COLOMBO: Veteran Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse is expected to unveil a populist budget on Friday hoping to shore up sagging electoral support ahead of a troubled bid to win a third term.

Rajapakse, who is also finance minister, has advanced the budget for 2015 by a month to give his government more time to implement widely predicted tax cuts and public sector pay rises ahead of snap elections in January.

Analysts say Rajapakse, who oversaw the crushing of the Tamil Tiger rebel movement in 2009, has a new fight on his hands to cling onto power with gratitude among voters over the end of the war having faded.

His information minister let slip on Monday that Rajapakse will seek a third term in January, two years ahead of schedule, after recent local elections underlined a steady drop in support for the main ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) party.

And analysts say the 68-year-old president’s allies appear to have persuaded Rajapakse that his chances of re-election would only have worsened if he held back from seeking a fresh mandate.

“People loved him too much after the war victory,” said political commentator and author Victor Ivan.

“The expectations were high. Gradually, that love has evaporated. “While Sri Lanka has posted impressive annual growth rates of around eight per cent in the years since the end of the fighting, observers say few people have reaped the benefit of the peace dividend.

The once-sleepy capital Colombo is a hive of activity as work to expand the port and build hotels and high-rises goes on around the clock. Major highways are sprouting across the island to end the isolation of rural areas.

But complaints abound that infrastructure projects have served to mainly line the pockets of ruling party cronies and Chinese companies who carry out the work, rarely employing locals.

While the overall jobless rate is around four per cent, youth unemployment is as high as 20 per cent.

Murtaza Jafferjee, head of the Sri Lanka-based stockbroker JB Securities, said the government was likely to bump up public sector salaries in an attempt to persuade civil servants to remain loyal to the UPFA.

Sri Lanka has 1.2 million public sector workers, a huge percentage of the workforce in a country with an overall population of 20 million.

Appeasement budget

“It would be a budget that would appease as many constituencies as possible,” said Jafferjee.

Although it did just manage to keep control of the council, the UPFA’s performance in last month’s election in the south-eastern Uva province was its worst performance since Rajapakse came to power in 2005.

While there are no reliable opinion polls, a partner in the ruling coalition, Technology Minister Champika Ranawaka, has said that up to a million voters may have dumped the UPFA and that it “wouldn’t be easy” for Rajapakse to win again.

Basking in the afterglow of victory over the Tigers, Rajapakse won the 2010 presidential election by a landslide and then rewrote the constitution, giving himself more powers.

But his second term has been dogged by accusations that he has undermined the independence of the judiciary, especially over the sacking of the chief justice in 2013.

His refusal to allow international investigators to probe claims of war crimes at the end of the 37-year ethnic conflict has brought him widespread international criticism, including during his hosting of a Commonwealth summit last November.

And the treatment of the former army chief Sarath Fonseka, who was jailed after he challenged Rajapakse at the 2010 election, led to fissures within the ruling party.

However, Information Minister Keheliya Rambukwella said voters were still grateful to the president for ending the war.

“People will vote for him for bringing real freedom to our country,” he said.

But Ivan, the commentator, said any budget sweeteners would not assuage anger over levels of corruption and lawlessness.

“Cost of living is a factor, but not the main issue,” he said. “Rajapakse is in self-destruct mode. No one else can take credit for that.”—AFP

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2014