By Vishvanath

Speculation was rife in political circles that the government would hold the Provincial Council (PC)
elections before in early April 2026, but they are likely to be further delayed. Foreign Minister Vijitha
Herath, addressing the parliament on Thursday, said the PC polls would be held only after the
completion of the ongoing delimitation process, which is likely to drag on. The new electoral system has
necessitated delimitation of electorates and governments have used that as an excuse for delaying the
PC polls since 2017. The incumbent administration has failed to be different.  
The Election Commission (EC) has said that it will take at least one year to complete a fresh
delimitation process, which should therefore commence forthwith. EC Chairperson R. M. A. L.
Rathnayake is reported to have said that a delimitation report submitted previously did not pass muster
with the parliament, and therefore the delimitation process has to get underway afresh, or the PC polls
will have to be held under the Proportional Representation (PR) system.
 
The parliament can legislate for the PC polls to be held under the PR system as in the past if it
does not want the PCs to remain unelected any further. That is the best way to ensure that the PC polls
can be held without further delay. Strangely, no party has called for such action.  
The NPP government would have held the PC polls immediately after the local government
elections, which were conducted last May, if it had been confident that its winning streak was intact.
The outcome of the mini polls indicated a sharp drop in the NPP’s national vote share, and the
government could not even seize control of some of the councils where it had secured pluralities. This
may be the real reason why the government is keen to have the PC polls delayed further presumably in
the hope that its electoral prospects will improve. Hope is said to spring eternal. But will the
government be able to do anything big that will help it arrest the decline in its vote share, and win
another election impressively. The NPP does not have a solid vote base and is dependent on swing votes
to win elections. Gone are the days when political parties had sizeable traditional vote bases, which
enabled them to maintain their electoral performance at a certain level even if they could not win.
Time was when governments were free to try to shore up their approval ratings by providing relief
to the public through national budgets even at the expense of the economy. They showered pay hikes

on state employees, employed tens of thousands of their supporters in the public sector, increased poor
relief allowances and reduced taxes and tariffs. These populist measures also contributed to the
country’s bankruptcy in 2022. However, the NPP government won’t be able to go to the same extent as
its predecessors in using the upcoming budget to garner favor with the electorate by granting economic
relief; the IMF is keeping a watchful eye on the budgetary process and won’t allow anything that will
have an adverse impact on economic recovery. The government finds itself in an economic straitjacket.
So, the biggest challenge for the NPP will be recovering lost ground on the political front before the next
PC elections.
The government has had to carry out economic reforms in keeping with IMF loan conditions. It
will have to reduce state expenditure drastically and divest some public enterprises urgently. Its efforts
to restructure the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) has run into stiff resistance from a trade union
collective, which is threatening a strike as the last resort. The IMF has reportedly expressed concern
over the delay in CEB restructuring. An electricity tariff hike is expected to be announced soon. The
government is also under pressure from the World Bank to downsize the state service, which successive
governments have used to provide jobs to their supporters. The NPP administration has decided to
recruit 60,000 workers into the state sector, and how the IMF and the World Bank will react to this
move remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa has declared that some of the SJB MPs will resign
from the parliament to contest the next PC polls. SJB MP Ajith C. Perera told the media on Sunday that
at least four SJB MPs would contest the PC polls as chief ministerial candidates. The SJB has thus sought
to have the public believe that it is so confident of turning the tables on the ruling NPP at the provincial
level that its MPs are ready to resign and enter the provincial election fray. The SJB and the UNP have
expressed willingness to form a common front. If their efforts reach fruition, they will be able to gain a
lot of political traction and win back a lot of their former disgruntled supporters.
One may recall that a breakthrough in the Opposition’s campaign against the mighty Mahinda
Rajapaksa government with a two-thirds majority came in 2014, with a rapprochement between UNP
leaders Ranil Wickremesinghe and his deputy Sajith Premadasa in the run-up to the Uva Provincial
Council election in that year. The duo appeared together holding hands on the UNP stage. Having
resigned from the parliament, Harin Fernando ran for Uva Chief Minister. The UPFA, which had under
President Rajapaksa’s leadership polled a staggering 418,906 votes (72.39%) and secured as many as 25
seats in the 2009 PC polls in Uva, was left with only 349,906 votes (51.25%) and 19 seats in the
September 2014 PC election. The UNP, which had obtained only 7 seats in the previous council, secured
13 seats; its votes increased from 129,144 (22.32%) in 2009 to 274,773 (40.24%) in 2014. The number of
the JVP’s seats also increased from one to two. The outcome of that election emboldened the UNP-led
UNF to crank up its anti-government campaign and defeat President Rajapaksa in the 2015 presidential
race by engineering mass crossovers from the UPFA and fielding a common Opposition candidate,
Mathripala Sirisena. The SJB and the UNP seem to be planning something similar. 
However, the situation is different today. The Rajapaksa government was very unpopular towards
the end of 2014. It was facing many allegations of corruption and abuse of power, and the SLFP old
guard was disgruntled, and the people were resentful. The NPP arguably remains the most popular party
at present. However, anything is possible in politics. If the SJB and the UNP succeed in overcoming their
differences and forming an electoral alliance by any chance, they may be able to improve their electoral
performance significantly. The first casualty of such a coming together will be the SLPP, which is

promoting itself as the only alternative to the NPP. Such an alliance is bound to change the dynamics of
the PC polls drastically.
Governments cannot win elections by postponing them, for the so-called anti-incumbent factor
does not go away, and public anger continues to well up. What befell the SLFP-led United Front
government (1970-77), the Yahapalana government (2015-19) and the SLPP administration (2019-2024)
may serve as an example.