Col R Hariharan | 31-12-2017
Sri Lanka is expected to hold
the nation-wide local government (LG) elections on February 10, 2018. Usually,
local body elections are low key affairs. However, this election is important
as a mid-term appraisal of the performance of President Maithripala Sirisena-
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe government. It would also provide an
indication of the future developments likely to affect the fortunes of
political parties and their leaders.
Over 15.8 million people will be
exercising their votes on a single day to elect 8293 member to 24 municipal
councils, 41 urban councils and 276 divisional councils is undoubtedly major
challenge for the government. Sri Lanka’s past experience in conducting
elections is a mixed bag of good, bad and the ugly. It ranged from misuse of
government machinery and state media, use of both muscle power and money power
to disrupt rival party’s election campaigns and even fisticuffs between
contestants ending in killings.
The sheer size of the elections, with over 70,000 candidates in
the fray, makes the administration’s job of conducting free and fair elections
even more difficult. Will the political parties and people rise up to the
occasion to make it a success? Probably, this is the question haunting the
minds of elections officials and police administration.
The government has already drawn plenty of flak for delaying the
local elections. Reasons for the delay are many, apart from political
compulsions of the ruling coalition partners. Systemic journey to conduct the
poll had been tortuous. The demarcation of new local authority wards took four
long years to complete the process in 2016. The mixed electoral system was much
debated; the Local Authorities Elections (Amendment) Act No 1 of 2016 made it
mandatory for political parties to include 25 percent women in the candidates
list. The Local Authorities Elections (Amendment) Act No 16 of 2017 changed the
ratio between the first-past-post and proportional representation systems of
voting from 70:30 to 60:40 to ensure fair representation of minorities.
Though local issues dominate the LG elections, they serve as a
national barometer of political parties strength at the grass root level. This
has made political parties nervous as they are not certain about their
performance on two counts. Firstly, they are not clear how the mixed electoral
system would impact their performance. Secondly, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party
(SLFP) led by President Sirisena’s unity talks with pro-Mahinda Rajapaksa
faction of SLFP has failed. The latter will be contesting under the banner of
the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (Sri Lanka Citizens Front) formed sometime
back. With former president Rajapaksa sotto vocethrowing spanners
into Sirisena’s works to keep his flock, SLFP’s votes in traditional support
bases are likely to be split. Any adverse impact of the split has the potential
to adversely affect the future of President Sirisena’s leadership of the party
and his ability to contain, if not prevail over, Rajapaksa’s influence within
SLFP.
As both the factors are germane to President Sirisena dominant
role in the unity government, the election results could also affect the
durability of the SLFP-UNP alliance and determine the longevity of the
coalition government.
For the present, President Sirisena probably has better chances
as he enjoys the advantage of being in power with a B+ track record, not as
badly tarnished as the Rajapaaksa regime.
The LG elections will also put the durability of the Tamil
National Alliance (TNA) led by veteran political leader Rajavarothiam
Sampanthan under the lense. The TNA in spite of holding the majority in the
Northern Provincial Council (NPC) had not been able to make good of all its
election promises. Both the NPC chief minister C Wigneswaran and some of the
alliance leaders like Suresh Premachandran of the Eelam Peoples’ Revolutionary
Liberation Front (EPRLF) had blamed Sampanthan’s constructive and
non-confrontational approach in dealing with the Sirisena government for not
fulfilling the aspirations of the Tamil people. As early as January 2017,
Premachandran had demanded the octogenarian leader Sampanthan and the
articulate general secretary M Sumanthiran to resign from alliance leadership
for below par performance.
However, TNA leadership seems to have handled the internal
schism fairly well. After the EPRLF quit the alliance last month, TNA managed
to finalise its candidates for the LG polls. Chief Minister Wigneswaran’s
announcement that he would remain neutral in the polls would probably work
better for the TNA, than its detractors.
The Election Commission Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya at a meeting
with political party representatives announced the guidelines for conducting
election without causing inconvenience to the public. The guidelines include:
allowing only one official party office per electorate; allowing display of
propaganda posters only in the party office; limiting the groups canvassing for
votes to ten members and conducting of election rallies only with prior police
permission.
The independent election monitoring group - Peoples Action for
Free and Fair Elections (PAAFREL) - has handed over to the Inspector General of
Police a list of 32 candidates contesting the forthcoming LG polls with alleged
criminal record of rape, murder, theft, financial frauds and corruption. The
organization urged the IG to keep a close watch over these persons, during the
election period. The chief opposition whip and leader of the Janata
Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) Anura Dissanayake has alleged that both the SLFP and
the UNP had nominated tainted candidates, some of who had seven to eight
criminal cases against them.
Despite such ominous signs, some hopes would be kindled to see
President Sirisena starting the poll campaign saying “I am not sure who will be
axed with my sword in my mission to have clean politicians.” The SLFP and UPFA
participants at the meeting took a pledge to dedicate themselves to elect
“educated representatives with high integrity, free of fraud and corruption to
work in accordance with the conscience of the public for the protection of the
motherland.” But, have we not seen such promises in the past evaporating into
thin air after the elections?
In such an environment, one cannot fault Sri Lankans
hoping to use the LG polls in the New Year to herald a period of constructive
politics. Why not? People everywhere live only on hopes!
Courtesy: South Asia Security Trends, January 2018 issue www.security-risks.com
Col
R Hariharan, a retired MI officer, served as the head of Intelligence of the
Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 90. He is associated with
the Chennai Centre for China Studies and the International Law and Strategic
Analysis Institute, Chennai. E-mail: haridirect@gmail.com B log: http://col.hariharan.info
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