PC Poll: Winners & Losers

“Let the UNP-SLMC cry foul until the next elections when they can begin a new round of their pastime. It has to be mentioned that this time the UNP was so sure of losing, being on a losing spree, began crying foul the day the nominations were given. If one goes by the last Presidential elections the UPFA had no chance of winning the Provincial Council elections. Ranil Wickremesinghe polled very heavily in the Batticaloa district at the Presidential elections but this time the UPFA was able to turn tables. In Ampara district the LTTE was involved in blasting bombs and killing people to intimidate especially the Sinhala voters, on behalf of the UNP-SLMC alliance.”
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by Prof. Nalin de Silva

(May 14, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The UPFA has won the first ever elections to the Eastern Province Provincial Council amidst allegations by the UNP-SLMC of intimidation corruption and other familiar "facts". The election held previously was for the Northern and Eastern Provincial council and not for the Eastern Province Provincial council.

However, it is not the first time that the UNP has come up with these charges and neither will it be the last occasion. With or without Ranil Wickremesinghe the UNP is to lose a few more elections and it would not be a bad idea to set up its own so called independent election monitoring committee at Sri Kotha with University non academics, without depending on the other NGOs and University academics with political rights to cry foul on their behalf. It may be the fifteenth election that Ranil Wickremesinghe has lost but in defence of the leader of the UNP, one must say that even a different leader would not have obtained a better result. It is not Ranil Wickremesinghe who has lost the elections but the UNP-SLMC alliance. In any event, the UNP knows more than the others about election malpractices having practised them since 1931, of course, by the forerunners of the UNP democrats. Distributing money, transporting the voters, intimidating the powerless by the village headmen, and even deleting the names of the eligible voters by the dreaded "ralahamy" (nobody has so far talked of disenfranchising of these people - how about writing a few theses on this type of disenfranchising) were not uncommon those days.

Undoubtedly, there would have been some truth in the charges brought out by the UNP-SLMC alliance against the UPFA. In Sri Lanka election is no election without allegations by the losing side against the winners but it is not only the winners who resort to malpractices at elections. The losers are not bodhisattvas and even this time there are allegations of misconduct, to say the least, against some leaders of the UNP-SLMC alliance. However, the winners drop the charges in no time as they have achieved what they want and it is left to the losers to cry foul until the next elections. The losers should have learnt a lesson from the Democratic Party in the USA when they did not want to make a big issue out of those ballot boxes at the Presidential elections that elected Bush Jr. as the President. Perhaps the Americans and the other westerners know that this is part and parcel of the so called democratic process but we who have learnt western democracy (not the mahasammathavadaya) through the text books written by the westerners still crave for ideal elections and make charges and counter charges while engaging in all the malpractices.

Let the UNP-SLMC cry foul until the next elections when they can begin a new round of their pastime. It has to be mentioned that this time the UNP was so sure of losing, being on a losing spree, began crying foul the day the nominations were given. If one goes by the last Presidential elections the UPFA had no chance of winning the Provincial Council elections. Ranil Wickremesinghe polled very heavily in the Batticaloa district at the Presidential elections but this time the UPFA was able to turn tables. In Ampara district the LTTE was involved in blasting bombs and killing people to intimidate especially the Sinhala voters, on behalf of the UNP-SLMC alliance. Surely the bombs were not to help the UPFA and Muslims would not have taken much notice of them as there was some kind of pact between Prabhakaran and Hakeem. Unlike the UNP, the SLMC was very confident of winning the elections, and Hakeem resigned from Parliament to become the first chief minister of the Eastern Province Provincial Council. One could say that the resignation was only to encourage the Muslim voters but Hakeem would not have resigned from Parliament as an election gimmick, losing his security also in the process.

The Tamils in Batticaloa who voted for Ranil Wickremesinghe (and Prabhakaran) at the last Presidential elections have voted for Pillaiyan at the Provincial Council elections while the Muslim vote has not changed much. The Sinhala voters as demonstrated by results of the Seruwila electoral district have shifted towards the UPFA. The division is very clear. The eastern Province has decided the fate of the country. In the Eastern Province there are four communities living, they being the Sinhalas, the Muslims, the Northern Tamils and the Eastern Tamils. The latter communities have different historical origins and different cultures. The Northern Tamils are of a Vellalla Brahmin mixed culture while the Eastern Tamils are of a non Brahmin Hindu culture. They lived as two different communities until SJV Chelvanayakam united them against the Sinhalas to establish a separate state for the Tamils. He extended this union to the Muslims as well in the guise of Tamil speaking people. In 1976 at the Vadukkodai conference all these communities passed the infamous resolution for a separate state on the basis of a united Northern Province and an Eastern Province. Ashraff had been present at this conference.

What Ashraff did was to make the Muslims a minority among the so called Tamil speaking people and ask for a non contiguous Muslim zone in a separate state. Of course he did not say in so many words but he insisted on a Muslim zone in a federal state. After thirty two years the Eastern Tamils have decided to separate from the Northern Tamils and also from the domination by the Northern Tamils. Of course, it did not happen overnight and Karuna Amman took the first step away from the union of the two communities. It has now completed the circle and the Eastern Tamils under the leadership of Pillaiyan have taken a firm decision to separate from the separatists, and we salute the Eastern Tamils for their historic decision.

The Muslims on the other hand, in spite of Hisbullahs, Athaullahs, Ferials and even the Iranian President and Sri Lankan President who has been a friend of Palestinians throughout his political career, have decided to be with Hakeem who is with the separatists and the westerners. It is not clear whether the Muslims in the East want to be with the separatists or their traditional loyalties to the UNP, which had been the Party of the Muslims before Ashraff.

The SLFP has to think hard about this question and evolve a strategy to get the support of the Muslims. It is true that they had Marikkars and now they have Moulanas. However, they were not Muslims who were able to win the Muslims but rather Muslims who were mainly elected by the Sinhala votes. In fact Marikkar was referred to as Sinhala Marikkar and many Muslim SLFPers had the support of the Sinhala people more than that of the Muslims. The Muslim factor has to be thought of very carefully especially in the context of westerners attacking the Muslim culture. In the background of world politics the Muslims should be with a party that is not an agent of the west. However, in Sri Lanka, traditionally the vast majority of Muslims have been supporting the UNP and parties that align with the west, and not the SLFP. Some thought should be given to understand this anomaly.

In any event the verdict of the Eastern province cannot be good news to the western diplomats and their masters in their respective countries as they would have expected a victory for the UNP-SLMC by hook or crook, with the support of their darling terrorist Prabhakaran whom they claim to be different from bin Laden and others. The division was clear in the East as the national forces against separatism, LTTE and their sponsors in the west united against the UNP-SLMC alliance that is supported by the LTTE and the west. Had the UNP-SLMC won the elections the clock would have been put back and the country drawn back thirty years nullifying the heroic work of the armed forces. The victory in the east has justified politically the victory of the armed forces.
- Sri Lanka Guardian