Provincial election post-mortem

There is no doubt that President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s governing United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) gained an overwhelming victory in last Saturday’s elections to the Eastern, North Central and Sabaragamuwa Provincial Councils.

Of the two million votes cast in all three provinces, the UPFA received over a million, giving it 51.0 percent overall. By way of contrast, the main Opposition United National Party (UNP) received just over half a million votes or 27.7 percent overall.

The principle trend which emerges from the overall result is the continuing decline of the UNP. Despite the debilitating drought (which affected farmers all over the island), which traditionally goes against the governing party, there was a swing against the UNP, which lost voter share in all three provinces, its overall vote coming down three lakhs from the previous, 2008 elections. The extent of the debacle can be gauged from the result from Dedigama, once the unshakeable stronghold of former Prime Minister and UNP leader Dudley Senanayake. The UPFA got 60 percent of the votes, while the UNP share decreased from 41 percent to 36 percent.

Vote bank

It is clear that the Grand Old Party has been unable to present itself as a real alternative to the UPFA, which has the broad support of the middle and lower strata in society. It does not project a clear picture of how it would do things differently from the current incumbents. Most importantly, it has lost touch with its rural roots, being dominated by the same urban-based, increasingly wealthy clique, more at home in California than in Kekirawa. Those national-minded elements within the party which continued to feel close to the indigenous cultural milieu generally migrated leftward to the government ranks. The corollary to the increased overall strength of the governing party is the virtual destruction of the once mighty Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), whose vote halved to just over thirty thousand votes, 1.6 percent of all the votes cast (although it managed to get just one seat in the NCP). In Trincomalee, the one district which the National Freedom Front (NFF) - Minister Wimal Weerawansa’s breakaway group of the JVP, and a constituent party of the UPFA - contested, it received over twelve times the JVP vote, winning one seat. This indicates that the bulk of the JVP vote bank has shifted to the NFF.

UPFA’s victory

Parenthetically, it should be noted that the JVP’s support base used to be overwhelmingly young in age. This time around, the number of grey hairs at JVP rallies vastly outnumbered the black ones: its support base, it seems, is composed almost entirely of the ageing kernel from its glory days. The UPFA’s victory should be seen as an expression of the trust that the ordinary people continue to repose in the government. The drought factor was mitigated to a great extent by the government’s prompt measures to alleviate the conditions of those affected. No doubt the record low unemployment also had something to do with the hope that ordinary people (especially the youth) feel about the future.

In both the North Central Province and Sabaragamuwa, the UPFA’s triumph was clear cut. It was a whitewash, with the Opposition not winning a plurality in a single electoral division. However, when considering the Eastern Province, the picture is not at first glance so rosy for the UPFA, which managed to squeak through ahead of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK). The Tamil-nationalist ITAK had victories in the Tamil-majority Padiruppu, Batticaloa and Trincomalee polling divisions and won a majority overall in the Batticaloa District. However, the UPFA and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) contested separately at this election. When the votes for the two are added, the ITAK wins are reduced to Padiruppu and Trincomalee. Nevertheless, this result is unsatisfactory, as it shows no improvement in the UPFA position since the general election in 2010. The majority of Tamil voters preferred the ITAK over the UPFA, which only managed to get a plurality in the Kalkudah polling division (it also won in Sinhala-majority Amparai and Seruwila).

Ethnic groups

The unfortunate fact is that the voting pattern in the Eastern Province shows that people continued to vote along ethnic lines. Most Tamils voted for the ITAK, most Muslims for the SLMC (which won in the Mutur, Sammanturai, Kalmunai and Potuvil polling divisions) and most Sinhalese for the UPFA.

It was a disaster for the UNP which, it seems has become irrelevant to the non-Sinhalese in the Eastern Province. For example, Kalkudah used to be a solidly UNP electorate in the old days, when KW Devanayagam was its MP from 1965 to 1989. This time, the UNP got just 1.8 percent of the vote. The Grand Old Party is now merely an oppositional force among the Sinhalese minority in the East. For the UPFA, as far as the minorities are concerned, there is hope for the future in that it is now the only truly national trans-ethnic political grouping, being able to command substantial minority votes.

Mass Media and Information Minister Keheliya Rambukwella, the Cabinet Media Spokesman has said that the UPFA will form an administration in the Eastern Province, possibly in coalition with other parties. The Eastern Province, with its multi-ethnic balance, can be a socio-political laboratory for Sri Lanka, a microcosmic version of the entire island. There, a UPFA led administration could work out the strategy for true integration of all ethnic groups into an all-inclusive nation, instead of a collection of ethnic groups thrust together by history. The continuing flow of Tamil youth as ‘refugees’ to Australia, as well as the reluctance of refugees in India to return, is an expression of their fears about their future economic status. The youth are the future of the country and their aspirations must be met. The new administration in the East can now work out solutions to assuage those fears in the same way that the UPFA has done in the North Central Province and Sabaragamuwa.