Mangala Samaraweera: Obituary
The political sphere of Sri Lanka, with its feudalistic and clientelist fault lines, is a space where ‘liberal’ political discourses and praxes are unwelcome. It is a polity where ethno-nationalist majoritarianism, in the form of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism, is a sure trump card to succeed in electoral politics. Similarly, affiliations to other conservative religious establishments, including the Catholic church, are extremely helpful in climbing the political ladder. In such a polity, the politician who wishes to stand on the ‘middle ground’, advocate for the rights of all citizens irrespective of ethnicity, language, class, caste, sexuality, gender identity, or any other factor, is faced with substantial challenges. A path of this nature is indeed an uphill struggle, a swim against the tide.
Mangala Samaraweera, a leading Sri Lankan politician with three decades-long innings in electoral politics, succumbed to Covid 19 on 24 August 2021, aged 65. Samaraweera, a member of Sri Lanka’s vibrant LGBTQI+ community, was, to date, the only openly non-heteronormative politician in the high politics of Sri Lanka. As a consequence of the island’s conservative attitudes, many LGBTQI+ politicians are forced to hide their truth from the public eye, through many tactics including heteronormative marriages, and in some cases, even adopting highly ethno-nationalist political views. It is in this context that Samaraweera can indeed be considered as a game-changer.
At a public rally in October 2018, Maitripala Sirisena, then President of Sri Lanka, resorted to a homophobic rant, referring to the alleged non-heteronormativity of a senior opposition politician, derogatorily using the term samanalaya [සමනලයා], the Sinhala word for ‘butterfly’. In response, Samaraweera tweeted ‘I’d rather be a butterfly than a leech’.
This tweet remains etched in public memory as the first occasion when a queer politician openly stood up against casual homophobia at the highest levels of Sri Lanka’s patriarchal, misogynist, elderly men’s club of a political establishment.
As Sri Lanka’s Minister of Foreign Affairs [2015–2017], Samaraweera steered foreign policy in a positive direction, after repeated policy negligence under the preceding Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency. He gave leadership to the task of managing Sri Lanka’s engagements with the UN HRC along a logic of adhering to international human rights standards — an approach that stood in stark contrast to the more confrontational, protectionist, attitude of the Rajapaksa regimes [past and present], of disregard for human rights obligations and international human rights mechanisms. Most importantly, he made a key contribution in mending Indo-Sri Lanka relations, which had witnessed considerable deterioration under the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime.
Lesser known within Sri Lanka, Samaraweera also gave leadership to ensure that Sri Lanka voted in favour of the appointment of the UN independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity [IE SOGI], at the UNGA 71th Session votes to this effect, at the 3rd Committee, the UNGA Plenary and at the 5th Committee.
It is indeed a truism that the above-mentioned precedents will inspire younger generations of LGBTQI+ citizens as well as citizens of other marginalised backgrounds wishing to enter public life, for many years to come.
Domestic Politics: A Tainted Record?
Despite his irrefutable credentials as an advocate of the liberal centre-ground and a cosmopolitan persona, Samaraweera’s record in domestic politics has been far from progressive. A staunch advocate of dynastic, family-run politics, he was one of the key figures behind the decision to bring Chandrika Bandaranaike [daughter of prime ministers Solomon and Sirima Bandaranaike] to national leadership in the early 1990s. His contributions were pivotal in presenting her as the ‘heiress’ to Bandaranaike family politicking. In the mid-2000s, Samaraweera emerged as the foremost endorser of the presidential ambitions of Mahinda Rajapaksa, playing a central role in leading Rajapaksa’s campaign at the 2005 presidential election. Samaraweera is therefore squarely responsible for the advent of a family-run dynastic regime that has since been maintaining a tight grip over Sri Lanka, with a mixture of hardline Sinhala nationalism, creating a fear psychosis of other ethno-religious minorities among the majority Sinhalese, authoritarianism, curtailing of civil liberties, and under the current regime in Colombo, outright and unprecedented militarism.
When a collective opposition effort to challenge the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime was under way in 2014, Samaraweera happened to be a key figure who pushed for the ‘common candidacy’ of a provincial politician, Maithripala Sirisena, to stand for Sri Lanka’s powerful executive presidency. This effectively sidelined the initial plans of the main opposition UNP to field Karu Jayasuriya, veteran politician, diplomat and businessman, as presidential candidate at the 2015 presidential election. Once again, this episode exemplifies Samaraweera’s lack of aptitude to analyse the consequences of key decisions in political strategizing. In Sri Lanka, he has long been known as a ‘kingmaker’. In reality, this was all but a capability of mere political manoeuvring in a conservative and clientelist polity, along its signature fault lines of political ‘deals’ made by men in positions of power, a preference for dynastic politics, and an unpreparedness to think beyond a narrowly construed, opportunistic brand of politicking.
It can be established that, in opting to shift his support from one dynastic politician [Chandrika Bandaranaike] to another [Mahinda Rajapaksa] in the mid-2000s, Samaraweera lacked the political foresight to take stock of the fact that he was paving the path to an unprecedented anti-democratic drift in Sri Lankan politics — one that stood in stark contrast to the liberal positions he may have upheld as a citizen.
Samaraweera had no formal training or education in politics and international relations. A graduate of Central Saint Martins in London, he was a fashion designer by profession. Indeed, it was his own dynastic credentials — of the political engagements of his parents in his home district of Matara in southern Sri Lanka — that enabled him to enter politics upon his return to Sri Lanka from higher studies in the United Kingdom. In non-urban Sri Lankan electorates, ‘caste’ remains a key determinant of voting patterns. In Samaraweera’s case, a key reason behind his repeated electoral successes from 1989 to 2015 was his home district’s ‘caste-based vote bank’, of the ‘Durava’ [දුරාව] caste. Samaraweera’s political parcours is therefore NOT one that stood against the tide of clientelist Lankan politics. Instead, it was very much part and parcel of, if not a quintessential product of that very same system. In the Sri Lankan political sphere, a politician who does not represent the ‘govigama’ [ගොවිගම] caste does not stand any chance whatsoever of contending for national leadership. Samaraweera’s role as a ‘king-maker’ can also be understood in this context — as a strategy to stick to the ‘second best-case scenario’ — of being a close confidante of national leaders and a key vector in power politics.
Weeks before his demise, Samaraweera launched a new initiative, emphatically entitled ‘True Patriots’. It was widely described as an effort to develop a liberal centre-ground in Sri Lankan politics. Despite the laudable objectives of this initiative, it lacked a clear articulation of is core objectives, a manifesto of its guiding principles or a clear strategy of how it intended to work towards such a liberal centre in a socially conservative and rapidly militarising polity. Given Samaraweera’s dubious track record of advocating for dynastic politics and religiously endorsing individuals from political dynasties, it would not be surprising if the entire initiative happened to be a front to bring a UK-based younger representative of a prominent Lankan political dynasty, also a cis gay man, into national-level politics.
Overall, Samaraweera’s political trajectory is one that provides an invaluable lesson to present and future politicians who a) harbour somewhat liberal political discourses, and who b) are part of political constellations led by dynastic politics. To make my point by way of a comparative perspective, the ill-fate of the second term of office of Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh remains the most poignant example of the abject destructiveness of dynastic politics in South Asia. The outstanding successes of UPA1, including economic management, foreign policy, unprecedented developments in Indo-Pak dialogues that led to the Manmohan-Musharaff formula, were all wasted, because of an Oxbridge-educated, well-experienced quintessential statesman succumbed — with no fight back — to the whims and fancies of one incompetent dynastic cabal. The same cabal has substantively reduced the political prospects of the party they hold onto, thereby effectively ruining chances to develop a broad-based anti-BJP coalition that stands for human dignity, democracy, and the values of unity in diversity that are at the core of the idea of India.
In the second decade of this century, had Samaraweera ‘the kingmaker’ taken stock of Dr Singh’s predicament, the Sri Lankan political reality today would have been a very different one. If Samaraweera’s political trajectory, with its signature lack of strategic insight, were to teach us one lesson, it is that upholding, aiding, and abetting family-based dynastic politics is all but a recipe for disaster, waste of talent, and political stagnation.
May Samaraweera’s soul rest in peace.
