‘Rice Mafias’, Presidential Campaigning, and the Moral Economy of Grain Access in Contemporary Sri Lanka

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Please cite as: Weerawardhana, Chaminda and Rapti Siriwardane (2015) "Reis Mafia" in Colombo: Wahlkampf um das Präsidentenamt. Südasien, 35 (1): 91-97.

ENGLISH VERSION:

‘Rice Mafias’, Presidential Campaigning, and the Moral Economy of Grain Access in Contemporary Sri Lanka

Chaminda Weerawardhana, School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, Queen’s University Belfast, Ireland E-mail: [email protected] Rapti Siriwardane, Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung, Universität Bonn, Germany E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Using Sri Lanka’s iconic presidential elections of January 2015 as a backdrop, we engage with how elite patrimonial politics and everyday moralities around grain access and distributive justice come to intersect with one another. With a focus on mainstream media, campaign speeches, and political propaganda discourses, we begin by exploring how rice was initially politicized during the highly charged presidential campaign, and why it subsequently disappeared from public gaze as the electoral media wars drew to a close. In particular, we analyse how the president incumbent – Maithripala Sirisena’s campaign mythologies continued to draw on the symbolic and historicised image of the Rajarata paddy cultivator, particularly at a time when a vastly different reality was being purported, entailing localised paddy mill-owning oligarchies implicating close family members. Introduction Food security and sovereignty, particularly in Sri Lanka, have featured prominently as dominant tropes in projects of modern nation building, starting from anti-colonial narratives, to the populist rhetoric of contemporary developmentalist discourse and election politicking (see Tennekoon 1988; Nissan and Stirrat 1990). Yet, there is scant literature on how contemporary narratives on food ‘rights’ particularly at the margins - among the rural poor, or across civil society - come to be contested or negotiated within the context of local patrimonial and patronage politics. In using Sri Lanka´s recent highly fraught presidential elections in January 2015 as a window, we explore how everyday meanings and expectations around grain pricing and access are expressed and tactically enlisted during moments of elite political bargaining. We draw on two historic observations as a point of departure. First, the fact that it has arguably been decades since the production and supply of rice has been nationally politicized in Sri Lanka. Second, the island´s recent presidential elections mark a watershed Sri Lanka´s electoral history, for it been the first time that a member of the rural Rajarata farming community has been sworn into office of Executive Presidency. In using a moral economy perspective, we engage with the contextual basis and implications of how and why rice once again came to be interwoven into political narratives, not so much in terms of hunger, deprivation and as matter of food security in itself, but as a symbol that was perceivably framed within a broader context of crony-capitalism, and personality-driven patronage politics.

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1. Rajarata, and the Material and Symbolic Historicity of Rice Rice, paddy cultivation and the primacy of the small-holder farmer have featured as central and highly potent symbols in the nation´s postcolonial narrative - and indubitably a Sinhala-Buddhist one at that. On the surface, there seems nothing remarkable about the indigenization of the Ceylonese peasant through what Barrington Moore (1966) in his ‘Catonism’ thesis noted as the elevation of the native peasant as the ‘soul of patriotism.’ The ideological invention of the Ceylonese peasant can be traced back to the early 1880s – in the form of cultural nationalist discourses that were later enlisted into projects of ethno-religious revivalism. In particular, the moral ascendancy of Buddhism and smallholder paddy cultivation came to be married with early 20th century anti-imperialist imaginaries of Ceylon as a ‘nation of peasants.’ The emblematic triad – the irrigation tank (wewe), temple (chaitiya) and paddy field (kumbura) – were conceived as symbols representing the glory of Ceylon’ s ancient monarchical hydraulic civilizations of the Rajarata, in the northeastern dry-zone plains, that flourished between the 6th century B.C., until its steady decline from the 13th century. In tandem, the late 19th century image of the Island’s pre-colonial peasantry as constituting a timeless, self-governing and self-sustaining circuit of paddy subsistence farmers was barely problematized during its time. Given the extent to which swidden or shifting cultivation was rampant on the Island during Portuguese and Dutch colonialism, wet rice was hardly a crop that was ubiquitously cultivated. Indeed, the question of whether rice was in fact a dominant staple in local diets over the past two thousand years remains to be proven.

2. Grain Politics during British Ceylon British agrarian policies since the advent of plantation capitalism (coffee, and subsequently tea and rubber), actively promoted more sedentary-based paddy cultivation as opposed to the prevailing swidden agricultural practices that were deemed as wasteful, primitive and not at all conducive to colonial land enclosure initiatives (Meyer 1992). Therefore, ideological invention of the small- holder paddy farmer as Ceylon’s ‘authentic’ peasant was partially, at best, an Orientalist image as well as the result of a series of colonially driven agricultural production practices. Wet rice, until Independence in 1948, was often grown for subsistence and its surplus was sold locally to consumers. As Ceylon did not produce enough rice for its domestic consumption, the local rice trade first took off under Dutch colonialism, when grain was imported at very low prices from Batavia, and subsequently from Burma and British India (Biswas 2007:106). The practice of exporting and reselling grain cheaply was sustained by the British who, while keeping a vigilant watch over the price of rice, often traded trade military supplies in the local market (Rogers 1987). Furthermore, powerful planters’ unions were effective in lobbying the colonial state in artificially keeping the prices of imported grain low, given rising labour costs (Yapa 2004). It must be borne in mind that the indentured labour brought in from southern India to work in the coffee and tea plantations in the nineteenth century were partially paid in rice. Thus, the political primacy of rice production whether in a colonial or post-Independence context cannot be discounted, particularly as it served more as an ideological bargaining chip, than as a highly politicized social grievance. Historically Sri Lanka has seen far fewer grain riots, than India or Pakistan.

3. Electoral Politicking and Moral Allegations Sri Lanka´s 15th presidential elections in January 2015 marked an iconic moment in its electoral history. Just weeks away from a snap presidential election in January 2015, it entailed the assembling of old political foes and the unlikeliest of bedfellows: the old United National Party (UNP)-Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) vanguard, the Marxist Janata Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) and a motley crew of ultra-nationalist Sinhala Buddhist leaders represented by the Jatika Hela Urumaya (JHU), and a smattering of ethnic-minority parties - all eager to oppose another term of Mahinda Rajapakse´s rule, and set in motion the

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repeal of the Executive Presidency.1 The grand coalition was represented at the 2015 presidential election by a common candidate, Maithripala Sirisena - a leading member of Rajapaksa´s former cabinet - and General Secretary of the SLFP. While Sirisena’s political rhetoric assumed a higher ground of moral rectitude in the campaign, the long-standing regional identities implicating the deep-south and the north-central Rajarata revealed how crosscurrents of revived ancient identities further complicate ethnicised ‘Sinhala’ identity, performed through the invocation of mythico-histories of the ancient Ruhuna (southern) and the Polonnaruwa (northeastern) Kingdoms. Public smearing campaigns are a ubiquitous and often an anticipated facet in Lankan election campaign culture. The modalities of ‘whistle-blowing’ where however were taken to new heights after the former president Rajapakse threatened to reveal the misdemeanors of his own cabinet members and party stalwarts who were intending to crossover to the Opposition, through the revelation of secret ‘files’ that were in his possession. The allegations leveled against Sirisena proved relatively unsurprising. By June and July 2014, the price of rice had risen following a decline in harvests after an island-wide drought. The political economy of paddy was once more in media attention. The dominant media narrative maintained that a small-group of large scale rice mill owners - described as an oligarchy- sought to artificially control the price of rice by concealing vast stores of local stock. The term ‘rice/paddy mafia’ had tricked into public discourse by July 2014, long before Sirisena had announced his crossover. By November 2014, Sirisena’s family and particularly his brother Dudley Sirisena who owns Araliya, one of Sri Lanka’s largest rice mills and retail brands - was implicated in the scandal. The politicking phase saw instances during which Araliya lorries were allegedly attacked, however there was never an official investigation into the allegations. While we are less concerned with the veracity of these indictments, we are more interested in the process and form which its narratives and counter narratives took. Interestingly, the allegations gradually faded from media gaze by mid December 2014, when election campaigning drew to an end. What was initially framed as an issue of social injustice came to be enlisted into campaign politics. In particular, the legitimacy of a rice oligarchy and its purported transgressions gained less salience as the issue itself became ‘personified’ as a facet of Sirisena’s moral integrity, and was enlisted as yet another discursive weapon in the patrimonial political race.

4. Son of the Soil: Campaign Mythologies Hailing from a family of twelve siblings, Maitripala Sirisena comes from a quintessentially agrarian background. His father migrated from the Gampaha District of the Western Province to the North Central region of Polonnaruwa, in the heart of Rajarata, idealized in Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist discourses as the iconic region where Sinhala (and invariably Buddhist) rulers provided royal patronage to paddy cultivation, in an effort to ensure self-sufficiency. Soon after the declaration of the Dominion of Ceylon on 4 February 1948, the first Ceylonese government was keen to revive the image of Rajarata-based self-sufficiency, by promoting paddy cultivation in the region, long-neglected during the centuries of Western colonial rule. As much as an enterprise to increase supplies of the staple food item, this was a cautiously crafted political gesture. Sinhala-Buddhist legislators led by Prime Minister Don Stephen Senanayake were conscious of the tremendous political capital of presenting themselves as advocates of an agenda for a Rajarata-based agricultural revival, given its strong public appeal to Sinhala-Buddhist communities, especially in the non-urban regions.2

1 Indeed, the main message of the coalition manifesto was a linear one, and a host of pressing issues for example political decentralization, the de-militarization of the north and east, land and tax reforms for example were barely raised. 2 On the Rajarata civilization and its collapse, see Indrapala (1971). For a succinct account on Sri Lanka’s agrarian civilization during the Rajarata heyday, see Seneviratne (1989).

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President Sirisena’s father was among the beneficiaries of the Senanayake government’s Govi Janapada initiative, which involved (re-)opening land for paddy cultivation. Sirisena began his career as a Grama niladhari, or village administrative officer, a role he juxtaposed with that of a full-time agriculteur, having gained a diploma at the Sri Lanka School of Agriculture.3 First elected to parliament at the 1989 general election, Sirisena regularly held ministerial positions since 1994, his portfolios including irrigation, environment, agriculture, and more recently, health. Sirisena’s claim to be a ‘son of a peasant’ has been criticized in some leftist quarters, citing that, as Minister of Agriculture, he presided over policies that favoured rich farmers and did nothing to challenge the control exerted by transnational companies over agricultural inputs such as seeds and fertilizers (Amaranath and Sunil 2015). Sirisena’s persona as an agriculteur-politician with a strong grasp of the challenges facing paddy cultivators was an aspect that he strived to strongly emphasize during the 2015 presidential campaign. However, this reputation has been long marred by the neoliberal politics of paddy processing, conservation and wholesale distribution. His younger brother Dudley Sirisena is one of the leading (if not the leading) magnets of Sri Lanka’s rice-processing industry. His company, Araliya, maintains a quasi-monopoly on the trade. At Araliya’s the main rice processing plant in the Sirisena’s hometown Polonnaruwa, different stages of paddy processing are assigned to specific employees. To each worker, areas of the mill complex other than the place of their activity remains strictly out of bounds, in an effort to ensure that the full ropes of the trade are never mastered by a single employee.4 The presidential sibling’s rice industry, developed since 1994, has today grown into a group of companies, expanding its business into a range of areas including tourism, property development, engineering, metal crushing, and the automobile sector.5 The expansion of their business interests has often triggered speculation of questionable political influence and corrupt practices.6 On the run-up to the presidential election, the Rajapaksa administration’s Trade Minister accused Dudley Sirisena of ‘hiding’ rice supplies, thereby causing a false scarcity of rice in markets, a charge that was categorically denied.7 The Sirisena brothers have consistently denied allegations of undue political influence on the family-owned businesses. In the months preceding the declaration of the 2015 presidential election, Sirisena, then the Minister of Health, was keen to flatly deny any form of favoritism towards his family during the time he held the post of Agricultural Minister, declaring at a public meeting of his non-participation in cabinet discussions on rice mill owners, as a means of ensuring impartiality and best practice. He also admitted the relative lethargy of governments to deal with the concerns of small businesses in the rice processing industry, who struggle with the monopoly of the large-scale rice magnets.8 Dudley Sirisena has repeatedly maintained that his business initiatives have never benefitted from favouritism or political

3 In translating the Sinhala term for paddy cultivator: goviya ( ), we use the French agriculteur, instead of the somewhat common practice of ‘farmer’ or ‘paddy farmer’. Neither of these terms serves to transpose the nuances inherent in the Sinhala term, quasi-uniquely deployed to refer to a cultivator of paddy, thereby contributing to the steady supply of rice. Given the vital relevance of the images of paddy and paddy cultivation to the dominant image of President Sirisena, we deem it crucial to deploy a term that transposes, albeit parsimoniously, the significance of the original term. 4 Source: Interview with a former Director of the Department of Agriculture, Sri Lanka, January 2015. 5 The broad range of the Araliya business ventures can be glimpsed in the firm’s general website (http://www.araliya.lk), which contains links to the respective websites of each specific business. 6 See, ‘Dudley’s hotel leaves President in jealousy’, Lanka News Web Friday 3 January 2014: http://lankanewsweb.net/news/6165-dudley-s-hotel-leaves-president-in-jealousy (accessed 27 January 2015). 7 Rice truck belonged (sic) to Sri Lanka Presidential candidate’s brother attacked’. Colombo Page, 29 November 2014: http://www.colombopage.com/archive_14B/Nov29_1417284392CH.php (Accessed 25 January 2015). 8 Footage of Sirisena’s speech, telecast in the Sinhala language T.V. channel Swarnavahini, at the aforementioned public meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKcrsTSw7dI (accessed 25 January 2015). Apart from Araliya, the other major stronghold over the rice processing industry is wielded by the Nipuna Rice Mills (http://nipunarice.com), owned by the politically influential Gamlath family, also based in Polonnaruwa.

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influence on behalf of his minister-brother.9 Soon after his brother left the Rajapaksa administration to accept the offer of the Opposition’s common candidate, Dudley Sirisena organized a meeting for civil society representatives at his hotel Sudu-Araliya in Polonnaruwa, on 24 November 2014, at which the business magnate, accompanied by the eldest daughter of candidate Sirisena, repeatedly denied allegations of corrupt malpractices by Maitripala Sirisena, affirming that the latter had consistently maintained a policy of non-involvement in the family’s business interests.10

5. Raja-ratin Rajek: Self-presentation11

“I don't come from an aristocratic household; I'm not from a wealthy background. I am not an academic....I am only the son of a poor farmer, who benefitted from the late D.S. Senanayake's Govi Janapada policy, who worked the paddy field, who tread the rough soil of the kumbura, wela and kamatha”.12

- Maitripala Sirisena, 26 November 2014

The 2015 presidential campaign turned out to be one between a candidate who upheld accountability and good governance, emphasizing his humble background as a peasant and the son of a paddy cultivator, and his opponent who, in all shades and colors, portrayed himself as the quintessential oligarch. Rajapaksa’s desire to seek a third presidential term of office, the 18th constitutional amendment that was introduced to increase the number of presidential terms from two to three, the Rajapaksa family’s monopoly over the defense apparatus and the national economy, and the presidential offspring’s lavish lifestyle all culminated to paint a picture of Rajapaksa as a corrupt and dictatorial ruler. This peasant versus oligarch dichotomy was crucial in attracting a large segment of the swinging vote to Sirisena. The visual imagery of the election, especially in the form of large cut-outs erected across the country, was intended at portraying the ex-President as the undisputed national leader, a hereditary ruler whose reign never ends. The entire state media apparatus provided exclusive coverage to the Rajapaksa campaign, with next to no space accorded to his contenders. The Rajapaksa campaign was thus one of an oligarch in full control of the state and its resources. Its management took a strongly feudal dimension, with the entire campaign being handled by presidential siblings, his three sons and other members of the presidential family circle, who occupied a range of influential government positions under Rajapaksa´s rule. In contrast, the Sirisena campaign emphasized the candidate's humble origins in rural Polonnaruwa, his profile as an agriculteur-turned-people's representative, his resolve to repeal the executive prerogatives of the presidential office that were detrimental to accountability, thereby creating an overall image of Sirisena as a man of the people, a true son of the soil, with no credentials of a politically influential family background. This image stood in stark contrast to the Rajapaksa family’s lavish excesses. Introducing the Maitripala Sirisena candidacy as that of – to borrow from François Hollande’s 2012 presidential campaign - a Président normal, representative of the rural masses that suffered under the rising cost of living and growing economic inequalities, could be described as a strategy that strongly

9 See, for instance, Udeshi Amarasinghe, ‘Strength of Character’ (an interview with Dudley Sirisena), Business Today, 9 June, 2014: http://businesstoday.lk/article.php?article=9172 (accessed 27 January 2015). See also, , ‘Dudley Sirisena denies minister-brother helped him’, Ceylon Today 23 August 2014: http://www.ceylontoday.lk/89-71126-news-detail-dudley-sirisena-denies-minister-brother-helped-him.html (accessed 27 January 2015). 10 Source: Hiru News, 24 November 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkFlg7OloAI (Footage of this meeting can be viewed as of sequence 2:22). Accessed 28 February 2015. 11 Rajaratin Rajek – a king from Rajarata, was a common slogan that appeared in posters and banners of the Sirisena presidential campaign. 12 Transcript taken from a speech.

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enhanced Sirisena’s public appeal across ethno-national, social class and religious divides. Such inequalities were the inevitable consequence of its neoliberal economic policy that favored the wealthy minority, to the detriment of a deprived majority.

6. The Electoral Outcome: Votes from Rajarata At the election, the voter turnout was suggestive of socio-political cleavages in the Sinhalese electorate. Whereas President Rajapaksa polled handsomely in his native Southern province (the historic Ruhuna, which Rajapaksa was keen to emphasize as opposed to his opponent's Rajarata credentials), Sirisena won all four constituencies of his native Rajarata, in the Polonnaruwa district.13 The significance of the Rajarata vote was extremely decisive to the Sirisena victory, in the context of opposition accusations that Sirisena's victory was enabled by the ethnic minority vote. Although Sirisena polled generously in the Eastern Province, with a substantive Muslim majority and in the Northern Province, he was less successful in electoral districts with substantive Sinhala majorities.14 The Rajapaksa camp's efforts to highlight the Sirisena victory as one based on a minority of the majority and a majority of minorities was extremely strong, even after the election. This effort continued well into the first weeks of President Sirisena's term of office, with ex-President Rajapaksa holding pocket meetings in his native Ruhuna, articulating a discourse that strongly maintained that he (Rajapaksa) was the preferred national leader of the Sinhala masses.15 In countering these allegations, the Sirisena campaign staff (and the office of the new President) was quick to react with statistical evidence of the substantive majorities President Sirisena polled in Sinhala-majority areas. The importance of the Rajarata vote was such that President Sirisena organized a special public event to extend his gratitude to the Rajarata voters on 25 January 2015, at which Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe reiterated the Rajarata vote's importance in Sirisena´s victory.16 In the course of the presidential campaign, Sirisena’s speeches strongly bore the mark of his agricultural roots. Especially during visits to paddy cultivating regions, candidate Sirisena’s speeches laid emphasis on his agricultural roots and profile as an agriculteur-turned-politician. Once elected to presidency, it is customary for the new head of state to pay visits to the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, and the two chief prelates of the Asgiri and Malwathe chapters of the Siyam Nikaya that traditionally holds the custodianship of the Tooth Relic, a historic symbol of ruling power over the Sinhala-Buddhist community. In delivering a welcome sermon to the new President, the deputy head-monk of the Asgiriya chapter laid emphasis on the vital significance of President Sirisena’s agricultural background, referring to the Sinhalese dictum ‘the agriculteur that washes off the mud is fit for kingship’.17

7. A Continuing Silence: Implications of Rice Access As the campaign drew to a close, the state-owned media outlets were replete with rice-processing industry-related allegations against the Sirisena family-owned business, together with mud-slinging specifically targeting candidate Sirisena. 13 For the full election results, see http://www.srilankanelections.com/results/results-main.shtml (Accessed 28 February 2015). 14 For a glimpse into the electorate’s preference for Mahinda Rajapaksa in Sinhala-majority areas in provincial Sri Lanka, see footnote 11 above. 15 Video evidence of MR’s pocket meeting/s 16 ‘Raja Rata residents extend wishes to President Maitripala Sirisena’, News 1st, 25 January 2015: http://newsfirst.lk/english/2015/01/rajarata-residents-extend-wishes-president-maithripala-sirisena/74125 (accessed 28 January 2015). 17 ‘President Sirisena participates in multi-religious observances’, News 1st, 11 January 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVDfOrv34E4 (accessed 28 January 2015). For the exact quote, see sequence 2:52.

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A defining feature of this election campaign was the considerable ineffectiveness of such propaganda, and the ability of social media and internet-based news websites (many of them banned in Sri Lanka under the Rajapaksa rule) to substantively influence public opinion. Indeed, some analysts describe #PresPoll 2015 as Sri Lanka’s very first cyber-election (Gunawardene 2015). Yet, and despite this reality, anti-Sirisena propaganda (including rice-related allegations) does appear to have had a negative effect on the vote for Sirisena in Sinhala-majority constituencies of provincial Sri Lanka. Sirisena’s manifesto was marked by a concerted effort to invert rice-related and other allegations to a discourse of unprecedented commitment to the promotion of agriculture in a future Sirisena government, highlighting the welfare of smallholders. As the Sirisena campaign grew in force, the public appeal of the agriculteur-turned-man of the masses image was such that the Rajapaksa campaign could no longer afford to question Sirisena’s substantive Rajarata agrarian credentials.

LEFT: an image widely circulated in social media, especially via the #PresPollSL2015 hashtag, depicting the ethnic majority and minority votes uniting to elect candidate Sirisena.18 RIGHT: In sharp contrast to the earlier image, this one interprets the election result on strictly ethnic lines, describing the Sirisena victory as the result of ethnic minority support. The Sinhala captions reads: ‘the President of [Tamil] Tigers and Muslims’ (on President Sirisena)19 and ‘Our President: the lion amidst the Sinhalese’ (with regard to ex-President Rajapaksa).20 As the campaign drew to a close, the attacks exclusively targeted the common candidate, with a gradual fading away of the focus on the wealthy Sirisena siblings. By that time, Sirisena had succeeded in twisting the Rajapaksa critiques to his seminal advantage, by presenting himself as a leader with a keen understanding of agricultural concerns, committed to addressing them. This contrasts with the leftist reading that Sirisena represents a local ally of the U.S.-India-led neoliberal political bloc, and that his terms as Minister of Agriculture did not include a coherent policy agenda for the betterment of the circumstances of small-scale cultivators.21 This critique, which also maintains that Sirisena’s tenures in

18Source:https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=860527783998547&set=a.124168347634498.22859.100001239999471&type=1&theater accessed 28 January 2015 19 The term ‘hambaya’, when used in reference to members of the Muslim community, carries extremely pejorative and derogatory connotations. 20Source:https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=866950806689578&set=p.866950806689578&type=1&theater (accessed 28 January 2015). 21 It has been observed that the U.S. authorities had long identified Sirisena as a possible political figure they could work with, and in June 2013, Sirisena travelled to Harvard University to receive a Health Leadership Award, having been nominated by the U.S. Embassy in Colombo (Amaranath and Sunil 2015).

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both agriculture and health portfolios were favourable to large-scale multi-national companies and less favourable to ordinary people, was tactfully sidelined and inverted by the Sirisena campaign. The clock turned a full circle with the rice-based critique was replaced by an overarching image of Maitripala Sirisena as the quintessential agriculteur, deserving national leadership. Concluding remarks The first few weeks of the Sirisena presidency have been marked by repeated expressions of commitment to good governance and accountability. Yet, there is no guarantee that the Sirisena rule would usher in an era of modern democracy to Sri Lanka. As one writer observes, it would rather imply a return to the ‘messy, bumbling democratic normal’ (Gunasekara 2014). The monopoly of companies such as Araliya and Nipuna over the rice processing industry is set to continue, with the ever-looming possibility of the emergence of a new family dynasty at executive level. Not long after he assumed office, Sirisena instated his brother P.G Kumarasinghe Sirisena as Chairman of Sri Lanka Telecom, illustrating how entrenched the presence of the presidential feudal-family tree is in political life. Moreover, Kumarasinghe, formerly the CEO of the State Timber Corporation when Sirisena was then Environmental Minister, is suggestive of the fact that the family grain business would have, at the very least, enjoyed considerable political patronage in the past. However, forming a Rajapaksa-style family dynasty may no longer be a feasible prospect, given the considerable monitoring exercised by opposition parties (especially the JVP), the fact that the Sirisena administration is held together by a tenuous multi-party government which includes the country’s largest political party (UNP). Most importantly perhaps, they offer lessons to be learnt from the political nemesis of President Rajapaksa, largely caused by a growing public discontent (especially among the youth) over the lavishly corrupt lifestyle of presidential offspring and siblings. A ‘dynastic’ trend under the Sirisena administration is also bound to have politically disastrous consequences, including the complete convolution of the Sirisena manifesto, and the loss of the new president’s hard-earned credibility. Having voted out such a powerful household with large-scale dynastic ambitions as the Rajapaksas, the Sri Lankan voters’ morale is likely to be placed at a record high in the aftermath of the 2015 presidential poll. This is a reality that politicians can no longer afford to sideline. Despite the Sirisena government's high emphasis on the curtailment of executive powers, President Sirisena's repeatedly pronounced resolve to not to contest a second presidential term, and apparently firm stance against corrupt and nepotist practices, the practical impact of the Sirisena policy agenda is yet to be witnessed. References Amaranath, S. and Sunil, W.A. (2015) ‘Who is Sri Lankan President Maitripala Sirisena?’, World Socialist

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http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2014_11_23_archive.html. Gunawardene, N. 2015, ‘Was #PresPollSL 2015 Sri Lanka’s first Cyber Election?’ Groundviews, 13

January 2015: http://groundviews.org/2015/01/13/was-prespollsl-2015-sri-lankas-first-cyber-election/.

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Nissan, E. and Stirrat, R.L. (1990) The Generation of Communal Identities, in (eds.) J. Spencer, Sri Lanka: History and the Roots of Conflict, London & New York: Routledge.

Rogers, J.D. (1987) The 1866 Grain Riots, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 29, No. 3. pp. 495-513.

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Author biographies

Dr. Chaminda Weerawardhana (www.chamindaweerawardhana.com) is a Post-doctoral researcher at Queen's University in Belfast, Ireland and Chargé d’Enseignements at Université Lille 1, France. An alumnus of Université François Rabelais in Tours, France, he was granted the Qualification aux fonctions de Maître de conférences des universités by France’s National Council of Universities in February 2014. Apart from research experience in the UK, Ireland, Sri Lanka, India and Norway, he has also held several teaching positions at a number of French universities, including Université Paris 13, INALCO-HEI, and Université Lille 1. His ongoing research revolves around the comparative politics of conflict management and post-colonial IR theory. He is currently working on a new book on the conflict management trajectories of Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka entitled On equal terms? Managing violent conflict from Belfast to Colombo.

Rapti Siriwardane (www.rapti-siriwardane.net) is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology (ZMT) and a Research Associate at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn. Trained as an environmental anthropologist at the National University of Singapore, and the University of Oxford (UK), she has published on themes related to political ecology, gender and development politics with a focus on rural England, South and Southeast Asia. Her recently completed doctoral monograph in maritime anthropology, funded by DAAD and the Foundation fiat panis, explores the dynamics of inter-group cooperation and conflict over natural resources amid contexts of militarization in Sri Lanka’s littoral northeast.