The EconomistJanuary 20th 2018 Asia 251A
T THE time, it wasseen as an astonish-
ing victory. In retrospect, it was also
something of a Pyrrhic one. Few expected
Maithripala Sirisena to defeat the incum-
bent, Mahinda Rajapaksa, in the presiden-
tial election of 2015. After all, Mr Rajapaksa,
although increasingly authoritarian, had
presided in 2009 over the defeat of the sep-
aratist Tamil Tigers, ending Sri Lanka’s 26-
year civil war. Mr Sirisena was merely a re-
bellious member of the president’s own
Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). To win
and then to govern, Mr Sirisena relied on
the support of the SLFP’s main rival, the
United National Party (UNP). As Sri Lan-
kans prepare to vote in local elections on
February 10th, that alliance has come to
haunt him.
In theory, the alliance between the UNP
and Mr Sirisena’s faction of the SLFP ended
in December. But this is a polite fiction ne-
cessitated bythe campaign. In practice, nei-
ther group has sufficient numbers in par-
liament to govern without the other. Mr
Rajapaksa, who is backing a new outfit
called the Sri Lanka People’s Front, has
called on voters to treat the poll as a refer-
endum on the government.
The lack of a fixed political base has col-
oured Mr Sirisena’s three years in office.
The endless struggle to assert his authority
over the SLFPhas taken up much of his
time and energy, while the alliance with
the UNP has associated him with its un-
popular economic policies. The presi-
dent’s ambitious promises—to transfer ex-
ecutive authority from the president to
parliament; to devolve power to the re-
gions; to crack down on corruption; and to
hold the army to account for the war
crimes it is alleged to have committed inthe final days of the war—have gone largely
unfulfilled.
The powers of the president have been
watered down, but not nearly as much as
Mr Sirisena had pledged. A promised new
constitution which would strengthen the
powers of the regionshas never material-
ised, to the irritation of the Tamil National
Alliance, a party that supported Mr Siri-
sena’s presidential bid. No members of the
former government have been prosecuted
for corruption, nor have any wayward sol-
diers been brought to book. Building pub-
lic trust in government was an important
element of the government’s mandate,
says Asoka Obeyesekere, the local head of
Transparency International, an anti-cor-
ruption pressure group, but it has made no
progressat all. Instead, the UNP has be-
come embroiled in a corruption scandal of
its own, and many observers worry that
the investigating authorities are not inde-
pendent enough to untangle it.
Meanwhile, runaway borrowing for
vanity projects under Mr Rajapaksa left the
new government with a balance-of-pay-
ments crisis. It had to turn to the IMF in
2016, and last year approved a tax overhaul
to help rein in the deficit. Rising taxes and
the falling rupee, in turn, have helped push
up inflation, which has jumped from 2% to
8% during Mr Sirisena’s tenure (see chart).
A common gripe concerns the price of co-
conuts, which has doubled over the past
year—a blow given that coconut milk is a
staple ingredient in local curries.
The local elections could deepen Mr
Sirisena’s troubles. Politicians tend to fol-
low the wind; if the SLFP performs poorly,
power will ebb away from the president in
anticipation of the presidential election in
2019 and a parliamentary one in 2020. It
does not help that Mr Sirisena pledged to
serve only a single term—another reason
he may soon be viewed as a lame duck. 7Politics in Sri LankaCoconuts and jolts
COLOMBO
The president is struggling to push
through promised reformsInflation in a nutshellNot what the voters orderedSource: Thomson ReutersSri Lanka
Rupees per $
Inverted scaleConsumer prices
% change on a year earlier2015 16 17 181601551501451401351302015 16 17 1820246810+T
INY and turbulent, Kyrgyzstan likes to
tout itself as a trailblazer for democracy
in Central Asia, a region otherwise pre-
sided over by autocrats. The former Soviet
republic of 6m has “proven to the world
that it is a democratic country”, its new
president, Sooronbay Jeyenbekov, trum-
peted triumphantly as he was sworn into
office in November. But the unusually
competitive election that brought him to
power may have been less an affirmation
of democracy than its last gasp.
Mr Jeyenbekov was making history. In
the 26 years since the collapse of the Soviet
Union, his election marked Central Asia’s
first peaceful handover of power from one
democratically elected leader to another.
But the election was flawed. Mr Jeyenbe-
kov, a dour 59-year-old, has admitted that it
was marred by vote-buying. International
observers were also troubled by media
bias and the strong-arming of civil servants
to vote for Mr Jeyenbekov, who was prime
minister at the time and had been en-
dorsed by the outgoing president.
Things have got worse since the elec-
tion. On December 30th Mr Jeyenbekov’s
main rival for the presidency, Omurbek Ba-
banov, announced that he was quitting
politics and resigning his parliamentary
seat. That came as no surprise. Mr Baba-
nov—whom Mr Jeyenbekov had perso-
nally threatened to lock up—had already
fled the country after the election to escape
spurious charges of inciting ethnic unrest
that could have led to a long spell in prison.
Kanatbek Isayev, an MPwho endorsed Mr
Babanov, did not escape so lightly. On Jan-
uary 4th he was jailed for nine years for
corruption, in a case that had been dor-
mant since 2011 but which the authorities
suddenly decided to press ahead with last
year. He faces a separate, implausible
charge of plotting a coup that could see an-
other sentence slapped on top.
Jailingobstreperous politicians is be-
coming a habit. Last year the authorities
abruptly accused Omurbek Tekebayev, an-
other opposition leader, of taking a bribe in- He was subsequently imprisoned for
eight years, preventing him from mounting
an electoral challenge to Mr Jeyenbekov.
Kyrgyz journalists who fail to toe the
government line are also under pressure.
After the election a plucky website named
Kloop published allegations that Mr Jeyen-
bekov’s campaign team had got hold, and
made unfair use, of government data on
voters to swing the closely fought election.
Politics in KyrgyzstanKyrgyz autumn
Almaty
Central Asia’s only democracy is sliding
into authoritarianism