By Vishvanath
Nominations for next month’s parliamentary election closed today (Oct. 11), and all political parties that participated in last month’s parliamentary polls have had to overcome campaign fatigue and be up and running again, with time fast running out. This is an unnervingly tedious task.
Some political parties such as Wimal Weerawansa’s National Freedom Front have opted out of the race for obvious reasons; their chances of securing at least a single seat are very remote. Their leader may have thought it would be far more honorable to skip the contest than to suffer a humiliating defeat.Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, former President Maithripala Sirisena and former Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena are among the senior politicians who have decided against contesting next month’s parliamentary election.
The NPP is in overdrive to win the upcoming general election and gain control of the parliament. Stakes are extremely high for it in the 14 Nov. contest. When the President and the Prime Minister happen to represent two different political parties, the latter becomes more powerful than the former. Given Sri Lanka’s political culture, where cooperation and coexistence are virtually nonexistent, there will be clashes between the President and the Prime Minister if the NPP fails to win the parliamentary election.
The UNP-led UNF government (2001-2004) became almost dysfunctional with President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who headed the SLFP-led People’s Alliance and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, elected from the UNP-led UNF, being at daggers drawn. A similar fate befell the UNP-led Yahapalana government (2015-2019) owing to clashes between President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Such a situation can come about even when both the President and the Prime Minister are elected from the same political party but the former is not the party leader. There was a cold war between President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and the SLPP parliamentary group controlled by his sibling Basil Rajapaksa, the founder of the SLPP, who pursued his own agenda. That was why the SLPP dissident MPs like Wimal Weerawansa demanded that Gotabaya be made the SLPP leader. Their demand went unheeded.
The NPP has cause for concern despite its win in the presidential race. It received only 42% of the total number of valid votes, and this works out to about 32% of the registered voters in the country. All previous Presidents obtained more than 50% of the valid votes. Therefore, the NPP will have to try harder to form a majority government.
The possibility of the next parliament being hung cannot be ruled out, given the fact that not all NPP candidates in the parliamentary contest have the same public appeal as President Dissanayake. Many of them are JVP members and not newcomers representing the other constituents of the NPP. At a parliamentary election, various factors influence the voter’s decision, and they include patronage, caste, kinship, accessibility and friendship. So, the upcoming electoral contest will not be a walk in the park for the NPP.
Electoral difficulties will be the least of the NPP’s problems. It will have to honor its key election promises. It won the presidential election by raising the people’s expectations, and unless it lives up to them, it will experience difficulties on the political front like the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government.
2025 will be an election year. The much-delayed local government and Provincial Council elections are slated for next year, and if the NPP is to retain its popularity and keep the Opposition at bay, it will have to make good on its election pledges. The anti-incumbency factor, which takes its toll on governments, is like the process of ageing, which commences at one’s birth. It has already begun to affect the NPP government, as evident from emerging social media trends.
If the NPP secures control of the parliament, the first task it will have to accomplish will be presenting the Budget 2025, which will be its moment of truth. It is left with two options; it can prepare a budget within the parameters stipulated by the IMF, or disregard them and run the risk of losing IMF assistance, which means much more than the Extended Fund Facility.
The next government will have to ensure that the IMF conditions are met, the main being that the country’s debt be brought down from 128% of GDP to 95% of GDP; the money supply be reduced from 34% to 4.5% and foreign debt servicing cost be slashed from 9.6% to 4.5%. This, a future NPP administration will have to do while fulfilling its election promises, such as biannual pay hikes, subsidies for state employees, allocation of more funds for education, health care, social welfare, etc., slash fuel prices and, above all, grant substantial tax reductions. The fulfilment of these promises will constitute a huge drain on the state revenue, and it will be a gargantuan task for the new government to bridge the revenue shortfall without resorting to money printing, which the new Central Bank Act does not provide for, and the IMF will not permit.
The NPP government has already chosen to bite the bullet and abide by the IMF-prescribed Debt Sustainable Analysis (DSA), which Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in the run-up to last month’s presidential election, promised to renegotiate and amend. It has had to come to terms with stark economic reality. It has to do as the IMF says if it is to avert another economic disaster. IMF assistance is a prerequisite for regaining access to the global capital market and attracting foreign investment. Most of all, Sri Lanka will have to complete the process of external debt restructuring expeditiously or find itself in a situation where it will have to pay back its external debt under the conditions which were effective when it declared a soft default.
The Opposition is in disarray, struggling to summon its strength to regain lost ground, but the situation is far from rosyfor the NPP. The dates for the third IMF review have not been set. The period to be reviewed is from January to June 2024, during which all IMF conditions were met, and the reason for the delay in the announcement of the aforesaid dates has been attributed to a trust deficit; the IMF is said to be buying time to assess the new government’s commitment to its bailout programme. The NPP has to prepare itself for a bumpy ride ahead.
