Opposition requires positive campaign to improve performance

By Jehan Perera

(October 13, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) 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.

-Sri Lanka Guardian