In Rajapakse’s defeat, some lessons for Malaysian politicians

Sri Lankan popular strongman Mahinda Rajapakse surprisingly lost the country's presidential elections two days ago while pursuing a third term in office – much to the joy of the South Asian island nation.

He lost with 47.6% of the vote, while his opponent, former health minister and ally Maithripala Sirisena took 51.3% of the vote.

If those numbers are familiar, it is because those are nearly the same numbers as the split between the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) and opposition pact Pakatan Rakyat (PR) in the 2013 general election in Malaysia.

More importantly, the fall of Rajapakse in Sri Lanka offers a lesson for Malaysia: that the very powerful and those who intimidate their opponents and the press, apart from advocating censorship – ultimately lose.

Rajapakse was Sri Lanka's hero who ended the 26-year civil war with the minority Tamil population in 2009 and after two terms in office with three brothers also holding key posts in the government – decided to change the law allowing unlimited terms as president.

Using the economy as a key driver in the Indian Ocean island, his government imposed censorship and hounded both opposition politicians and journalists to prevent dissent to his rule.

Rajapakse, who first came to power in 2005, was last elected in 2010 when he defeated his former army chief Sarath Fonseka, who was later jailed on charges of implicating the government in war crimes.

According to the BBC, his critics said he became increasingly authoritarian and failed to tackle the legacy of Sri Lanka's civil war, which left the Tamil areas in the north impoverished and embittered. While the circumstance with Malaysia is different, his brand of politics is all too similar to Malaysians.

The licensed mass media in Malaysia paint a picture of a popular government but in cyberspace, dissent and criticism hog online media and social media sites that has now led Putrajaya to bring back a retired civil servant to head its communications regulatory agency.

In public universities, academics and students are routinely reminded not to get involved in political activities while the colonial-era Sedition Act is now the preferred law to silence dissent.

This from a government that has lost further ground in the 2013 elections from the 2008 elections where PR first denied BN its traditional two-thirds parliamentary super-majority.

The BN government had also used the economy as a bait, planning economic and government transformation programmes together with direct cash aid but only gained 47% of the popular vote in 2013.

Perhaps BN can learn from what contributed to Rajapakse's defeat and if it does not, it might just share the former Sri Lankan president's fate in the next general election. – January 11, 2015.

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