By Vishvanath
JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva, giving a press conference over the weekend, declared the NPP’s Colombo mayoral candidate—Vraie Cally Balthazaar, who is a National Executive Committee member of the NPP. His announcement came as no surprise, for she was to run for Mayor from the NPP in 2023, when the local government (LG) polls were postponed indefinitely. She unsuccessfully contested the Nov. 2024 general election. The NPP fielded a large number of its LG politicians in last year’s parliamentary polls, and more than 40 of them were returned thanks to a mammoth wave of popular support the NPP rode. Deputy Minister of Public Security Sunil Watagala is prominent among them.
One would have expected the announcement of Balthazaar’s candidacy to come from NPP General Secretary Dr. Nihal Abeysinghe, and not JVP General Secretary. Now that the NPP is ensconced in power, its main constituent, the JVP, is asserting itself in what is described in political circles as a cold war between the liberal NPP and the Marxist JVP in the ruling coalition. Pubudu Jagoda, the Education Secretary of the Frontline Socialist Party, a JVP offshoot, has famously called the NPP a ‘patchwork of ideological differences’ owing to the competing ideologies in the government. Speaking in the parliament on Monday (March 10), SJB MP Rohini Kaviratne demanded to know whether the Education Ministry was run by Prime Minister and Education Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, who is a non-JVP member of the NPP or Deputy Minister Mahinda Jayasinghe, who is a JVP Central Committee member. She sought to highlight the ideological differences between the NPP and the JVP, which, the Opposition says, has appointed its full-timers to every ministry to ensure that its interests take precedence over those of the NPP alliance. Coalitions tend to weaken their main constituents and disintegrate, as evident from the experience of the former two main political parties—the SLFP and the UNP—which lost their electoral vitality owing to coalition politics. The JVP’s position is even more vulnerable.
The SLPP-led Sri Lanka Nidahas Podujana Sandanaya coalition won elections mainly because of the SLPP’s electoral strength. The same holds true for the UNP in the United National Front (UNF) alliance, which won the 2001 and 2015 general elections. The SJB is also the main constituent of a coalition—the Samagi Bala Sandanaya—but it is so dominant and other constituents are so dependent on it electorally that only a few people are aware of the official name of the coalition. But the general consensus is that the JVP would not have been able to win elections under its own steam, and the credit for its electoral victories should go to the NPP, whose non-JVP members were instrumental in mustering support of the floating voters who had previously backed the SLPP and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to win last year’s elections.
Aside from the internal dynamics of the NPP, Tilvin made an interesting observation when he announced Balthazaar’s mayoral candidacy. He said the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC), was the crown jewel of the LG system, and it was the dream of every political party to secure its control. He expressed confidence that the NPP would be able to bag the premier local government institution. He seems to think that since the NPP has won the presidency and obtained a supermajority in the parliament, it will be able to win the CMC hands down. But the CMC is a different kettle of fish. It has remained a UNP bastion even during powerful governments formed by other political parties. The SLPP won the 2018 LG elections handsomely, but lost the CMC, which the UNP secured by obtaining 131,353 votes (46%) and 60 seats although its overall performance was poor countrywide; it had to settle for 3,612,259 votes (32.63%) and 34 councils with 2,385 members. The SLPP polled only 60,087 votes (21%) in Colombo city and obtained 23 CMC seats. The UNP’s win in Colombo took the gloss off the SLPP’s victory in the LG polls to a considerable extent. The JVP, which polled 14,234 votes (4.99%) in Colombo had six members in the CMC.
Whether the UNP, which is debilitated due to last year’s years electoral defeats and internal problems, will be able to poll enough votes to regain control of the CMC remains to be seen. The SJB has been able to eat into the UNP’s vote base in the Colombo city considerably, but the biggest challenge before it is to regain the support of the Colombo voters, who had gravitated towards the NPP out of frustration. In last year’s general election, the NPP swept the polls in the Colombo District, winning even the Colombo Central electorate, the stronghold of SJB leader Sajith Premadasa. The NPP polled 39,160 votes (51.47%) in Colombo Central as opposed to the SJB’s 27,347 (35.94%). It also won all the electorates in the Colombo District as it did in most other areas. Interestingly, the JVP could not win a single council in the 2018 LG election; it polled 693, 875 votes (6.27%) and secured 431 seats nationwide. In 2024, after its victory in the presidential election, it won the Elpitiya Pradeshiya Sabha, where it obtained 17,295 votes (47.64%) and secured 15 out of 30 seats.
Who will be the SJB’s mayoral candidate? SJB General Secretary Ranjith Madduma Bandara has gone on record as saying that an announcement to that effect will be made at the right time. In 2023, the SJB considered Mujibur Rahman, who was an MP then, as its best bet for the topmost post in the CMC. Rahman resigned from the parliament to run for Colombo mayor, only to fall between two stools. The then President Ranil Wickremesinghe postponed the LG polls indefinitely, claiming he could not allocate funds for local elections because he had to prioritize meeting the basic needs of the public over elections. Rahman, however, managed to re-enter the parliament as a National List MPs and was re-elected in last year’s general election. The LG polls to be held next month were first postponed in 2022 under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s watch. It was thanks to a Supreme Court intervention that the country is going to the polls to elect local councils countrywide.
If Rahman does not take up that challenge again in Colombo, that will be seen as a sign that he is not sure of the SJB’s victory in Colombo city. Perhaps, the only way the SJB can prevent the public from getting that kind of impression is to find a better mayoral candidate than Rahman. The SJB has said it will declare the name of its mayoral candidate soon. Whoever the candidate may be, the SJB will have to prepare for an unnervingly tough contest in Colombo.
