Sunday Times 2
A vote for change to the 100-day challenge
Sri Lanka voted for change last Thursday. Maithripala Sirisena won the presidency polling 51.3% of the vote to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s 47.6%. This was a swing of 10.3 percentage points against MR who polled 57.9% in 2010.
It is not clear at this point in time how political forces in parliament would align under President Sirisena’s administration. Under his 100-Day Programme today, Sunday January 11, he is due to form an all-party cabinet with Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister. This in itself would be a novelty in Sri Lankan parliamentary government. We have to assume that the 51% who voted for Mr. Sirisena approve of this idea and what is to follow from that initiative as described in the 100-Day Programme.
Type of voters
Sri Lanka does not have exit polls to find out who voted for whom for what reason. The closest we have are a few random sample surveys usually done by major poltical parties during the campaign. Based on the result of a random sample survey of 1,588 voters covering the entire island, completed as recently as January 2-4, we can say, with a reasonable degree of confidence, the following about the January 8 vote.
= MS polled around 75% of the Tamil and Muslims votes and about 65% of the Sinhala Christian vote.
= MR polled about 53% of the Sinhalese-Buddhist vote.
= MR polled slightly more of the rural vote, perhaps 55% to the 45% that MS polled.
= MS polled around 65% to 80% of the vote in the large urban centres of Colombo.
MS won on the strength of the overwhelming support he received from the Tamil and Muslim communities while managing to retain a respectable 45% of the Sinhalese-Buddhist vote.
Issues
Opinion polls that were conducted in the five weeks prior to the election showed an overwhelming 80% of the electorate recognised the 2009 war victory against the LTTE and the peace that it brought to the daily lives of people as a major benefit for which MR got most credit. About 36% of the voters also gave credit to MR for the mega development projects.
However, the voters were also concerned about three issues that stood against Rajapaksa. These were the high cost of living, inadequate income and corruption. The first two are inter-related. People with modest or low fixed incomes suffer when prices of consumer goods increase. If prices increase incomes must increase to compensate for the loss of real income. This did not happen in the last five years. Private sector workers in agriculture, industry, commerce and services that have their wages fixed by Wages Boards, experienced very modest increases in real wages in 2010 and 2012 and stagnant wages in 2011 and 2013. Major categories of government employees including, all non-executive grades, and government teachers experienced a decline in real incomes between 2009 and 2013. It is no surprise that the opposition candidate did quite well among the half of a million postal voters who were exclusively drawn from the ranks of government employees.
Cost of Living
In the first three weeks of December the opposition was relatively successful in keeping the focus of the voter on the cost of living and other economic woes of the voters. They also tried to tie the cost of living to two glaring shortcomings of the government. One was corruption. The second was waste of funds on unproductive mega projects such as the Mattala international airport costing $209 million and the Hambantota Port (Phase 1) costing $361 million.
In the last two weeks of the campaign Mr. Rajapaksa made a serious bid to move the debate to the issue of terrorism and national security where his credentials remain unmatched. The opposition’s argument that Rajapaksa was merely trying to resurrect an old-issue that has already been settled, in order to cover other shortcomings of his admiration resonated with many voters, especially those who belonged to the minorities, and the more educated urban Sinhalese voters.
The voting pattern confirms this. Sirisena who won 6.2 million votes (51.3% of the valid poll) did exceedingly well among the minorities in the north and east and the urban voters in the south. He did very well in Colombo and some of its suburbs and in some of the provincial capitals. Mr. Rajapaksa who polled 5.8 m. (47.6%) won the Sinhalase South and the Sinhalese north central planes of Matale, Anuradhapura and Kurunegala.
Role of NMSJ and NGOs
A tribute has to be paid to Ven. Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thera and those behind the National Movement for Social Justice (NMSJ) whose untiring efforts made the fight against corruption and the need for good governance, popular election issues. In the past these were seen as “elite” issues that did not concern the ordinary voter. Ven. Sobhitha Thera and his small team changed that.
The efforts of JVP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the JHU’s Ven. Athureliya Rathana Thera and Champika Ranawake helped to cement that NMSJ opening. Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremesinghe lent their considerable political weight and contributed to firm up the coalition against MR. Civil society leaders of the much-vilified NGOs played an important role to educate voters and push the opposition leaders to fight the election on the issues of good governance and corruption.
National reconciliation
Rajapaksa squandered the wonderful opportunity for national reconciliation using the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) Report of 2011 as a base.
His ‘triumphalism’ as opposed to what could have proved to be his statesmanship, victory parades and annual commemoration meetings to glorify himself in the guise of glorifying “rana viruwos” (war heroes) proved to be counter-productive in the long term. Playing god-politician instead of statesman appealed only to a section of voters.
Shackling of the media and his treatment of those who defied him and asserted their freedom, journalists Lasantha Wickremetunge, Prageeth Ekneligoda, and Keith Nohyar, are examples, invited condemnation from the more liberal sections of the community both in Sri Lanka and abroad.
New Government
The opposition coalition won because it was united in its opposition to what they saw as Rajapaksa’s mismanagement of the economy, bribery and corruption. Having won they have to implement the 100-Day Programme that was promised to the country. It is one of the most ambitious programmes that any incoming administration has ever promised to the electorate. It has some liberal proposals including the establishment of a string of independent commissions and the passing of freedom of information legislation. It also promises significant economic relief to the low-income groups. If these could be achieved in 200 days or even 300 days, let alone in 100 days, the Sirisena administration will go down as one of the most active and progressive in Sri Lanka’s post-independence history.
We see Mr. Sirisena’s victory as a major turning point in Sri Lanka’s post-independence history. There were three such turning points in the past 66 years. One was the day of independence from British rule in February 1948. The country made some bad decisions in the twenty-five years that followed. The bad decisions included a short-sighted language policy that was the root cause of the ethnic conflict and the civil war and some ill-conceived economic decisions such as the nationalisation of plantations and state control of trade that contributed to a near collapse of the economy in the mid 1970s.
The second turning point was when J R Jayewardene assumed power in 1977. He took the correct turn on the economy by abandoning a state-controlled system for a more market driven system that we still have and yields reasonably good results. But he took the wrong turn in governance by introducing the executive presidency.
The third major turning point came in 2009 when Mr. Rajapaksa, having defeated the LTTE, had the opportunity to turn the country in a fresh direction. He failed to do so. On January 8, the country decided to give Mr. Sirisena the chance to accomplish what Mr. Rajapaksa failed to do.
President Sirisena’s strength lies in the fact that he has broad support base in Sri Lankan society. Kumaratunga’s election to the presidency in 1994 was the last occasion in Sri Lankan electoral politics that drew similar broad-based support.
On that occasion Ms. Kumaratunga, for various reasons, failed to build on the energy and strength of that force that she mobilised in that election to address a few deep-rooted problems, especially the ethnic problem, that confronted our society.
Mr. Sirisena now has a similar opportunity. This time Mr. Sirisena has promised to form a national government mobilising the support of his coalition partners, the liberal UNP, nationalist JHU, as well as SLFP, JVP, the minority parties and others to address these issues. If he succeeds it would be a truly remarkable achievement.