Will there be a snap presidential election?

The Election Commission (LC) is reported to have said it will initiate the process of conducting the much-delayed Local Government (LG) elections towards the end of this month. But is being rumored that the mini polls will not be held, and the next election will be a presidential contest. Former Minister Navin Dissanayake told the media on Wednesday (07) that the country could expect a presidential election in July/August 2023. Interestingly, dissident SLPP MP and former State Minister Prof. Channa Jayasumana, speaking in the parliament recently, offered to move a private member’s motion in the parliament to enable the government to hold an early presidential election because President Wickremesinghe is without a popular mandate.

Why is the government—the UNP, to be exact—floating the story of a possible snap presidential election?

There is nothing that worries the current government more than the prospect of having to face an election in the near future although it has succeeded in securing a majority in the parliament, as evident from the passage of the 2023 Budget with a majority of 43 votes on Thursday (08). But the Opposition and pro-democracy groups, especially polls monitoring outfits such as PAFFREL (People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections) are mounting pressure on the EC to hold the LG elections. The government is trying every trick in the book to postpone the LG polls for obvious reasons. There is a massive build-up of public anger in the country, and the SLPP-UNP administration does not want to suffer an electoral setback, the way the Yahapalana government did in 2018.

What is playing out on the political front bears similarity to the situation during the early stages of the Yahapalana rule; the UNP-SLFP administration did everything in its power to postpone elections because it knew an electoral contest would make the two parties part ways and vie with each other at the expense of their fragile unity. It succeeded in amending the Provincial Council (PC) Elections Act in 2017 in the most controversial manner and postponing the PC elections indefinitely, but had to face the LG polls the following year and were trounced with the SLPP scoring a stunning victory. After suffering humiliating defeats, the SLFP and the UNP turned on each other, and the SLFP/UPFA pulled out of the ‘government of national unity’. In October 2018, the then President Maithripala Sirisena went so far as to try to oust the UNP-led government only to wipe the egg off his face owing to a Supreme Court ruling against his executive action.

Unstable political marriage

The current political marriage of convenience between the SLPP and the UNP is far from stable. It came into being as a disaster management measure on the part of the beleaguered Rajapaksa family, and a cold war has already come about in the uneasy political alliance, with the UNP trying to win over some SLPP MPs. The chances of the SLPP recovering fully and becoming fighting fit in the foreseeable future are remote, and the UNP is apparently trying to make the most of the situation to strengthen itself. But the SLPP is all out to consolidate its power, and is demanding that some of the die-hard Rajapaksa loyalists such as Mahindananda Aluthgamage, Rohitha Abeygunawardena and Johnston Fernando should be appointed to the Cabinet.

Basil Rajapaksa is believed to have returned to Sri Lanka from the US to launch the next phase of the SLPP campaign to recover lost ground and play a bigger role in ruling the country. The SLPP obviously does not want the UNP to emerge stronger at its expense. He has ensured the passage of the budget with a comfortable majority. The government did not want to leave anything to chance where the budget vote was concerned, but Basil could have pulled the strings from the US without coming all the way here. What has warranted his presence here could be the surreptitious efforts being made to engineer crossovers from his party, and the likelihood of the LG polls. He has to arrest the erosion of the SLPP’s support base. His presence in the country helps boost the SLPP’s morale.

The UNP has only a single MP, and its organizational structure is still extremely weak. It has to prepare itself for an election from scratch. The election by the parliament of its leader Ranil Wickremesinghe will not enable it to turn itself around soon. The fact that Maithripala Sirisena became the President in 2015 did not help the SLFP either politically or electorally. The SLFP-led People’s Alliance led by Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga lost power in the parliament in 2001 due to mass crossovers and was defeated at the snap general election held in that year despite Kumaratunga’s success at the 1999 presidential election, where she secured a second term. President Mahinda Rajapaksa could not win a third term and the UPFA government collapsed, in 2015.There has been no discernible improvement in the economic situation although there are no fuel queues. Life has become unbearable for most people due to the high cost of living. Food inflation has gone through the roof. It is as high as 73%. Independent economists believe that it could be even higher. UNICE has said in its Sri Lanka Appeal and ‘an acute economic crisis since early 2022 has caused severe food insecurity in Sri Lanka, and the situation is predicted to deteriorate between October 2022 and February 2023. “An estimated 6.2 million people (28 per cent of the population) are moderately acute food insecure, while 66,000 people are severely acute food insecure. Two in five households (41.8 per cent) spend more than 75 per cent of their expenditures on purchasing food, leaving little to spend on health and education. Many families have exhausted their savings and are struggling due to crippling inflation.”

The SLPP has been blamed for the current economic crisis, and with reason, but the fact that the Yahapalana government also made a huge contribution to it by borrowing heavily from external sources is only public knowledge. The UNP’s biggest disadvantage is its alliance with the SLPP, and the fact that its leader, Wickremesinghe, is widely seen to be trying to save the Rajapaksa family rather than the economy.

The IMF-prescribed restructuring programme and tax and tariff revisions will make the current administration even more unpopular when they kick in.

Million-dollar question

The question that needs to be asked is whether the UNP, which is too weak and scared of facing LG elections, will dare take a bigger gamble like contesting a presidential election. If it is confident of winning elections, it should face the LG polls first, and prepare itself for the next election. It cannot expect the SLPP to support Wickremesinghe at a presidential election. The SLPP elected him President in the parliament because it did not consider him/the UNP a political threat to the Rajapaksa family. But it will be a different story where the next presidential election is concerned.

The SLPP cannot be unaware that if it helps Wickremesinghe win the presidency at a popular election, it will lose its hold on power for good. On the other hand, it is not a shadow of its former self where its electoral strength is concerned, and it will not be able to secure enough popular support at future elections. The act of bankrupting a country and inflicting untold suffering on the people is not something that any political party can live down. Economic hardships that caused the SLFP to be reduced to just eight seats at the 1977 general election pale into insignificance where the people’s suffering at present is concerned.

The SLPP and the UNP are not united at the grassroots level despite their symbiosis in the parliament.

Thus, it may be argued that the UNP is too weak to face even the LG polls and does not want to bite off more than it can chew electorally; the SLPP is highly unpopular and is sacred of elections, and therefore both parties are not serious about conducting a presidential election, and will go all out to avoid the LG polls. But the EC is under tremendous pressure to conduct the mini elections, and the world is watching; international media focus is on Sri Lanka for the wrong reason—its bankruptcy—and the western aid donors are known to detest poll postponements.