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The highs and lows and an election of many firsts
View(s):By Chandani Kirinde
The September 21 election was one for history books vis a vis Sri Lanka presidential election for several reasons but mainly for going to a second preference count, something that has not happened since the first election to elect a president was held in 1982.
In the lead up to the poll, Election Department officials anticipating that no candidate would secure 50%+ 1 to win the election in the first count urged voters to mark a second preference.
They were proven right by late afternoon on September 22 when it became clear that no candidate would cross the 50% mark forcing EC officials to announce a second preferences count.
Brisk voting in Gampaha. Pic by Eshan Fernando
The second count barely altered the first count results with less than 400,000 preference votes marked for the two leading candidates, National People ‘s Power (NPP)’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Samgi Jana Balawegaya’s (SJB’)s Sajith Premadasa.
Mr. Dissanayake secured 5,634,915 (42.31 %) of the votes in the first count and added 105,264 to this tally in the preference count while Mr. Premadasa obtained 4,363,035 (32.76 %) of the total votes polled and added 273,131 to the final count.
Election monitoring group PAFFREL Executive Director Rohana Hettiarachchie said that by its very nature canvassing for preference votes by any candidate contesting for the presidency defeats the purpose. “How can any candidate say vote for me first and then cast the second vote for my opponent? This is why people don’t vote for a second candidate,” Mr. Hettiarachchie said.
He added that the truly democratic thing to do is have a run-off election between the first two candidates as happens in some countries but it’s an expensive exercise,” he said.
For the new president and his party, the NPP, the results saw a major change in fortune. In the 2019 presidential election, Mr. Dissanayake secured only 3.16% of the votes but this increased to nearly 43% this year.
Political analyst and senior journalist Kusal Perera said that a majority of the 6.9 million people who voted for Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2019 voted for the NPP candidate this time while the rest went to Mr. Premadasa and some to independent candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe.
“It was the Sinhala south that voted for Mr.Dissanayake giving him 43 % of the vote. The past two decades have seen the emergence of a new rich Sinhala middle class, largely vernacular, that has helped give the JVP-led NPP a new look. This is clear from the appointments that the new president has made so far,” Mr.Perera said.
He said that the voters were mobilised in support of the NPP candidate and away from the SLPP by academics, traders and other influential persons in this segment of the population.
For Mr. Premadasa, his second attempt to win the presidency was disappointing. In comparison to the votes he obtained in the 2019 presidential election where he came second after the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa, he lost over 1.2 million votes.
In 2019, Mr. Premadasa contested as the candidate of the New Democratic Front (NDF) with the backing of the United National Party (UNP) and obtained 41.99 % (5,564,239) of the total votes polled but this dropped to 32.76 % (4,363,035) this year.
However, he won the majority of the votes in the Jaffna and Vanni electoral districts as well as the Eastern districts of Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Digamadulla with the backing of a section of the main Tamil political party the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK).
For former president Ranil Wickremesinghe who obtained 17.27% ( 2,299,767) votes contesting as an independent candidate, it was a big improvement from the 2.1% of the vote the UNP led by him obtained in the 2020 general election. Some analysts say that the around 1.2 million votes that Mr. Premadasa lost in 2024 went to Mr. Wickremesinghe.
As steep as the rise of Mr. Dissanayake was the fall of Namal Rajapaksa, the heir of the Rajapaksa political dynasty. His paternal uncle Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the SLPP candidate in 2019 obtained 52.25 % (6,924,255) votes but Namal Rajapaksa vote count dropped to 2.57 % (342,781) votes in the September 21 poll.
Ariyanethiran Pakkiyaselvam, the Tamil independent candidate who was backed by several ITAK seniors obtained 226,343 (1.70%) of the votes.
Entrepreneur turned politician Dilith Jayaweera who contested as the candidate of the Communist Party of Sri Lanka secured 122,396 votes (0.92 %) and came sixth among the 39 candidates who contested.
Of the total number of registered voters numbering 17,140,354, 79.46 % or 13,619,916 cast their vote. The number of rejected votes was 300,300 (2.2 %).
Even though there was an increase in the number of registered voters by over 1.1 million in 2024 as compared to 2019, the increase in the number of people cast their votes this year as compared to 2019 was around 230,000.
Mr.Hettiarachchie of PAFFREL said the drop in the number of people who voted was due to migration of a large number of registered voters in the past two years as well as many others who remain in the country but are unable to take time off to vote due to professional and other obligations.
“Though statistically the percent who voted is around 79%, it would’ve been more if the large number who remain registered voters were residing in the country,” he said.
He added that though there is a drop in the percentage of who voted this year, Sri Lanka remains the country with the largest turnout on Election Day among the countries in the region.
“People’s faith in the electoral system remains high,” he said.
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