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by Professor S. T. Hettige

It is a common practice in the many developed countries to conduct pre-election opinion surveys to predict the outcome of elections. Most of these opinion surveys are conduced by private research companies on a commercial basis. Apart from conducting pre-election opinion surveys, in these countries researchers conduct various types of opinion surveys on current issues that the politicians as well as the public are interested in and the findings are published in daily papers and other mass media without any distortion or any bias towards any political party or an individual. This is in keeping with generally accepted ethical codes.

In Sri Lanka, pre-election opinion surveys are a recent phenomenon and very often these surveys are carried out by some firms with the help of foreign advisors or commercial research establishments. During the recent general election held in December, 2001 two or three commercial establishments carried out opinion surveys and daily papers and other media carried their results.

At the same time certain political parties also carry out opinion surveys to find out their electoral chances, but not for publication or create awareness among the voters. In the meantime, there were some individuals who had conducted opinion surveys and predicted that the governing party was going to win with a considerable majority. State media had given publicly to these survey findings.

Survey

A survey was also carried out under my guidance by a team of researchers to ascertain the prevailing political trends prior to the general election on December 5th 2001. First let me give some information about the methodology of the survey we conducted. For this survey, a representative random sample of 2865 households was selected, distributing them in all districts with probability proportion to the size of population in each district, excluding those in the Northern and Eastern provinces, but Ampara in the Eastern province was included in the sample.

The enumeration was carried out in clusters of 15 households. Two sample points leading to two such clusters wee selected at random from each randomly selected Grama Niladhari Division. In drawing the sample the ethnic and sectoral distribution of the population was also taken into account.

A coded questionnaire was administered to a randomly selected sample of voters by a well trained team of 20 graduate-interviewers under the supervision of four experienced researchers. The interviewers were formed into four teams, each working under a supervisor. Each team was provided with transport. The fieldwork was carried out during November 8th-12th 2001. The whole team of interviewers was coordinated by a senior research assistant. The completed schedules were coded, edited and fed into the computer and analyzed by a competent team of statisticians/researchers.

By November 28th the findings were finalized, but were not released to the media. However, without the knowledge of the research team, the State media published some of our data without our interpretation, distorting the picture of the pre-election situation in the country.

This was pre-election to be followed by a post-poll survey in a few months after the elections. However, we did not want to publish the results of the survey without our interpretation, as interested parties would have quoted us out of context. Instead, we prepared an analytical article based on the survey giving an accurate picture of the prevailing trends. Unfortunately, the relevant newspapers did not publish them before the election.

This gave the State controlled media institutions, which had somehow secured our report, a chance to give their own interpretation and give the general public the impression that, according to our survey, the PA was ahead of the UNP in terms of popularity. Some media institutions highlighted that the incumbent President was the most trusted, popular and credible leader in the country.

Findings

The main findings of our survey, however, were:

a) PA's popularity rating had come down to about 35 per cent:

b) Only 32 per cent of the people interviewed expressed confidence that if the PA was re-elected, it would be able to solve the country's problems;

c) Only 38 per cent of the people interviewed expressed confidence in the incumbent President and the proportion of the people who expressed confidence in the UNP leader was even less;

d) The vast majority of the minority voters had switched their loyalty to the UNP;

e) The vast majority of the people interviewed (75 per cent) in the Sinhala dominated areas favoured a negotiated settlement to the ethnic conflict; and therefore, the PA's campaign against the UNP on the basis of an alleged link between the UNP and the LTTE was counter-productive for the PA;

f) A majority of the people interviewed viewed the JVP-PA government in a favourable light and the JVP's support base had expanded substantially in the recent past. This indicated the growing disillusionment with both the major parties;

g) Though according to the survey, UNP's popularity rating was only 32 per cent, given the dwindling credibility of the incumbent regime, it was going to attract most of the floating vote, which stood at over 12 per cent.

It should also be noted that the situation prevailing in some parts of the country was not conducive for some people to indicate their preference. This was mostly applicable to opposition voters.

In short, according to our survey, the political trend prior to elections was very clear, PA's popularity had declined substantially, paving the way for a UNP victory. Though many people leaving the PA had turned to the JVP, floating voters desirous of a change of regime turned to the UNP to achieve their objectives. Aggressive media campaigns against the JVP, highlighting the Kalutara speech of the JVP leader, Somavansa Amarasingha, frightened some voters away from the JVP in the last two weeks prior to the elections. They no doubt voted for the UNP.

Identifiable factors

Many people have already attempted to explain why the PA was defeated. While it is true that the defeat cannot be attributed to one single factor, it is necessary to recognize the fact that the defeat did not come all of a sudden. In fact, their declining popularity was evident from the late 1990s. On several occasions I warned that the PA was heading towards a humiliating defeat due to a number of clearly identifiable factors. They were:

a) Excessive politicization of public institutions and state programmes;

b) Appointment of wrong people to important institutions and projects;

c) Corruption and abuse of power involving several key PA politicians;

d) Excessive privileges of politicians at public expense such as luxury vehicles and various perks;

e) Failure to revamp public investment programmes to address pressing problems faced by the ordinary people in such areas as public transport, health and social security;

f) Failure to bring about a peaceful settlement to the ethnic problem;

g) Failure to arrest the widening gap between the rich and the poor;

h) Excessive reliance of the leaders for advice on a few friends and acquaintances, who did not have their feet on the ground and

i) Inadequate economic growth leading to unemployment, underemployment, poverty and the very high cost of living.

The leaders of the PA continued to boast that they were winning all the elections held after 1995, whereas the popularity was declining from year to year. President Kumaratunga, who polled 62 per cent in 1995 barely retained office in 1999. In the general election held in 2000, PA lost even the simple majority it had in 1994 and had to form a coalition government with the support of the SLMC. So, given the disastrous developments in the following months following the 2000 general elections, if the PA expected to win power at the recently conducted elections, they would have been living in a world of their own totally cut off from reality.

Slavish press

As mentioned earlier, those who were leaving the PA did not readily rally around the UNP. In fact many of them turned to the JVP. This shows that the UNP did not attract unqualified support from those who did not want the PA to continue. It should be noted that the UNP, even with the minority vote did not get a simple majority of seats on its own, but the slavish press had already given the UNP a resounding victory!

It is true that the two main parties in the country have their own vote banks, about one third of the electorate for each of them, but the ability to form a stable government does no longer depend on such vote banks. Today, there is a sizeable segment of the electorate, which, independent of the ideological and personal commitments, act in the public interest, taking into consideration issues of political culture, social justice and social and economic policy. On the other hand, the ruling party leaders can no longer simply talk about political culture, good governance, poverty, cost of living and peace. They now have to deliver the goods. Future political stability will depend on their ability to live up to the people's expectations and this readiness to accept and tolerate political pluralism.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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