Elections: It is funny, these elite in denial!
UNP sympathizers and those who have something in it for themselves in the UNPs perpetuation, found it very difficult to break-up with the UNP even as the party's defeat loomed before them last week as large as a flailing Elephant.

It was amusing. One Jehan Perera wrote in a column "Therefore, the relatively narrow gap in the number of seats won by the two sides in Parliament does not reflect the political reality on the ground of a sweeping rejection of the UNP by the Sinhalese majority. In this context a successful effort on the part of the UNP to cobble together a majority in Parliament would be met with anger by the Sinhalese electorate.'

Shouldn't this guy have gone back to wherever he studied -- and definitely did not get a doctorate from -- to learn his arithmetic?? The UNF secured 82 seats, as predicted accurately in my columns last Sunday prior to the finalizing of results. The TNA secured 22 seats. The SLMC got 5 seats in parliament, and then there was one each for the EPDP and Up Country People's Front.

By contrast, the UPFA secured 105 seats, and the Jathika Hela Urumaya 9 seats. Slate and chalk arithmetic will reveal to even the most ersatz political analyst that UNF (82) + TNA (22) + SLMC (5) = 109. The Sri Lankan Parliament has 225 seats, and half of that is 113 seats. So how does the UNF "cobble together a majority in parliament?" when by the time of his writing, the JHU monks had stood on their heads several times and said they are not going to join any political party to form a government? Any political commentator would have not just been dense but also deaf if he did not hear that. Imagine also a government with the monks and TNA together in it. Could 109 therefore, be a "majority'' in parliament, according to the latest political brains???

The fact is, it is an absolutely impossible prospect for the UNF to successfully "cobble together a majority'' in parliament as a majority = 113. The UNF could not form a government, period. There is no point even talking about it. Their chances were zilch, non-existent, a statistical impossibility. Whereas, the UPFA with 105, a very substantial lead over the UNF's 82 (not a "relatively narrow gap'' as so-and-so also mentioned) had a real chance of cobbling together a majority if the SLMC and some from the CWC (from within the UNF ticket) joined them.

You can also call it the great reportorial fiasco. Even before the results were in, wire reports speculated over a possibility of a UNF government, or a "minority'' UPFA government. Somehow, the UNF's expected 90 seats (which in the end became 82) becomes a ''working majority'' and the UPFA's 105 with the possibility of a 113+ coalition was certainly a "minority'' government, not a "working majority.''!! All that maybe excusable, because dyed-in-wool UNPers never thought their party will dive the depths, hit the nadir and come up with only 82. When this writer predicted 82 on "exit polls'' Saturday evening for the newspapers, the dyed-in-wool diehards had to insist making it 88 or even 90!!!

But the great reportorial fiasco included observations that would belong only to Bozo in the circus. One rag editorialized that "unable to accept defeat, Chandrika Kumaratunga will form a minority government.'' That's after predicting that the UNF along with two other parties will get 90 seats.

Unable to escape defeat??? For statisticians, this is the biggest margin by which the UNF has lost an election since Proportional Representation was introduced. It was the first time that the UNF, post PR, had gone down to 82. It was also the lowest percentage of popular vote received by the UNP since the decade of the sixties!! And of course, the UPFA vote stayed at a respectable 105, which is incidentally what the PA got in 1994, enabling a new government and 6 years of rule. On top of all that, to repeat, it was a statistical impossibility for the UNP with a maximum109 even with the unlikely TNA support to earn a majority, because the monks were not biting.

Also if the monks were biting, they may have actually joined the UPFA which had the lead and didn't have the dreaded TNA! The story of course is clear that they are not biting. And yet, Chandrika Kumaratunga had suffered a defeat, and "unable to accept defeat will form a minority government." If that's a D-E-F-E-A-T what would they call the UNF's performance?? A deep grovel in hell?? Eating of humble-twenty-times-two pie?? Having their eyes rubbed in ditchwater? A kick in the butt to infinity??

So, not only did the UNF cling the depths, elementary political commentary also hit the pits. And everybody plaintively was saying in Colombo that the UPFA could form a minority government, while the UNF maybe able to get a 'working majority', which was not only partisan but also a diabolical lie. This of course was also meant to impart the startling knowledge to mere mortals that a minority government was somehow an egregious crime.

But facts are that almost all governments under PR have been minority governments, including the last government of the UNF which managed to "cobble together'' a majority with the help of the SLMC. (UNF 109, SLMC 5). In 2000 there was also a minority government with 107 for the PA. The 1994 government which ruled for 6 years was also a minority government, with 105 for the PA. It was only in the 1989 elections, which were held under quite unstable circumstances, that the UNP improbably managed 125 seats, with the SLFP trailing behind with 67. Those were all the general elections in Sri Lanka held under the PR system, and bar one all others have returned minority governments.

But yet, the minority government of 2004 April (just formed) is said to be a disaster, if you are to hear Colombo's aching commentators. None of this would have been significant if a story didn't hang by all of this. The story is that assorted UNP addicts of the Colombo elite and other gravy-train peaceniks are wedded to the UNP, and are therefore willing to go to considerable lengths to distort the picture returned by the electorate.

It is a truth that all these elections are not good for the country, and that this election was held on a highly dubious premise. It may be that the new UPFA government will be bad for the country. Or it may turn out to be good, who knows? But that's another matter. When the nation has polled, and a verdict has been returned by the electorate, the party that has the overwhelming majority - and the only party that has a realistic chance of having a working majority under the circumstances - will govern. There is no other way.

But to give a different picture, and to somehow infer that the UNF is only "doing the right thing'' by not forming a government, is to deliberately distort the picture to show that the UNF in fact secured some kind of victory by default with the help of the "Northern minorities". Nothing can be further from the truth. (Note also the hidden agenda with this business of the "Northern minority".) Therefore it is not a question of ''giving the UPFA a chance to govern'' as yet another election-watcher insisted.

It is a question of the party that can form a government doing so, as opposed to talking of a government by a party that patently cannot form one. It is called democracy. It shows the Colombo chattering-class still has to learn the meaning of that word.

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