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The guessing game over the question of who would rule the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) came to an end this week with the deal reached between SLMC leader Rauff Hakeem and the UPFA coalition.

The SLMC fought the election independent of, and therefore in contest with the UPFA, and ended up being wooed by both sides in their attempts to form the council – the Opposition (TNA and UNP) on the one hand, and the government on the other.
The SLMC’s support for the UPFA in the EPC was negotiated on the basis of an agreement highly favourable to itself. Although the hotly contested Chief Minister’s post fell to the lot of an SLFP candidate for the time being, the SLMC can still boast that it kept its promise of conferring that office on a Muslim. The government’s choice was its Trincomalee district candidate Abdul Majeed.

According to the understanding reached, the CM’s post will devolve on the SLMC midway through the five-year term of the council. Two of the council’s four ministerial posts will be theirs. The party has succeeded in blocking ‘rival’ Muslim contenders from within the UPFA coalition, from securing key positions. Reports indicate that the other two ministerial posts would go to a Tamil and a Sinhalese.

The SLMC will hold a pivotal position in the newly formed provincial administration. With a council of 37 where the Opposition TNA and UNP jointly hold 15 seats, the stance adopted by the SLMC’s seven-member bloc could potentially tilt the balance on any crucial vote in the provincial body.

Mr. Hakeem who holds the post of Justice Minister in the central government, has undoubtedly pulled off a heist. In the process he seems to have earned the wrath of many. Fellow Muslims within the ruling coalition have openly lambasted him for campaigning in opposition to the government whilst retaining his ministerial perks and privileges.

The UNP, under whose banner the SLMC contested at the previous EPC election in 2008, is upset because it has probably lost votes to the SLMC from among its one-time Muslim supporters. The TNA is angry because the SLMC appeared to respond favourably to its overtures to form an alliance, only to be rebuffed at the last minute.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa for his part seems to take it all in his stride. Those who followed the Eastern Province election campaign as it progressed may recall something he said at a rally in Samanthurai on Aug. 28. It was a remark to the effect that “some people campaigning in the East keep shouting about mosques being attacked, but when they come to the cabinet meeting they are quiet as mice. This is just politics – I know this for a certainty.”

The SLMC’s controversial decision to contest independently was taken when the party was denied the desired number of slots on the UPFA nomination list. Its leadership seems to have been driven by two considerations in taking the step. Firstly it wished to show that the SLMC is kingmaker in the East. And secondly it seemed to want to thumb its nose at ‘rival’ Muslim coalition partners in the UPFA – the All Ceylon Muslim Congress (ACMC) led by Rishad Bathiutheen, and the National Congress (NC) of A.L.M. Athaulla – by demonstrating that the SLMC could command more votes than they. It has succeeded on both counts. The ACMC won three out of four seats for the UPFA in Batticaloa district, and the NC won three out of five for them in Amparai. The SLMC won seven seats on its own.

One of the concerns raised about this provincial election campaign, by the left parties in the government among others, has been its tendency to polarise communities along ethnic lines. Parties carried out campaigns that appealed to communal loyalties. Election results seem to show that the minority vote banks of both the main political parties, the SLFP and the UNP, have been eroded in this election. Have the national parties lost their ability to command the confidence of minorities? If so it may be seen as a negative trend from the point of view of the imperatives of national reconciliation. These are parties that have traditionally drawn on the support of all communities.

The two national parties, between them, have had only one Tamil candidate elected in the entire multi-ethnic Eastern Province. That is Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan alias Pillayan from the TMVP, which is a UPFA coalition partner. The former EPC Chief Minister held his seat with the third-highest number of preference votes in the Batticaloa district, with the first and second highest number of preferences going to TNA candidates.

These developments would seem to point to the need, in both the SLFP and the UNP, to analyse the causes for their diminishing grip on minority constituencies, and make a concerted effort to win back that support. The tendency in both parties has been to ‘outsource’ the work of winning minority votes to coalition partners that are communal in orientation. The national parties need to ask themselves whether this approach to electioneering is at all helpful in the long run, in achieving the professed objective of national unity.

With the votes splitting in such a manner that there was no clear winner, there was the prospect of a hung council in the East. This gave rise to an innovative proposal by Senior Minister and Communist Party Leader D.E.W Gunasekera for the formation of an all-party provincial council for the East, “collectively and with consensus, for a specific period.” Though the UPFA did not formally endorse it, another Senior Minister Sarath Amunugama did sound out leaders of the UNP, the TNA, the SLMC and NFF on the idea. The response all round had been positive, by all accounts.

In his letter addressed to the General Secretaries of the UPFA, UNP, ITAK (or TNA), SLMC and NFF, Gunasekera appealed to the parties to leave contentious national issues to be tackled by national leaderships at the centre, so that the newly elected councillors may have the opportunity to deal with the people’s immediate problems at the provincial level. “Such an arrangement would facilitate the ongoing reconciliation process and also provide a conducive atmosphere for the people to live in peaceful coexistence and create healthier political climate” the letter said.

If drawing marginalised groups into the mainstream of national politics is one of the goals of the reconciliation process, then this would have been an ideal opportunity for the UPFA to demonstrate its political will to advance that goal. But partisan politics has yet again won the day. It would seem that the opportunity to try out a unique experiment in power sharing, which had signs of a rare degree of initial consensus, has been lost.

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