• Local reports find the majority becoming more politically engaged while some are disillusioned and others are immune to the ‘aragalaya’s brand of activism  

The socio-economic crisis that led to a number of changes in Sri Lanka’s social, economic, and political spheres had different impacts on different groups. While the crisis motivated as much as 50.3% of Sri Lankans to become more politically engaged, some disengaged from politics due to the same. In the case of some individuals, it did not result in any difference.

According to two survey reports that cover the 2020-2022 period, which were officially launched by the Sri Lanka Barometer yesterday (8) in Colombo during an event titled “Understanding Social Change: Survey Data and Public Opinion in Sri Lanka”, during the said period, public opinion about a plethora of matters concerning the public have considerably changed. These changes could be observed across different ethnic groups, as per the reports. The key findings of the two surveys were presented by researcher Natasha Palansuriya at the launch.

Public perception in 2020-2021

One of the survey reports, “National Public Perception Survey on Reconciliation 2021” focused on what Sri Lankans understand as reconciliation, whether there is a demand for reconciliation in the country, and what Sri Lankans perceive as the progress of reconciliation. This survey was based on a quantitative, structured survey questionnaire, and it analysed the responses of a nationally representative sample of 3,880 persons. The report identified eight domains of reconciliation in Sri Lanka. They are, identity and belonging, trust, equality and opportunity, dealing with the past, justice for all, accountable governance, active citizenship, and security and wellbeing.

As per the statistics that were presented, the demand for reconciliation in Sri Lanka remained high in 2020-2021, and this trend could be observed in all major ethnic groups, i.e. Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims. The highest demand for reconciliation was observed in the Tamil community followed by the Muslim community, while it was slightly low in the Sinhala community in both the years. Overall, the demand for reconciliation among Sri Lankans had slightly increased in 2021. With regard to different ethnic groups’ interest in progress in reconciliation, the statistics showed moderate scores regarding the progress of reconciliation in 2020-2021 (as identified by the ethnic groups), and that it was the case in all ethnic groups. With regard to identity and belonging, it was noted that in 2020-2021, there was rather strong agreement among Sri Lankans about the importance of a national identity. Although the Tamil community was the leading community that had expressed support for such an identity, although the difference in percentage was not significant, all the said ethnic groups were in support of a Sri Lankan identity. 

However, nearly a quarter of Sri Lankans identify most strongly with others belonging to the same ethnic group as their own. Around 24.7% had expressed in 2020 that they would identify as belonging to the same ethnic group as their first response, which had reduced to 23.6% by 2021, while 14.2% had expressed in 2020 that they regard themselves as Sri Lankans as their first response, which had increased to 20.6% by 2021.

The report had further looked into the equality of opportunities, regarding which it was noted that Sri Lankans disagreed in 2021 that there was equality of opportunity for all people in comparison to the moderately positive views that they had in 2020.  When it comes to dealing with the past, Sri Lankans had agreed that recognising past injustices is important in order to deal with the past. Although there were slight differences between the three ethnic groups’ opinions in 2020-2021, the overall opinion (mean) remained unchanged in the two years. Meanwhile, in response to the question as to how responsive the respondents think the Government institutes are, the respondents had expressed that Government institutes and officials are fairly responsive to meeting their needs. 

When it came to active citizenship, in 2020-2021, Sri Lankans had shown rather low levels of willingness to engage in a range of civic actions including contacting the media, public officials, civil society organisations and community leaders and also participating in legal and peaceful protests. Noting that there is a massive drop in the same in some Provinces, Palansuriya said that it could be a result of the Covid-19 pandemic as well.

2022 crisis and social cohesion

The second survey report, “Sri Lanka’s 2022 Crisis and Social Cohesion: A Snapshot Survey 2022” analysed the responses of a nationally representative sample of 1,018 persons, and primarily focused on how the socio-economic crisis impacted the citizens. Among the matters that the survey looked into were whether the crisis has motivated the respondents to become more politically engaged, whether the interests of the respondents’ families and communities were being represented in the “aragalaya” (the public protest movement to overthrow the Government led by then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa) movement, whether the relationships between different ethnic communities have changed as a result of the present crisis, whether the crisis has shown the importance of addressing past injustices suffered by ethnic minorities, the extent to which the respondents were confident in the political leadership before the crisis, and also the extent to which the respondents’ were confident in the current political leadership as a result of the crisis.

Explaining the findings, Palansuriya said: “In the 2021 survey, we saw fairly low active citizenship levels. But, in this survey, we see that 50.3% of Sri Lankans felt motivated to become more politically engaged because of the crisis. There are few who said that their motivation to engage in politics stayed the same, and about 26% said that they had disengaged from politics. What is really interesting in terms of desegregation is the age group. When we look at the news or public conversations, it was mainly young people at the forefront of the increase in political engagement. But here, we see that the youngest population, i.e. those under 25 years of age, and the oldest population group, i.e. those above 60 years of age, actually mostly disengaged from political engagement.”

With regard to the crisis and inter-ethnic relationships, the survey had found that nationally, 56% of Sri Lankans had believed that inter-ethnic relationships stayed the same as a result of the crisis, while 32.4% of Sri Lankans had felt an improvement in the relationships. However, 11.6% of them had felt that inter-ethnic relationships had worsened. The Northern and Eastern Provinces had the highest percentages of people that believe that those relationships have improved. When it came to the crisis and the importance of addressing injustices, 59.1% of Sri Lankans had agreed on the importance of addressing past injustices, while a substantial minority from all three ethnic groups had disagreed with it.