The elections to the Southern Provincial Council that
took place on Saturday were the last prior to the all important General
Elections, and possible Presidential Elections, scheduled to be held by
April 2010. Election monitoring organizations gave the alarm that
the elections to the Southern Provincial Council were going to be more
violent than the series of provincial elections that preceded it.
Although the polling on election day itself was peaceful, the election
campaign period was not. This was a pattern to be seen at previous
elections as well, and which election monitoring organizations have
noted.
There was intense competition between the rival
political parties, and pre-occupation within the ruling alliance to
obtain victory in the pre-election period. There was an escalation
of violence to the point of assaulting candidates, burning of rival
party offices and even of personal property, and a concentration of
attacks by ruling party members on candidates of the JVP. The law
and order machinery was relatively inactive until one of the election
monitoring organizations, PAFFREL, filed an action in the Supreme Court.
These shortcomings made these elections fall short of the standard that
is expected of a free and fair election.
The reports of acts of violence, misuse of state
resources by ruling party politicians and instances of police inaction
registered an increase in comparison with the previous provincial
council elections for the Uva, Sabaragamuwa, North Western and Central
provinces. The government machinery worked overtime on the election with
people from far flung provinces being brought to add numbers to the
rally presided over by President Mahinda Rajapaksa. One reason for
the worsening trend of abuse could have been that these elections were
projected as being a crucial test of political popularity prior to the
forthcoming General and possibly Presidential Elections.
There was more at stake than victory at yet another
election to the relatively powerless provincial councils. The
question that these elections were billed to answer was whether there
was any reduction in the overwhelming electoral support for the
government that had been manifested in the earlier elections. The
argument was made that the government’s popularity had peaked and its
reliance on the victory it had obtained in the war over the LTTE would
no longer be the determining factor in the people’s vote. Now
other issues would come to the fore, or so it was hoped.
Electoral Support
The government continued its sweep of elections with
the victory it obtained at the Southern Provincial Council elections.
The ruling alliance got more than 67 percent of the valid votes cast.
This was less than the record breaking 72 percent it had notched up at
the Uva Provincial Council elections just two months ago. As this
was President Rajapaksa’s home province there was an expectation of an
even greater victory. Still for all, the wide margin of victory gives
little comfort to the opposition parties that had been hoping to see a
significant dent in the government’s popularity being manifested at
these elections.
The failure of the government to match its previous
figure would be cold comfort to the Opposition. Nor would it be of
much use to say that the government claimed it would get 80 percent of
the vote, but ended up with only 67 percent. Such efforts to see
something positive in what is objectively another crushing electoral
defeat will not be helpful in either getting the Opposition back on its
feet or in helping the country to find better answers to its problems.
The voter turnout of around 65 percent indicated that many Opposition
voters may have not have been motivated to cast their votes.
The Opposition appears to have been banking on the
increasing problems facing the people due to hardships in their economic
life that might be leading to erosion in the level of public support to
the government. The government gives much publicity to its massive
infrastructure development projects which range from road and bridge
construction to power generation and port development. But the
fruits of these projects will be slow in coming to benefit the masses of
the people. At the present time the main benefits are going to
contractors and to the limited number of workers on these projects.
There has also been no visible economic dividend from
the end of the war. Spending on the armed forces and increasing
their numbers remains a government priority. Due to the strict
controls on travel to the north and east, and security check points that
dot the landscape, the willingness of private businesses to risk their
capital in economic investments that would generate employment and
spread wealth remain low. There has been no flurry of small scale
economic activities that would give the general population the hope of
any dramatic economic invigoration after the war.
Opposition Campaign
Among the themes taken up by the Opposition in their
election campaign was the looming economic threat of the withdrawal of
the GSP+ tariff concession provided by the European Union, which could
lead to the closure of many garment factories. Other issues
included corruption and breakdown of law and order, media repression,
the continued incarceration of internally displaced persons in the Vanni
and deterioration of relations with the western component of the
international community who have traditionally been Sri Lanka’s aid
donors and continue to provide the country with its export markets.
These are all matters that have the potential to seriously affect Sri
Lanka in the longer term.
However, most of these problems were also ones that do
not impact directly upon the voters at provincial elections. The
problems of the internally displaced persons are not in the forefront of
public consciousness of people who are far from those areas. In
addition the government has provided security-related justifications for
their continued detention which makes sense to the majority of people.
Even issues such as the repression of the media and killings and
abductions outside of the law do not really affect the lives of the vast
majority of people as they are untouched by those tragedies that affect
a relatively small number of people with whom they have no contact.
But there is an important factor that needs to be kept
in mind. At all the recent elections that were held the ruling
alliance achieved big victories. The one exception was the
local government elections in the north held two months ago where the
ruling alliance fared relatively poorly. These results indicate a
continuing north-south rift that the government has been unable to
bridge. It is this rift that was responsible for the war that
raged on for three decades, and the ethnic conflict that lingers.
While they endeavour to win the next series of all important elections,
both the government and opposition have a duty to address this rift that
has held Sri Lanka back from achieving its full potential
Persuading the electorate to vote for an alternative
government requires more than negative campaigning and pointing out the
failures and mistakes of the government, of which there are many.
The Opposition needs to identify the links between seemingly distant
events and the continued stagnation of Sri Lanka and its people at
economic and social levels that many countries of Asia have now passed.
The inter-connected nature of human rights, governance, trade and the
economy in today’s globalised world, and the circumscribed nature of
national sovereignty need to be addressed to the electorate in a
language that resonates with the ethos and day to day concerns of the
electorate.