By Vishvanath
Sri Lanka has had to get ready for a general election even before the dust has settled on the political front after a fiercely contested presidential election. The parliamentary election has been slated for Nov. 14, 2024. Political leaders who contested the Sept. 21 presidential election will have to overcome fatigue and be up and running soon.
The political party that wins the presidency has a better chance of outperforming others in a parliamentary election that follows a presidential contest, but there is no guarantee that it will be able to form a majority government on its own. President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga won a second term in December 1999, but could not obtain a working majority in the parliament at the subsequent general election held in October 2000. Kumaratunga’s weak government fell in 2001, when the UNP captured power in the parliament.
President Sirisena won the presidency in November 2019, but the UNP-led UNF, which ensured his election, could not obtain an absolute majority in the parliament in the general election that followed in August 2020. On both occasions, the general elections were held seven to ten months later. But the NPP is going to face a parliamentary election in less than two months. In fact, it was left with no alternative but to dissolve the parliament because it had only three members in it. It is facing the next election while its victory in the presidential contest is still fresh.
The upcoming general election will not be a cake walk for the NPP. It has now been revealed that the NPP’s electoral strength was somewhat exaggerated before the presidential election. The NPP kept on claiming that it would be able to obtain more than 70% of the total number of valid votes, and its candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake would be able to win hands down. But he could obtain only 42% of the votes. What basically enabled him to win was a split in the anti-NPP vote; SJB candidate Premadasa and President Wickremesinghe polled, between them, more votes than Dissanayake, who obtained 5,634,915 votes (42.31%). Premadasa received 4,363,035 (32.76%) and Wickremesinghe 2,299,767 (17.27%). After the preferential vote count, Dissanayake’s votes increased to 5,740,16 and Premadasa’s to 4,530,902. Wickremesinghe was among the contestants who were eliminated from the race at that stage.
The Tamil and Muslim votes in the North and the East are of crucial importance to candidates contesting presidential elections, but it has now been proved for a third time that a candidate can win the presidency even without those votes if there is a huge groundswell of support for him or her in the other parts of the country.
In Sri Lanka’s first ever presidential election (1982), the then President J. R. Jayewardene lost badly in the Northern Province to both SLFP candidate Hector Kobbekaduwa and All Ceylon Tamil Congress candidate Kumar Ponnambalam. However, he bagged most of the electorates in the Eastern Province and other parts of the country to win a second term. Thereafter, voter turnout remained extremely low in all elections in the North and the East due to the war, and it was only after the defeat of the LTTE in 2009 that the voter participation increased there to the extent of influencing the outcomes of national elections.
In 2010, the Tamil and Muslim political parties delivered their block votes to New Democratic Front candidate and former war-winning Army Commander Sarath Fonseka, in the North and the East as well as in the central hills. But President Rajapaksa, who sought a second term, fared extremely well in other parts of the country, and won the election. He obtained 6,015,934 votes (57.88%) as opposed to Fonseka’s 4,173,185 votes (40.15%) nationwide.
But in 2015, the Tamil and Muslim votes swung for New Democratic Party candidate Maithripala Sirisena enabling him to win the presidency against President Rajapaksa much to the surprise of many. Sirisena obtained 6,217,162 votes (51.28%) and Rajapaksa 5,768,090 votes (47.58%).
In the 2019 presidential race, the Tamil and Muslim political parties backed New Democratic Front candidate Sajith Premadasa, who won in the North and the East impressively but lost the race; SLPP candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa secured the presidency by polling 6,924,255 votes (52.25%). Premadasa received 5,564,239 votes (41.99%). Gotabaya, like his elder brother, Mahinda, proved that it was possible to win a presidential election without minority votes.
At the recently concluded presidential election, NPP presidential candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake won the presidency without the backing of the minority parties, who threw their weight behind SJB candidate Premadasa again. Dissanayake could not win the presidency straightaway and a preferential vote count had to be taken to choose the winner for the first time. However, the fact remains that he managed to obtain huge majorities in other parts of the country and they offset Premadasa’s lead in the North and the East and the Central hills besides some other areas in Kandy and Colombo.
At the upcoming general election, the SJB is not likely to get most of the votes its leader Premadasa polled in the North and the East in the presidential election with the help of the ITAK, the main constituent of the TNA. They will go to the ITAK and other TNA constituents. However, the SJB will be able to retain the Muslim votes if the SLMC and other Muslim parties continue to be its allies. It will also be able to dominate the central hills if it succeeds in retaining the backing of its up-country partners.
Frantic efforts are being made to bring the SJB and the UNP together in view of the Nov. 14 general election. Former President Wickremesinghe has said he will neither contest the next general election nor enter the parliament via the National List, but he has not given up the UNP leadership!
The SJB and the UNP seem to have realized how disadvantageous a split in the anti-NPP vote is to both of them. But there is the possibility of the two parties failing to achieve the desired result even if they join forces. If they come together, they may even alienate some of their voters. The UNP has already decided to contest future elections under its own party symbol, the Elephant, and it is not likely that the SJB will agree to give up its symbol, the Telephone, which has now become a brand. The two parties have too many differences to be ironed out in less than a few weeks for an electoral alliance to be forged. As things stand, the SJB and the UNP are not likely to close ranks, but anything is possible in politics, where nothing is more certain than the unexpected.
