Cover Story
By Kassapa
Nominations for the November 14 general election closed this week but the results of the poll are now a foregone conclusion. The Jathika Jana Balavegaya (JJB) will emerge as the single largest party in the next Parliament. The only question is whether it will get a comfortable working majority and if so, how many seats would it secure.
Projections based on the presidential election, extrapolated into district level calculations using the proportional representation (PR) system, has the JJB at 106 seats. However, electoral politics does not work on mathematics alone. There are many variables at play and current indications are that the JJB will over-reach the 113 seats needed for a working majority comfortably.
There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the ‘domino’ effect of a presidential election, where previously undecided voters and those with no strong party affiliations now decide to ‘go with the winner’. This has been a noticeable trend in most general elections in Sri Lanka with a couple of exceptions in 2000 and 2015.
Secondly, there is the ‘fear psychosis’ that was built up during the presidential election by other major political parties. They suggested that if the JJB wins, there would be anarchy, politically motivated violence and the economy will be on the verge of collapse. Several weeks after President Anura Kumara Dissanayake took office, nothing of that sort has happened. The presidential poll was the most peaceful ever. So, voters who shied away from the JJB previously will now vote for them.
Thirdly, there is what could be described as the ‘Ranil phenomenon’. Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe polled nearly 2.3 million votes or 17 per cent of the vote. This exceeded many expectations. A sizeable proportion of that vote was not a vote for his party, the United National Party (UNP) or his independent group but a personal vote based on his handling of the economic crisis. With Wickremesinghe not contesting the general election, this segment of the vote will go elsewhere and some of it to the JJB.
The fourth- and most important- factor that will be to the advantage of the JJB is the plight of all other major political parties, the UNP, the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).
The collapse of talks between the UNP and the SJB to form an alliance for the general election means they are now contesting separately. Under the PR system, the right-of-centre vote base will now be split. The SJB will still probably get a lion’s share of that vote but the numbers the SJB and the UNP polled during the presidential election are such that they don’t hold much promise for either party.
The fate of the SLPP is worse. Now ridiculed as the ‘2.5 per cent’ party, they will struggle to gain any kind of representation. This is best illustrated in one statistic: Namal Rajapakse polled just 6 per cent of the vote in the Hambantota district, the home base of the Rajapaksas. Rajapaksa will be lucky to be in the next Parliament and that may well be as a National List MP.
Spare a thought for former ministers and assorted others who were elected from the SLPP but decided to endorse Wickremesinghe at the presidential election. They are now party-less, the SLPP having closed the infamous ‘saloon door’ on them for the crime of daring to defy the Rajapaksa edict and not support Namal Rajapaksa.
This group, which will include many high-profile Cabinet ministers of the previous government, will now contest in alliance with UNP candidates, competitors with whom they have locked horns and engaged in bitter rivalry for decades. These nomination lists will make interesting reading but seeing those names on the same nomination list itself may put-off many a voter.
The less said about the SLFP, the better. Party members themselves may not know which faction they belong to. Matters have become so farcical that yet another group of SLFP members held a media briefing recently to say they will be supporting JJB candidates. The JJB, of course, never solicited that support and will not accommodate this group on their platforms but this faction claims it will work to endorse the JJB, nevertheless!
Trying to gain advantage from all this chaos is Dilith Jayaweera and his Maubima Janatha Pakshaya (MJP). Jayaweera polled 122,000 votes or less than one per cent at the presidential election. Now he has attracted a motely crowd- Wimal Weerawansa, Udaya Gammanpila, Channa Jayasumana, Dilum Amunugama, Roshan Ranasinghe and Daham Sirisena- to contest under the MJP banner for the general election.
Looking at the credentials of most of these individuals, not to mention the cowardly and uncouth remarks Jayaweera himself made about Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, this unholy alliance aims to appeal to that segment of voters who are easily swayed by communalist, ultra-nationalist and blatantly racist sentiments. The country will save much blood, sweat and tears if such types are kept out of the legislature.
With such disorganisation and turmoil in the opposition ranks, one must ask what the opposition would look like after the election. The SJB may still be the single largest party in the opposition, albeit with a lesser tally of seats than it secured at the 2020 general election. Sajith Premadasa may still become the Leader of the Opposition. However, with such a fragmented array of parties in the opposition benches, whether it can function as an effective force, as an alternative government, will be debatable.
It is not only for the sake of the public that a country needs an effective, vociferous and principled opposition. It is for the sake of the government too, especially when that government consists of a party and politicians who have never governed before. They will need that scrutiny from an alert and diligent opposition to keep them on the straight and narrow and to hold them to account.
That will depend not only on how many MPs the opposition will have after November 14 but also on who they are. This is where the collective opposition is likely to fall short, when the results trickle in on the early hours of November 15.
