What’s in a Name? - I

By N.Sathiya Moorthy

(August 17, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Minister Dulles Alahapperuma’s needs commendation for public lamentation over the massive drift/loss in the UNP vote-share in the three years since the presidential polls of 2005. It is long since any politician or political analyst in Sri Lanka has put the successive electoral defeats of the GoP of the island-nation in perspective.

Translated, it could mean that the SLFP leadership of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has been able to make deep inroads into both the traditional and shifting vote-banks of the UNP. Yet, the fact remains that in the seven elections covering 17 districts since 2005, the UNP vote-share has dwindled by more than 60 per cent, from 4.1 million to 1.9 million.

“This is a serious matter,” Minister Allahapperuma said, fondly recalling the UNP’s contribution to obtaining Independence for the country. “This is a serious situation… Yet, this is not a party to be under-estimated,” he said.

Considering that the ruling SLFP has come from behind to retain the presidency for a decade and more now, that too after the UNP had won a four-fifth majority in the parliamentary polls of 1977, Minister Allahapperuma may have a point. But then, it also took the party a decade and more, a long and frustrating ethnic war (whose beginning it actually was) and a new-generation leadership to win over the people of all communities – and not just of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority.

The nation accepted Chandrika Bandaranaike – and that included the Tamils sans the LTTE leadership, Muslims and of course the majority Sinhala community. Though faltering at the start, Sri Lanka has since given President Rajapaksa overwhelming mandates in the seven Provincial Council elections – with only those for the South and the North left. Of them, Uva alone came after his conclusive war-victory. That the UNP made its own contribution should explain the poll results in part.

Now, after a sweeping victory in the Provincial Council polls in Uva, the ruling SLFP-PA is talking in terms of a two-thirds majority in the parliamentary elections that are due after April next. In making such a prediction, Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva has used the SLFP-UPFA’s performance between 2005 and now as the bench-mark. There is more to it than war-victory, he has argued.

Whether or not the UNP thus feels defeated – about which loud noises have once again risen within the party -- EPDP’s Tamil Minister Douglas Devananda feels so in the native Tamil-majority Northern Province, where his leadership has won the Jaffna Municipal Council for the ruling UPFA. This is possibly one of those few occasions where the victor too feels cheated.

The ruling combine has come third after the TNA and the DPLF, which was friendly to the Government until the elections were called in the Vavuniya Municipal Council. This cannot be laid at the door of Minister Devananda. It is generally agreed that the IDP issue dominated the Vavuniya voter’s mind while walking up to the poll booths. Such decisions are not under his control but his party did pay the political price. That did not mean that they automatically favoured the LTTE-centric TNA.

It was the tactical decision to ask the Tamil parties in the UPFA to contest on the common ‘Betel Leaves’ symbol of the Alliance that was the undoing – if it was one. The original symbol of the SLFP, it became the common symbol of the UPFA. That way, asking the EPDP to forgo its ‘Veena’ symbol was not mischievous as was/is being made out to be. It was wrong as the symbol became unacceptable to the Tamil voters in the North.

If you ask National Freedom Front founder Wimal Weerawansa, another partner in the Government, he would blame DPLF leader D Sidharthan for the UPFA debacle in Vavuniya. It is only half the truth but even here Sidharthan might have made other decisions if only the SLFP leader of the UPFA had not insisted on all allies contesting under the common ‘Betel Leaves’ symbol.

Like the Uva polls, the northern elections have their own conclusions to offer. No Tamil candidate representing the UPFA has won the election either in Jaffna or Vavuniya. They are all Muslims. Like UNP, the other mainline party, the TULF of V Anandasangaree from among the Tamil parties has been all but wiped out in the municipal polls.

While the UNP can still hope for a revival in the North as in the South, Sangaree and Co cannot hope to do so. Despite regaining the party’s traditional ‘Rising Sun’ symbol, the Sangaree’s TULF was not able to revive the hopes of the older generation or capture the imagination of the Tamil youth.

It is anybody’s guess at this stage, as to how many voters really backed Sangaree – or, anyone else in his place for that matter – from within the 1000 votes that the TULF list attracted. As is known, a voter in the Local Government poll has the option of casting all three preferential votes in favour of the same candidate. The situation is different in the parliamentary and Provincial Council votes. Here, the voter has to show a differential preference to candidates from the party, with which he cast his lot, at the beginning of his engagement with the ballot paper..

Where the ‘Sangaree phenomenon’ – if it can be called so -- mattered however was in denying the UPFA a higher score, just as the latter’s controversial decision not to contest on the EPDP’s ‘Veena’ symbol might have done. In a way, the UPFA decision on the election symbol may have painted the TNA as a greater power in the North than may be the case.

To be continued ....

(The article originally published by the Daily Mirror, Colombo based daily news paper)

-Sri Lanka Guardian