by Vishvanath
Two important events are scheduled to take place during the current week (Oct. 20-27). One is the release by an Opposition politician of two probe committee reports on the Easter Sunday terrorist bombings, on Monday (21). Two committees were appointed by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, with former judges S. A. Imam and A. N. J. de Alwis as their heads, to investigate a host of allegations made by British Channel-4 against Sri Lanka’s military intelligence and to inquire into intelligence coordination and investigative processes in respect of the Easter Sunday terror attacks, respectively.
Former Minister Udaya Gammanpila, who has undertaken to release the reports, thinks the government is trying to have him arrested under the Official Secrets Act and the Prevention of Terrorism Act. A discussion on this issue will have to wait until the release of the two reports and the government reaction. The other significant event is slated for next Saturday (26). It is the Elpitiya Pradeshiya Sabha (PS) election.
Interestingly, in 2019, the Elpitiya PS polls happened a couple of weeks before a presidential election. It acted as a kind of political windsock. The SLPP won that election hands down, and its easy victory came as a harbinger of its winning streak. It bagged 17 out 29 seats in the PS, and the UNP, which was in power at the time, came a poor second with only seven seats. The UPFA secured three seats and the JVP two. That election sealed the UNP-led UNF government’s fate. The SLPP won the presidential election that followed soon afterwards with Gotabaya Rajapaksa as its candidate, and went on to score another impressive win in the general election the following year.
The SLPP mismanaged its electoral fortunes where the Executive, the parliament and the local government institutions were concerned. Its economic mismanagement trigged a popular uprising, which however did not lead to the collapse of its government although the Rajapaksa family had to let go of their positions in it. The rest is history.
Something interesting happened in the Elpitiya PS a few days before the SLPP’s National Convention, last year. Its annual budget failed to be carried on Dec.06, as some of the ruling party members turned against their Chairman and voted with the Opposition. That must have been the last thing that the SLPP wanted ahead of the launch of a campaign to boost its image.
This time around, the Elpitiya PS election is coming a few weeks after a presidential election, which was won by the JVP-led NPP. The next parliamentary polls are slated for next month. It may look like an oversimplification of complex electoral matters to saythat the Elpitiya PS will serve as a microcosm of the entire country, but the outcome of the forthcoming election to it will have a bearing on that of the general election to follow.
Strangely, the Elpitiya PS election has not attracted much media attention, and social media is busy with post mortems on last month’s presidential election, allied issues and next month’s general election. Both the public and the media have apparently taken the Elpitiya election for granted.
Ten recognized political parties and two independent groups placed deposits for contesting the Elpitiya PS election, but only eight parties and one independent group are in the fray. Postal voting for the election has already taken place.
It is popularly thought that the JVP-led NPP will be able to sweep the upcoming parliamentary election as its victory in the presidential race is still fresh. But electoral politics is full of surprises. Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who came third in last month’s presidential election, has predicted that going by the outcome of the presidential contest, the next parliament will be hung.
Under the Proportional Representation (PR) system, the level of popular support a political party or an independent group enjoys, is not necessarily reflected in the seat allocation in a general election. As we pointed out in a previous comment, 10 political parties whose total number of votes ranged from 34,000 to 68,000 secured 12 seats in the 2020 general election. The AITC and the EPDP secured two seats each by polling only 67,766 (0.58%) and 61,464 (0.53%) votes, respectively whereas the UNP, which polled 249,435 (2.15%) votes received only one seat. This is the way the cookie crumbles under the PR system.
The JVP-led NPP benefited from a wave of popular support in last month’s presidential election, as evident from the steep rise in its votes from 418,553 (3.0%) in the 2019 presidential election to 5,740,179 votes (42%) last month. But the fact that it failed to secure an outright victory by clearing the 50% plus one vote mark makes one wonder whether it will be able to obtain a working majority in the next parliament although it is very likely to outperform all its rivals. Its failure to carry out some of its election promises might adversely impact its electoral performance to some extent, next month.
The NPP did not make a serious effort to renegotiate the terms of the IMF agreement in spite of its election promise to do so. Instead, it chose to go along with the terms of debt restricting the previous government had agreed to. The fuel price reductions were far below public expectations. Before the presidential election, the NPP leaders made an issue of taxes on fuel and claimed that their prices could be slashed by about Rs. 150 each. The NPP is giving evasive answers to questions on the promised pay hike for public sector employees although it pledged biannual pay increases. Besides, one of the NPP’s prominent campaign speakers has admitted that she stretched the truth when she claimed, during the presidential election campaign, that under the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government a planeload of US dollars had been taken out of Sri Lanka to Uganda. She has said she was aware that the money had been printed by a foreign firm, which has a factory here, for the government of Uganda, but repeated the unsubstantiated claim like others. This claim repeated by some NPP leaders as well has attracted criticism on social media, where the NPP is apparently on the defensive at present.
Why President Anura Kumara Dissanayake was in a mighty hurry to dissolve the parliament and hold a snap general election is not difficult to see.
It is not prudent to venture guesses where election results are concerned. Suffice it to say the NPP is ahead of others in the parliamentary race, but the outcome of the forthcoming Elpitiya PS election will be of immense psephological interest.
