Thursday, 03 April 2014 | Pioneer |
Provincial polls reiterate support for UPFA
The Provincial Council elections in Sri Lanka, which returned a clear victory for the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance, are a strong vote in favour of the development-oriented, people-friendly policies of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. His critics will point out that the number of Council seats held by his alliance and the percentage of votes that the UPFA received has dropped since 2009 including in the Rajapaksa stronghold of Hambantota. This is true. In Hambantota, represented in Parliament by the President's son Namal Rajapaksa, the UPFA's vote share has shrunk from 66.95 per cent in 2009 to 57 per cent this time around. Overall, the alliance lost 12 seats in the Western Provincial Council which reduced the UPFA’s earlier 68 seat tally to 56, and in the Southern Provincial Council, it lost five seats that cut its share from 38 to 33 seats. In terms of vote share, the ruling dispensation suffered an 11.38 per cent loss in the Western Provincial Council and a 9.82 per cent loss in the Southern Provincial Council. But none of this takes away take from the fact that the UPFA still has a majority in the Southern Province, where it got 58.06 per cent of the votes, and remains the largest political outfit in the Western Province, where it received 53.35 per cent of the total vote share. Indeed, much of the brouhaha over the UPFA's ‘poor' performance in this round of Provincial Council elections is driven by two factors: First, the Southern and Western Provinces are crucial to judging the national mood as together they account for one third of Sri Lanka's population. Therefore, a performance drop in these Provinces can be used to run down the UPFA. Second, and more importantly, many had expected President Rajapaksa to deliver a clean sweep.
And, to be fair, he has — just not as strongly as in 2009. This is understandable given that when the Western and Southern Provinces went to the polls that year, in April and October respectively, President Rajapaksa's popularity was at an all-time high. He was not a political leader or another President — he was a war hero, the man who defeated a terror group and ended a decades-long war. It is near impossible for anybody to maintain that kind of popular momentum for several years afterwards. That even five years later, President Rajapaksa has held his ground, therefore, underlines the effectiveness of his ‘peacetime' initiatives which include economic development as well as reconciliation between Sri Lanka's Sinhala majority and Tamil minority.
The results from the Provincial Council election also highlight another key trend in Sri Lankan politics — that of a weak and fractured Opposition. The UPFA's primary rival, the United National Party, failed to convert the ruling coalition's losses into gains for itself. It seems likes much of the opposition votes went to other parties such as the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and the newly formed Democratic Party led by former Army chief Sarath Fonseka. But despite their focus on Government corruption and rising prices, these parties failed to make a mark. Clearly, President Rajapaksa remains Sri Lanka’s best leadership option and the international community will do well to keep this in mind as it seeks to isolate him, supposedly for not doing enough to protect Tamil interests.
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