Editorial

11th April 1999

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Post-poll position

The government's performance last week in the Provincial Council elections enabled President Kumaratunga and her immediate followers to salvage the loss of face suffered at the Wayamba polls.

Wayamba was an unmitigated disaster, but, relative to the epic tragedy that took place in the North Western province, last week's election was fairly clean.

But this does not mean that it was squeaky clean, or without incident.

With the retrospective analysis trickling down the grapevine, it appears that there was election rigging this time around as well. But, the rigging this time seems to have been more clinically carried out. It was so expertly done in some electorates, that it was just sufficient to tilt the balance.

Taken on the whole, most things didn't hit the nadir that they hit at the last poll. The public, for instance, was able to repose fresh confidence in some institutions which had been almost written off after the Wayamba contretemps.

The police, for example, seemed to regain its lost prestige. The performance of the police at last week's poll goes to show that if the government is keen on holding a free and fair poll, the police can still rise to the occasion. So it appears all is not lost in the state of Sri Lanka, though many things may still be rotten in this, our paradise enclave. The illegitimate victory of the People's Alliance at the Wayamba polls had the effect of making people lose faith and hope they had reposed in the democratic process. Any sanguine hopes they had about the administration of public institutions in the country were dashed to smithereens due to Wayamba polls and related events. With so much egg on its face after the Wayamba fiasco, an embarrassed government was seen to be locked in a struggle to redraw its image. The result seems to have come out in quite an uncanny recipe.

Hung councils, political stalemates and BJP style minority governments could all be outcomes that would follow from last week's results of the Western, Uva, Central, and Sabaragmuwa provincial elections. The North Central Province alone has returned a clear winner from the poll stakes.

What is interesting is how all this will impinge on the next major polls that the nation will face, which, after the Southern Provincial elelctions, would be the presidential or the parliamentary elections.

The government could decide either way, as these more important polls approach. Either the government could opt for a Wayamba style "all out clout'', where the prevailing doctrine would be to leave no room for also-rans and runners-up. Or the president and her party can go for the more sober option which would be to mimic last week's process of a relatively free poll, with however, the inevitable repercussions of a grey result. Such a result would create ambiguous situations such as hung parliaments and minority governments.

How the government chooses to work out its options will be seen in the future. For now, all that can be said is that the provincial councils elected last week will do no good for the ordinary people of this country. It's a safe bet that elected provincial councillors will be busy spending their time in the next six years jockeying for positions and office, eyeing the perks, Pajero's and phones that come with the turf, while wasting money the exchequer certainly cannot afford.

We said this last week, before the polls, and we say it now. This week's polls amounted to a tactical political exercise which indicated the kind of mass support the various political parties enjoyed. Apart from this political litmus test that the parties benefited from, there was nothing else tangible that accrued to the people at this concluded elections. But yet, it's a conveniently forgotten fact that the cost rose to the tune of millions of rupees for this dubious exercise. For a country that is classified as poor and developing, that's surely not a small piece of cake?

Political Column

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