The Rajapaksa juggernaut has left Opposition political parties in serious disarray following the 2010 parliamentary elections. Some government politicians too had to face their day of reckoning, including some Ministers who were given their marching orders by the electorate.
This overwhelming endorsement of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the United Peoples Freedom Alliance coalition he leads will of course have to be evaluated in the light of the extraordinarily low voter turnout, of only a little over 50%. The outcome in Kandy and Trincomalee where the final tally is yet to be announced is not likely to change the map very much. As the result now stands, the UPFA has 117, the United National Front 46, the Tamil National Alliance 12 and the Democratic National Alliance (JVP led by (retd.) Gen. Sarath Fonseka 5 seats in the newly constituted Parliament.
The National List seats are still to be allocated. What is clear is that the Opposition has been all but decimated, reduced to a rump in the House, and will no doubt have a hard time making itself heard.
Ranil Wickremesinghe’s UNP-led UNF, the main Opposition in this election, has failed to secure a majority in a single district of the country. The only districts that registered non-UPFA majorities were those where the TNA took the majority, namely Jaffna and Vanni in the Northern Province and Batticaloa in the Eastern Province. The few seats that the UNF won in the North and East were thanks to their coalition partner, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress.
 |
| Opposition leaders,from left-Tissa Attanayake, Mangala Samaraweera, Ranil Wickremesinghe and Karu Jayasuriya address a news conference after the April 8 elections |
With the exception of Vijayakala Maheswaran (wife of the late UNP MP T. Maheswaran) who won the solitary UNF seat in Jaffna, the SLMC’s candidates took the rest - one each in Vanni, Batticaloa and Trinco, and two in Amparai. It’s worth noting that in the parliamentary elections of 2004, the SLMC won the same number of seats respectively in the Eastern districts, while contesting independently. So the UNP can hardly take credit for these wins. (Note that, in contrast, three EPDP candidates who won seats for the UPFA in Jaffna, did so while running on the UPFA ticket, whereas in the Vanni, where they contested independently, they failed to win any seat.)
The UNP debacle brings a number of issues to the fore, relating to electoral politics in Sri Lanka. What does this crushing defeat of the main Opposition party mean - in the light of the importance of having a vigorous Opposition in a parliamentary democracy? What will be its long term repercussions?
The PR epresentation system has drawn a lot of flak in recent times, owing to the staggering levels of thuggery and intimidation witnessed during the campaign period as well as post-election. It is argued that the intra-party violence is caused by having a list of party candidates vying for a limited number of slots, competing not just with the Opposition but amongst themselves as well.
But it is thanks to the PR system that Opposition parties jointly secured even 63 seats. Under a first-past-the-post system, the UNP seat-count in Parliament might arguably have been reduced to single digits. Just as the SLFP was reduced to eight seats in 1977, when the tables were reversed and the UNP won a landslide with 140 seats in the 168-seat legislature. That was before PR was introduced.
There is no denying that the PR system allows for more balanced representation in Parliament.
To address the problem of thuggery, would it not make more sense, instead of throwing out the SYSTEM, to throw out the MISCREANTS - and present a list of more honourable candidates for the hapless voters of this country to choose from? Why not heed the call of women’s groups to allocate a percentage of nominations for women? India went even further recently by passing a Women’s Reservation Bill that mandates 33 per cent of seats in Parliament to be reserved for women.
Another issue that will continue to plague the UNP is its leadership crisis. Jokes that bestow Wickremesinghe with the title of “Permanent Leader of the Opposition,” are beginning to sound monotonous. No wonder the SLFP stalwarts love him so much!
The UNP has fared worse at this election than it did in 2004, in every district except in Jaffna, where it gained a foothold with one seat. In Vanni and Hambantota it retained the same number of seats as in 2004 – one in Vanni, two in Hambantota, but with lower percentages in both districts. Any post mortem of the party’s performance would seem to point to the need for some serious rethinking with regard to the party’s leadership and agenda, if it wants to survive at all.
It appears that the UNP needs to re-connect with constituencies (not exclusively rural) that have been alienated by Wickremesinghe’s mishandling of the ethnic issue, and excessive partiality to the West. The candidate best suited to lead in this task however seems to be pointedly maintaining a low profile. He has diligently done his bit for the campaign, holding his ground in the tough terrain of Hambantota, the Rajapaksas’ home turf.
He has, to his further credit, done so whilst avoiding any crude grandstanding on the strength of being a former President’s son. Sajith Premadasa emerges very much the ‘unsung hero’ of the UNP campaign, if not the election. If his leadership potential is to be realized, he would need to be given the opportunity.
This is not to say that Wickremesinghe should quit altogether.
His name and his reputation for integrity still carry weight with a significant vote base. Also he has asserted himself with authority on issues such as media freedom and women’s rights, where others have been tardy. It is up to the party insiders to figure out the magic formula that retains the input of their seniors and mentors while making room for some new thinking, if they are to save the ‘green’ from fading out entirely from Sri Lanka’s political spectrum. The issue here is not so much that of resuscitating a bankrupt political entity, but of countering the danger of a one-party-dominant polity emerging, consolidating itself and paving the way for a dictatorship.
The re-appearance of mainstream political parties in the North, and their ability to once again command vote bases in all 22 districts of the country may be seen as a positive aspect of this first post-war election. Both SLFP and UNP led governments have always included Tamil and Muslim MPs and cabinet ministers representing significant vote bases.
The western media’s knee-jerk tendency to portray the Sri Lankan polity as being dominated by “Sinhala chauvinists” is in this sense misguided, and has done much damage to the image of the state overseas. Given the choice, Sri Lankan voters have generally shown a preference for the mainstream parties, and rejected the extremist agendas of ultra-nationalists, both Sinhala and Tamil.
The TNA’s heist of 22 seats in the 2004 Parliament may be seen as a distortion, brought about by LTTE’s vote-rigging in favour of their proxies. In that instance the terrorized electorates did not have a real choice. It is in the context of the relevance of maintaining viable choices for voters among mainstream political parties that the UNP debacle becomes a matter of national concern. |
E-mail
