By Easwaran Rutnam and Ashanthi Warunasuriya
Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s attempt to return to power and seek a third term in office, though not as President, has raised eyebrows both here and overseas.
Historically, no Sri Lankan President has attempted to make a return to politics after two terms in office, especially as Prime Minister.
The unique nature of the current scenario is that Rajapaksa is trying to make a comeback after being defeated on January eighth this year when he tried to secure a mandate for a third term in office.
Many modern presidential republics employ term limits for their highest offices. The United States placed a limit of two terms on its presidency by means of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution in 1951. There are no term limits for Vice Presidency, Representatives and Senators, although there have been calls for term limits for those offices.
The only president to serve more than two terms in the US was Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1940 he won the election for his third term. Four years later in 1944, he ran again. He became the only president to be elected to a fourth term. However, he was president for only a year into his fourth term before he suffered from a cerebral hemorrhage and passed away.
According to Wikipedia, he was able to remain president for so long because his country was in a state of turmoil, World War II and the post-depression era, and they wanted a reliable figure to turn to and lead them during one of their weakened times.
Mahinda Rajapaksa, when seeking a second term in office, rode on his success in defeating the LTTE after 30 years of war.
He also looked for a mandate to rebuild the country, a mandate the people gave him in 2010 when he sought a second term in office. However the LTTE factor was not taken into account when he sought a third term in office as President and by then allegations of corruption took center stage.
Unsuccessful attempts to stay in power
A few US presidents unsuccessfully tried to hold their position for more than eight years. In 1880, after a three year break from the presidency, Ulysses S. Grant attempted to run again. However, he did not win his party’s nomination so he was not even a choice in the final election. About two decades later, Theodore Roosevelt became the president when William McKinley was assassinated. He then served as president from 1901-1909. Three years later, he tried to become the president again; however, he lost to Woodrow Wilson. (Courtesy yourdictionary.com)
The 22nd Amendment, enacted after Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president for the fourth time, imposes a two-term limit on presidential candidates and was established to formalise a tradition George Washington started by refusing to run for a third term in 1796.
The 22nd Amendment states that no person elected president and no person to hold the office of president for more than two terms is allowed to be elected more than once more. It makes no difference whether the two terms are consecutive.
Clinging onto the chair
There have been a few world leaders who have managed to hold onto power for several years, either as Prime Minister or President.
In Russia, Vladimir Putin was appointed President in 2000, and he was re-elected in 2004. Due to term limits, Putin could not run for the presidency again in 2008. (That same year, presidential terms in Russia were extended from four to six years.) When his protégé Dmitry Medvedev succeeded him as president in March 2008, Putin secured the post of Russia’s prime minister, continuing his position among the top Russian leadership after eight years at the helm.
In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, as one of the leaders of the rebel groups against white minority rule, was elected as Prime Minister, head of government, in 1980, and served in that office until 1987, when he became the country’s first executive head of state. He has led the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF) since 1975.
In 2008 Mugabe suffered a narrow defeat in the first round of a presidential election but he subsequently won the run-off election in a landslide after his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew; Mugabe then entered a power-sharing deal with Tsvangirai as well as Arthur Mutambara of the MDC-T and MDC-M opposition party. In 2013, the Election Commission said Mugabe won his seventh term as President, defeating Tsvangirai with 61 percent of the vote in a disputed election in which there were numerous accounts of electoral fraud.
Sri Lanka’s Presidential Term
The office of President in Sri Lanka was created in 1972, as more of a ceremonial position. It was empowered with executive powers by the 1978 Constitution introduced by J. R. Jayewardene.
Former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who served two terms in office from November 1994 to November 2005, was replaced by Mahinda Rajapaksa as President in 2005.
After being elected to office for a second term, Rajapaksa introduced the 18th Amendment to the Constitution that was termed by many as an ‘undemocratic’ piece of legislation that removed the two term limit of holding office by an elected President.
However, Rajapaksa who faced a Presidential election on January eight this year after holding office for a period of two terms was defeated by the people.
The Sunday Leader spoke to a broad section of society, both here and overseas to gather their views on a Sri Lankan President seeking more than two terms in office or attempting to return to power as a Prime Minister.
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Ousted President seeks a comeback
By Amantha Perera
Six months ago, Maithripala Sirisena pulled off a stunning electoral upset in Sri Lanka, defying expectations to defeat incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa in a national election. Sirisena, a former Health Minister for Rajapaksa, rode to victory supported by a diverse political coalition united, above all, in its desire to displace the Sri Lankan strongman accused of increasingly autocratic rule.
Rajapaksa, who in 2009 ended a three-decade-long civil war with separatist Tamil guerrillas seeking an independent homeland in the north of the country, depended on the country’s Sinhala Buddhist majority to stay in power. Sirisena, himself a Sinhala Buddhist, was backed by minority Muslims and ethnic Tamils sidelined under Rajapaksa, along with many Sinhala Buddhists tired of the heavy-handed former leader. “The Mahinda Rajapaksa era is over,” Sirisena told TIME after his victory earlier this year.
His former boss, however, refuses to go away. With characteristic theatricality, he summoned the media to his ancestral home in southern Sri Lanka on Wednesday to outline his ambitions for a comeback. Standing at a podium installed near a tree that formed the backdrop for his late father’s addresses to his supporters — Don Alvin Rajapaksa was a prominent politician from the region — the former President said he would contest a seat in parliamentary elections set for August after Sirisena dissolved the Sri Lankan legislature on Friday. His goal: to become Prime Minister (and thorn in his former ally’s side).
“For the sake of the country … we will contest the upcoming election,” he said. “I ask all patriotic forces from all parties to join us in this struggle to regain the integrity of our motherland.”
But although the setting was rich with political imagery — before making his way to the podium, and with the media at hand, he listened to a Buddhist sermon at his family home — Rajapaksa was more subdued than usual as he made the much anticipated announcement. And he failed to answer a critical question: Under which political banner will he seek a parliamentary seat?
Both Rajapaksa and Sirisena belong to the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP), a section of which remains loyal to the former Sri Lankan leader. But Sirisena, who became the head of the party when he was elected President, has thus far resisted allowing Rajapaksa to run as an SLFP candidate. Rajapaksa didn’t specify whether he would continue to seek an SLFP ticket or if he would try to run as part of the broader United People’s Freedom Alliance, a political coalition led by the SLFP and chaired by Sirisena.
“It will be an uphill task for [Rajapaksa] to become a real force because right now there is no clear sign whether he has a party machinery to back him,” Jehan Perera, a political analyst and executive director of the Colombo-based National Peace Council, told TIME.
The elections will help determine the fate of Sirisena’s reform drive. In January he won with promises to, among other things, dismantle the executive presidency and devolve more power to the legislature by strengthening the Prime Minister’s office. His rise also brought hopes of reconciliation in a country marred by a deep ethnic divide. As President, Rajapaksa brazenly rejected international calls for a thorough and impartial investigation into allegations of human-rights abuses by the Sri Lankan army in the final months of the civil war. Sirisena campaigned with a promise to hold an independent domestic probe into the claims. The international community was supportive after he came to power, with the U.N. deferring the release of its own report into the matter until later this year to give Sirisena time to put together a domestic process.
To implement his promises, Sirisena appointed Ranil Wickremesinghe, a veteran of Sri Lanka’s fractious political scene and leader of the United National Party, as Prime Minister to head a minority coalition government. With Wickremesinghe at his side, he succeeded in introducing some checks on the power of the presidency, including bringing back a two-term limit for incumbents that had been scrapped under Rajapaksa. But with the Rajapaksa faction in Parliament acting as a roadblock, he had to discard his ambition to abolish its executive powers altogether. Lacking a two-thirds majority in the legislature, he also had to shelve a planned overhaul of the voting system and a right-to-information law to make government more transparent.
Sirisena now needs a Parliament that will be sympathetic to their cause, with enough MPs allied with the President to push through reforms. Rajapaksa’s candidacy means that the final outcome could hinge on the country’s minorities, says Perera.
“The minority parties could hold the key to gaining a majority in Parliament,” explains Perera. “I don’t think any [single] party will gain a majority in Parliament. We will have a situation where the major parties will be jockeying for support from the smaller parties.”
(TIME magazine – July 1, 2015)
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