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Wayamba
- a different poll game Unmoved by general election campaign exhaustion, 803 candidates, including some former provincial council members who were defeated at the April 2 polls, are turning the heat on the hustings with the elections to the 52-member Wayamba Provincial Council just six days away. The April 24 elections will return 36 members from the Kurunegala district and 16 from the Puttalam district. The elections will be the first testing ground for both the main parties after the general elections three weeks ago. The UPFA, which emerged victorious as the largest single party in the parliamentary elections, is all out to consolidate its winning trend while the UNF wants to ensure that it is on a comeback trail. As in the April 2 parliamentary elections, the problems faced by farmers in the two districts and the fisher folk in the coastal areas of the Puttalam district and the question of more than 40,000 unemployed graduates are the pressing issues dominating the campaign. Though the peace process and the economic dividends of two years of no war formed the platform of the UNF at the general elections, the party failed to ride back to power on these achievements. The UNF was at the receiving end of UPFA allegations of corruption and misrule. However, at provincial level, the issues are different and the party at the receiving end is the People's Alliance (PA), which ran the provincial administration. The PA, a main constituent party of the United People's Front Alliance (UPFA), is being blamed for failing to find solutions to the problems faced by farmers and fisher folk. Neglected tanks and irrigation schemes are plenty with both the provincial council and the central government failing to take sufficient action to attend to them. As a result, the UNF government was voted out of office at the April 2 elections and it is yet to be seen how the voters would react to the failures of the PA provincial administration. The Kurunegala district also has the highest number of unemployed graduates and these jobless graduates are once again being wooed by politicians with all sorts of promises. Before the April 2 elections, the jobless graduates held protests, picketing campaigns and death fasts to get the attention of authorities focused on the problem. But these actions bore no fruits with both the central government and the provincial administration giving any priority to the problem. "Politicians have given us various promises. But this time, we are not allowing them to get away with promises," says Ven Rathmalgoda Mahanama Thera, President of the Wayamba unemployed graduates Association. Education is another area where people are not satisfied with the performance of the administration. They say that a shortage of teachers exist in remote areas of the province while schools in urban areas have a surplus of teachers. The problem has been aggravated by politically-motivated transfers to urban areas, they allege. The PA administration was also accused of spending a large sum of money for the construction of the provincial secretariat while neglecting devlopment projects. However, the combined force of PA and the JVP under the UPFA banner is expected to give the opposition UNF a tough fight. A negative factor in the UPFA campaign is the battle for the preference votes – with the PA, mindful of the humiliation of coming second to the JVP at the general election preference vote race, trying its best to avoid a similar situation. But for the UNF, there is some relief as the Jathika Hela Urumaya, which, according to some analysts, ate into the UNF vote bank at the general elections, is not contesting the provincial polls. Besides, the margin of victory the UPFA recorded in the electorates of the Kurunegala district is narrow when compared to electorates outside the district. The result of the election will also be important for both the UNF and UPFA with six more council elections to be held in the next few months. The UNF, United Lalith Front, Bumiputhra Pakshaya, New Left Front, Sinhale Maha Sabhawa, Sri Lanka Progressive Front and the Sri Lanka Muslim Kachchi are among the parties contesting the elections. Former chief minister Athula Wijesinha is leading the UPFA as the chief minister candidate while former opposition leader Ashoka Wadigamangawa is the chief minister candidate for the UNF. Only two of the provincial council members - Bandula Basnayake (Kurunegala) and Weerakumara Dissanayake (Puttalam) - were elected to Parliament at the April 2 elections, while former chief minister Wijesinha, former PC ministers Dharmasiri Dassanayake, Neranjan Wickramasinghe, M.H.M. Navai, Victor Anthony Perera, Padma Wettewa, Tikiri Adhikari, R.D.Wiamadasa and Ranjith Nawaratne from the UPFA were defeated. On the UNF side, former PC members Lionel Rajapakse, Shamal Senarath, Ajith Rohana, D.M. Chandratillake and W.H.K. Nandasiri failed to get elected at the general elections. The last provincial council election has gone down in the history as one of the worst elections this country has ever held. President Chandrika Kumaratunga herself admitted that it was a corrupt and violence-ridden election while some elected PA members themselves conceded that the elections were not fair. At the last provincial election, the PA returned 30 members, the UNF 19 and the JVP three. The UNP members launched a prolonged boycott of the PC sessions, protesting against the malpractice and violence at the elections. Police say they have taken all necessary measures, including additional police officers and security forces, to ensure that the April 24 elections will be free and fair. Polls monitors say they hope the Wayamba elections this time will be largely free and fair in keeping with the peaceful trend at the April 2 parliamentary elections. |
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