life will further deplete the regime’s political capital and increase international scrutiny. Growing international and domestic pressure on multiple fronts could overwhelm and de-stabilise the incumbents to such a degree that the only thing needed for regime change would be the most difficult to engineer and envision: a new leader for the UNP.