Six weeks of lacklustre poll campaigns paved the way only for sombre and dull Parliamentary elections last Thursday; arguably the dullest ever. Yet, it created political history for post-independent Sri Lanka in many respects.
Nearly half the 14,088,500 registered voters stayed away; or some, like the IDPs (Internally Displaced People) were unable to find conveyance to the booths. Even if the Department of Elections where transparency has become increasingly lacking, and questionably so, deviated from the custom of releasing the percentage of voter turnout, it was clear. The People's Action Front Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) said only 50-52 percent had cast their votes. The Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) said the turnout was less than 50 per cent.
The Sunday Times learnt that statistics compiled by Police Headquarters through its divisions countrywide pointed to a turnout of 53.4 percent of the registered voters. This was soon after the polls closed at 4 p.m. on Thursday.
Since the election to the First Parliament in 1947 when 55.8 percent of registered voters cast their votes, Thursday's turnout is the lowest. There have been 20 nationwide Parliamentary and Presidential elections in addition to a referendum in 1982. In all those, the lowest voter turnout was at the presidential election in 1988 where 55.32 percent of registered voters cast their votes.
It must be remembered that the 1988 election came at a time when there were two different insurrections - one in the south by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and in the north and east by the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). In the south, the JVP had issued a 'decree' threatening voters with death. It said it would kill the first voter going to the polling booth in the south. Despite threats to their lives, 55.32 percent turned up at polling booths.
Thereafter, at the Parliamentary elections in 1989, 63 percent of the registered voters turned up whilst in the Parliamentary elections in 1956, 69 percent of the registered voters cast their votes. Many analysts in the two main contending parties, the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) and the United National Front (UNF), acknowledged that there was lack of voter interest at Thursday's polls.
They said this was because Thursday's elections came just two months after the January 26 Presidential polls, and a string of provincial elections last year. Yet, this was not the first time Sri Lanka witnessed two polls within a short span. There were two Parliamentary elections held in March and July 1960 where 77 percent and 75 percent of the registered votes were polled.
It would be imperative for both the Government and the Opposition parties to conduct a detailed study to identify the causes for the lack of voter enthusiasm. This is the first Parliamentary election in three decades after Tiger guerrillas were militarily defeated. Thus, there was no public fear nor threats and the voters were free to move. A record number of candidates - 7,620 from 36 political parties and 301 independent groups were in the fray. Thus, the voters had a broader choice, at least in quantity if not in quality.
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| President Rajapaksa celebrating the victory with close aides on Friday. |
One of the first Opposition leaders to respond to reports of poor voter turnout was Tissa Attanayake, General Secretary of the United National Party (UNP), the main player in the United National Front (UNF). The national list aspirant to Parliament said the low voter turnout was "really an attack on the Government by the people." He told a news conference on Friday, the elections were far from being free. On polling day itself, he said, polling agents and other election staff were chased away. The UNP supporters had not wanted to cast their votes in the light of this. He claimed that though the UPFA percentages were higher, the number of votes it received was much less. He vowed that the UNF would not accept the results of Thursday's elections but did not say what his party proposed to do.
Attanayake appears to have put his foot in his mouth with those remarks. If indeed his claims are correct, the UNF has in fact conceded a walkover to the UPFA. Until Thursday's elections, Attanayake and other UNF leaders had wanted their supporters to cast their votes early and forecast a win. They spoke of forming a Government, with or without the support of other opposition parties. Now, Attanayake asserts that his party supporters did not want to vote. In saying so, he is conceding that the UNF supporters rejected the call of their own leaders to cast their votes and make them win.
Unfortunately, for Attanayake, he is at the centre of another controversy. It was over the list of UNF candidates for Moneragala district that was signed by him. Ranjit Madduma Bandara, who headed the list of candidates, had allegedly been behind the move to tippex and erase the name of Janaka Tissakuttiaratchci, another candidate, an utterly high-handed act if true. This prompted UNF leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe, to make a public appeal urging voters in the Moneragala District not to cast their preference votes to Maddumabandara and his close ally, Ananda Kumarasiri.
However, Maddumabandara was the only opposition candidate to win a seat at Thursday's polls with the largest number of preference votes (15,015). Coming next, though not elected was Ananda Kumarasiri (14,120). Nihal Chandrasiri, the first name in the list of candidates whom Wickremesinghe urged voters to cast their votes came fourth with just 4,961 votes, and was defeated.
Vijitha Herath, General Secretary of the DNA, said that in view of the malpractices during the Presidential elections, the people had become sick of polls. "This is a dangerous trend for democracy," he said.
Minister Dullas Allahapperuma, a spokesperson for the UPFA, rejected claims that the low voter turnout was because people had lost faith in democracy.
"The fact is people have lost faith in the Opposition," he told the Sunday Times. He said "The President asked for a mandate from the people to have a strong Parliament. That is exactly what the people have given. There is no necessity to have coalitions. We will have a steady government. We have been able to get a better majority than what the UPFA achieved during the Presidential elections. This shows that the people have endorsed the policies of the Government."
President Mahinda Rajapaksa termed Thursday's resounding victory by the UPFA as a "triumph for democracy." He said in a statement: "The assured majority in Parliament given by the voters encourages the Government to proceed with its policies for the strengthening of peace and reconciliation, reconstruction, greater infrastructure development, increased investment in identified areas of growth, and the overall development of the country to make it the centre of economic and social progress in South Asia. These results, coming after the successful elections to Provincial Councils and the Presidential Election, are proof that democracy is fully in place in Sri Lanka and the commitment of our people to the democratic process."
Making another point was UPFA's campaign manager Basil Rajapaksa. He told the Sunday Times yesterday that "the results, as we predicted, prove another important point to the people of the country. Like the Presidential elections two months ago, we won an overwhelming majority. This should lay to rest unfounded speculation about computer jilmaats", a reference to JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe's allegations that the Presidential election results were fixed by computer operators at the Elections office. Rajapaksa said this time every counting centre issued to candidates certified copies containing the number of votes cast.
Notwithstanding these developments, United National Front (UNF) leaer Ranil Wickremesinghe appeared upbeat yesterday. He dismissed a comment by Attanayake that the election was a "fraud" by saying that he did not think there was anything wrong in the counting process. However, he claimed the outcome of Thursday's polls was not a mandate for the UPFA to effect constitutional reforms or other changes. This was because, he argued, a sizeable segment of the voters had not cast their votes and that was a slur on democracy.
He was of the view that sooner than later media freedom would be further curtailed. "We want to make the Opposition into a movement and fight for the rights of the people both in and outside Parliament," he told the Sunday Times. His remarks came ahead of a meeting he was due to chair with leaders of constituent parties of the UNF, and a news conference he later gave with Attanayake, former UPFA Minister Mangala Samaraweera and UNP deputy leader Karu Jayasuriya at the table.
Yet, there were rumblings within sections of the UNP membership over the party's dismal performance last Thursday, the worst since its rout in 1956 when it received only 27.44 of the total vote. Even then, the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP) on which ticket Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) founder S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike swept to power obtained only 39.96 of the votes, so the margin was not as wide as last Thursday where the margin of votes between the victorious UPFA and the UNP was as wide as almost 40 percent of the vote.
They want the issue raised at the next meeting of the party's Working Committee. Of particular significance in this regard is a handful, identified as those maintaining a dialogue with the UPFA leadership. Already, they have initiated moves to rally around a party parliamentarian from the south who feels the time has come to stake his claim for leadership. Nevertheless, the person in question has remained non committal over all important issues sometimes keeping away from meetings of the Working Committee when it was known there would be a heated debate.
When the late J.R. Jayewardene introduced the proportional representation system of voting in the 1978 Constitution, the primary aim was to ensure there was greater representation for political parties in Parliament in accordance with the votes they received at the polls. This was by avoiding one single political party dominating Parliament with an overwhelming majority.
He had a classic case with the results of the 1970 elections when the UNP received the most number of votes, but ended up in the Opposition with only 15 seats in Parliament. The PR system paved the way for a strong Opposition, a measure to ensure checks and balances in parliamentary democracy. It gave smaller parties a voice in Parliament, a move that brought the JVP into the political mainstream rather than the fringe and armed revolutionary politics, and also gave a voice to minority parties. Alas, the late UNP leader would have never foreseen that his own party would create history in post independent Sri Lanka by becoming the weakest Opposition in Parliament since the introduction of PR system.
All Opposition parties are riddled with internecine battles, but the UNP and its leader Wickremesinghe have been plagued by such battles ever since he assumed the mantle following the assassination of Gamini Dissanayake in 1994 on the eve of the Presidential election of that year. The troubles really started soon after the 1999 Presidential election defeat of Wickremesinghe to then incumbent President Chandrika Kumaratunga. A last minute assassination bid on Kumaratunga tipped the scales in her favour in what appeared to be a closely fought contest.
A section of the party tried to oust Wickremesinghe from the leadership and mount deputy leader Karu Jayasuriya on the chair, but Wickremesinghe had the backing of his Working Committee (most of whom are his appointees), and survived the putsch. In 2001, thanks to some Colombo businessmen backing Wickremesinghe, a rare crossover from the Government to the Opposition was engineered and the Kumaratunga government was toppled with Wickremesinghe becoming the Prime Minister at the subsequent general elections. SLFP General Secretary S.B. Dissanayake, Ministers G.L. Peiris, Mahinda Wijesekera etc., crossed over to the UNP.
Wickremesinghe's six-year term was cut short by Kumaratunga dissolving Parliament prematurely, and when he lost another Presidential election in 2005, this time to Kumaratunga's successor Mahinda Rajapaksa, Wickremesinghe's troubles within the party resumed. A group of 17 MPs, led by Karu Jayasuriya, Milinda Moragoda and G.L. Peiris impatient to accept ministerial posts broke away from the party on the pretext that they needed to help their constituents, and help the country. Of course, none did it to help himself.
Unfortunately for Wickremesinghe, intra-party rebellion coincided with successes by the Rajapaksa Government in the war front with the LTTE, and both, Wickremesinghe and the UNP were completely wrong-footed in their policy towards the military offensive. Wickremesinghe opted to chide the resounding military victories, then he sided with the minority Tamil civilians caught up in the conflict which was seen as an attempt to stop the forward march of the Forces, and he was then portrayed as someone trying to get Western assistance to stop the war in a desperate bid to stop the kudos for winning the war going to the Rajapaksa Government.
Party leaders were meanwhile engrossed in fighting Wickremesinghe not on policy matters like the 'war', but on battling it out for posts within the party. Who should be the deputy leader, the assistant leader, the national organiser, who should be chairman etc., were what the 'rebels' were more interested in, while Wickremesinghe kept making the wrong statements on the 'war'. Few began to speak otherwise, but the Government pounced on the negative remarks of Wickremesinghe, and the likes of Ravi Karunanayake to ruin the party's image in the majority Sinhalese-Buddhists constituencies in the country.
The UNP persisted with wooing the minorities and ignored the majority Sinhalese voters; often antagonising them by its over indulgence with minority rights. UNP leaders would speak about the plight of the IDPs in Nikaweratiya for instance. In the circumstances where the Government was boasting about how it defeated the LTTE, protected the Motherland and asked the West to stop interfering in our internal affairs, the UNP leadership was talking about the loans the Government was taking from overseas lending institutions, which the Government said it was taking for the economic development of the country.
By the time last Thursday's elections came, the UNP of 2010 was akin to the UNP of 1956, out-of-touch with the larger section of the masses and their aspirations, and seen as an urban, disunited party riddled with factionalism, without financial resources and unable to attract young voters while alienating the older voters. The party's campaign managers were novices who hadn't stepped foot in the far flung constituencies where individual candidates were left to their own devices to get themselves elected.
Wickremesinghe in the meantime gives no indication that despite a humiliating defeat, he is willing to quit the party leadership. He said yesterday that the party needed to be "revamped" and made noises about taking on the Government "in Parliament and outside". Personally, he is emboldened by the fact that he received 232,000 preference votes and his economic wizards are quick to point out that percentage-wise he has fared better than anyone else in the Colombo district, to hell with whether his party won or lost. The vote for him came despite an undercurrent within the party to see that those who vote for the UNP don't vote for him - but party insiders say that a remark made by UPFA's Wimal Weerawansa that he would get more preference votes than Wickremesinghe may have inadvertently helped the UNP leader. Thus many UNP voters who intensely disliked Weerawansa, cast a preference vote for Wickremesinghe. Weerawansa in any event did get more than Wickremesinghe -- 280,000 votes.
On the other hand, Thursday's voter response, though low, has brought about a dangerous domination by a single political entity, the UPFA. Since nominations on February 19, UPFA leaders have focused their campaign on achieving a two-thirds majority, perceived as a Herculean task given the PR system of voting. Though the results of the Trincomalee and Kandy districts have not been officially announced yet due to the suspension of counting in several booths in the Trincomalee and Nawalapitiya areas, the UPFA is expected to win 144 seats, just five seats short of a two-thirds majority (150 in the 225 seat Parliament). The UNF is expected to get 60 seats, the Tamil National Alliance 15 and the Democratic National Alliance 6. With only six seats required to constitute a two thirds majority, there is little doubt the UPFA would woo those in the Opposition, particularly the UNF.
The Department of Elections has said results of the Trincomalee electorate as well as Nawalapitiya will not be announced. In Trincomalee, at two different polling stations, reported irregularities have led to the annulment of polls. In Nawalapitiya, voting in eight polling stations has been annulled after a UPFA candidate's thugs reportedly prevented sections of voters from casting their votes. Reports from the President's un-official campaign office at 'Temple Trees', the conduct of Minister and Nawalapitiya organiser Mahindananda Aluthgamage has been a worrying concern for the President.
Aluthgamage has often been associated with violence in elections, and the UPFA has turned a blind eye all these years as it served the party well at the end of the day. However, this time, with the battle for the preference votes, his actions went beyond the boundaries of acceptance. The first sign of trouble was when his supporters had the cheek to hoot the President when he mentioned the name of Dr. Sarath Amunugama as a candidate from the Kandy district. The antics of his supporters, ably assisted by the Nawalapitiya Police, were too much for even for the usually laidback Commissioner of Elections this time, a man who has a lot of patience with such violent activity at polls.
Thus, the war over preference votes has delayed UPFA's victory celebrations until after the Sinhala Avurudu. In any event, the re-poll in the two areas will not cause a dent to the polls outcome. It will only impact, if at all, on the preference votes in the respective districts.
The UNF is not the only bad loser at Thursday's elections. So was the JVP-dominated Democratic National Alliance (DNA) headed by retired General Sarath Fonseka. As the official results were released from time to time on Friday, he was facing a General Court Martial over allegations of fraudulent activity in military procurements. Gen. (retd.) Fonseka was elected to the Colombo District. The DNA won two seats from the Colombo district, with Sunil Handunnetti being returned to Parliament.
The main platform of the DNA was to seek the release of Gen. Fonseka now in detention at an annexe at Navy Headquarters. The 6 seats the DNA won were in marked contrast to the 39 seats the JVP held in the last Parliament. This was of course after the party contested the 2004 parliamentary elections under the UPFA banner. Barring one of its stalwarts, Wimal Weerawansa, and ten others who remained with the Government, the rest sat in the Opposition. The DNA came into being after the United National Front (UNF) turned down repeated requests from the JVP to contest as a common alliance under the Swan symbol (under New Democratic Front) as they did in the Presidential election. The UNF did not favour the idea and insisted on the Elephant symbol. This was to avoid JVPers turning up in Parliament in substantial numbers, winning on UNF votes, if they contested under the Swan.
Paradoxical enough, though small in number, this is what happened last Thursday. The DNA lost seats where the JVP had a strong base like in Hambantota, Matara, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa. Instead, it made gains in Colombo, Gampaha, Kalutara and Galle, all districts with a substantial middle class UNP vote base. Thus, it would not be wrong to say that the DNA drew in a fair volume of the UNF votes in these four districts, mainly on the Fonseka factor.
One of the areas that drew international attention was the outcome of the polls in the North and East, particularly after the defeat of Tiger guerrillas. The one-time LTTE proxy, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) bagged eight seats in the North, five seats in the East and two from the national list. It contested as the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK). In the districts of Jaffna, Wanni and Batticaloa, it defeated the UPFA. However, their wins totalled only 15.
This was against 22 seats it held in the previous Parliament. Part of the blame has been attributed to the split in the TNA. In Batticaloa, the Mayor Sivageetha Prabhakaran supported the UPFA after the Presidential election boosting the ruling coalition's power base in the area, something the likes of Pillayan and Karuna were unable to do. The UNP also made some fatal mistakes in the area by putting more faith in Muslim candidates and thereby losing the Tamil vote it enjoyed for decades. Yet, the seats the TNA have won are significant in the context of the post conflict era.
It has established its legitimacy, particularly in the absence of the LTTE, in an election where the ruling party has gained dominance. If such a phenomenon is to be put to good use, the party would have to embark on a dialogue with the UPFA not only on issues related to Tamil grievances but also on matters relating to Government's development activity in the North and East. Not doing so would only lead to its isolation, particularly when it has emerged as the single largest Tamil political group to win a mandate from the Tamil people.
President Rajapaksa's next task is to pick his Cabinet of Ministers. Naturally, the country would hope that he doesn't end up merely shuffling the same set of jokers in the pack, or replace one with another. He must take cognizance of the fact that the lower turn-out at the General Election compared to the Presidential election in January means something; that the people were not so enamoured by the MPs or Ministers in the Government. Some have been shown the door, but others have been picked for the lack of choices. That is why the President, in his wisdom, took the chance to hold the Presidential Election first, so that the victory flush could continue to the parliamentary polls.
There is now no excuse either for the President, armed now with a landslide victory to butter MPs with ministerial portfolios.
There is general currency in the public agitation for a slimmer - and fitter Cabinet than the overweight Cabinet that was overbearing on public expenses and a bad example to good governance.
The focus in the coming days will clearly be on two fronts; the formation of the Cabinet, and identifying Opposition MPs who will join the Rajapaksa Government and bolster its strength to the magical two-thirds majority.
While engaging in this exercise, he will, no doubt, ensure the creation of those who are going to be Rajapaksa loyalists; a new guard of the likes of Wimal Weerawansa and Johnston Fernando, young and energetic, who received the full backing of the President at these polls to top their respective district lists; for the next stage of what is increasingly getting consolidated as the Rajapaksa Era in Sri Lankan politics. |
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