By Vishvanth
The political party that wins a presidential election usually goes on to win parliamentary polls held soon afterwards. Hence the winners of the presidency are in a mighty hurry to face general elections while their victory is still fresh and the so-called anti-incumbency factor sets in.
Why Anura Kumara Dissanayake dissolved the parliament immediately after being sworn in as the President is understandable. But politics is full of surprises, and anything can happen in electoral contests as in Snakes and Ladders.
In December 1999, President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga won a second term, but her party, the SLFP-led People’s Alliance could not form a stable government after winning the general election that followed in October 2000. Her administration collapsed due to mass crossovers the following year, when the UNP-led UNF formed a government with the help of some of its allies. Ranil Wickremesinghe became the Prime Minister.
Maithripala Sirisena became the President in January 2015 with the help of the UNP, but the UNP-led UNF could not win a majority of seats in the general election held in August 2015. It could obtain only 106 seats in the 225-member Parliament as opposed to the SLFP-led UPFA’s 95. In fact, the UNF would not have been able to win the election if President Sirisena had not queered the pitch for former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who contested as the UPFA’s prime ministerial candidate. President Sirisena knew that Mahinda would become more powerful than he in case of becoming the Prime Minister.
Unless President Dissanayake manages to consolidate his power by forming a majority government, he will be in serious trouble. Extremely powerful as the executive presidency may be as an institution, the Prime Minister becomes more powerful than the President, to all intents and purposes, when he/she and the President happen to represent two different political parties. The 21st Amendment does not allow the President to dissolve the parliament before the expiration of two and a half years of its term.
We saw the Prime Minister undermining the President from 2001 to 2004, when President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga had the UNP-led UNF, which won a parliamentary majority in the 2001 snap general election clashing with her. Their differences came to a head and President Kumaratunga took over all key ministries, especially Defence, dissolved the parliament and won the 2004 parliamentary election.
A similar situation occurred after President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe fell out in 2018. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution debarred President Sirisena from dissolving the parliament arbitrarily, and his attempt to sack Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and the UNP-led Yahapalana government failed. Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was appointed the Prime Minister, had to resign. President Sirisena had to bite the bullet and reinstate the UNF government with Wickremesinghe as the Prime Minister.
In 1982, President J. R. Jayewardene won a second term, but fearing that he would lose his five-sixths parliamentary majority obtained in the 1977 under the first-past-the-post system, if he faced a general election under the proportional representation (PR) system, he did away with the parliamentary polls due in that year. Instead, he held a heavily-rigged referendum to ask the public whether they wanted a general election. President Jayewardene’s party, the UNP, resorted to large-scale rigging and violence and won the referendum. The UNP won the 1989 general election in a similar manner amidst JVP violence and counterterror, after the election of its leader Ranasinghe Premadasa as the President.
Dissanayake knows that his victory in the presidential race will not be complete unless his party, the NPP, wins the upcoming parliamentary election. He is using every trick in the book to rally more popular support and the NPP is resorting to the tactics other political parties used after winning presidential elections, some of them being enhancing subsidies, exhibiting vehicles returned by outgoing government politicians and their aides and appointing probe committees, bringing down fuel prices and adopting austerity measures in a bid to be seen to be sharing in the woes of the public.
The NPP has its share of political and electoral worries, the main being that it failed to poll more than 50% of the valid votes in the recently concluded presidential election. It got only 42% of the votes, and the SJB and the UNP polled more than 50% of the votes between them. The fact that the NPP failed to achieve its much-advertised target in the presidential contest is likely to be held against it during the parliamentary election campaigns to be launched soon.
Frantic efforts are underway to bring the UNP and the SJB together for the upcoming general election to prevent a split in the anti-NPP vote. If the two parties forge a common front, they may be able to improve their electoral prospects significantly. But it will be extremely difficult to bring about a rapprochement between the SJB and the UNP together. The SJB has said former President Ranil Wickremesinghe is trying to divide the SJB in a bid to secure a considerable number of seats in the next parliament. He has reportedly said he will not contest the next general election or enter the parliament via the National List, but politicians’ pledges are like the pie crust; they are made to be broken. Wickremesinghe said something similar after the UNP’s humiliating defeat in the 2020 general election, but he re-entered the parliament as a National List MP. A political party can bring in virtually anyone as an MP by engineering National List vacancies, and if the UNP wins a National List slot or more, it will be able to appoint Wickremesinghe an MP. This, the SJB thinks, is Wickremesinghe’s strategy.
So, it is likely that the SJB and the UNP will contest the forthcoming general election separately under the Telephone and Gas Cylinder symbols, respectively.
The possibility of the next parliament being hung cannot be ruled out although the NPP claims that it is striving for a two-thirds majority. The NPP’s most popular candidate, Dissanayake, could not obtain 50% of the valid votes in the presidential race and therefore it is doubtful whether the lesser ones contesting the upcoming general election will be able to secure 50% of the seats in the next parliament. Under the PR system, it is not possible for a political party to form a majority government unless it rides a massive wave of popular support. The NPP succeeded in increasing its votes substantially in the presidential race, but the wave it rode was not as huge as it was thought to be.
The PR system is favorable to smaller parties. In the 2020 general election, 10 smaller parties won 12 seats and the votes they obtained only ranged from 34,428 to 67,766. The EPDP and AITC secured two seats each by polling 61,464 votes (0.53%) and 67,766 votes (0.58%), respectively. Even the SLMC, which polled a mere 34,428 (0.38%) by going it alone in some areas, won a seat. The UNP, which polled 249,435 (2.15%) could win only a single National List seat. The NPP, however, may be able to increase its seats if it can retain its votes polled at the recently concluded presidential election and win the district-based bonus seats.
The NPP has cleared one hurdle, a big one at that, but the next one that is the parliamentary contest will be even more formidable as its candidates to be fielded will not be as popular or markable as President Dissanayake. There’s the rub. Dissanayake must be hoping and praying that his political rivals will not be able to unite and/or regroup soon. The outcome of the 21 Sept., presidential election has left the winner and the losers equally desperate.
