Election results sobering for Chandrika

COLOMBO, APRIL 9: President Chandrika Kumaratunga's People's Alliance (PA) coalition has won all five provincial councils to which electi...

COLOMBO, APRIL 9: President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s People’s Alliance (PA) coalition has won all five provincial councils to which elections were held on Tuesday but the wafer-thin margin has sent a wave of jubilation through the ranks of the opposition United National Party (UNP) — and brought the high-flying PA down to earth with a thud.

The PA and UNP were neck-and-neck with 45.26 per cent and 42.55 per cent of the vote share respectively, indicating a sharp drop in the PA’s popularity since the last general election five years ago.

“This is a sign that Chandrika Kumaratunga is on her way out,” declared UNP member of Parliament Tyronne Fernando.

While the prediction may be a bit too premature, the margin of victory is sobering for the ruling coalition, with the general elections due in 2000.

The provincial elections saw the PA’s vote share dip by nearly six or seven percent from the last parliamentary elections and the 1997 local elections.

“Come Down from Cloud Nine”, the governmentmouthpiece Daily News advised on Friday, asking ministers to pull up their socks and rally behind Kumaratunga.

“There is the stark truth that the PA has not performed up to expectations in certain polling divisions or electorates, some of which are virtual strongholds of senior ministers. PA politicians should consider the result a wake up call,” the newspaper said in its editorial.

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Had the PA fared well in these polls, Kumaratunga was expected to hold parliamentary and presidential elections ahead of time. However, the coalition’s far from satisfactory performance may force a rethink.

It may also mean the final shelving of Kumaratunga’s proposals for devolution of power to the Tamil minorities.

The UNP was ousted from four provincial councils which it held prior to the elections, and was unable to dislodge the PA from the fifth, but it is taking comfort in the fact that the overall result showed a marked improvement in the party’s performance in the 1994 parliamentary elections and the localelections in 1997.

Though the UNP lost to the PA in the western province, Karu Jayasuriya, its candidate for chief minister in the province polled over 2.5 lakh preferential votes, the highest secured by any candidate in any election. In contrast, the PA’s chief ministerial nominee polled just over 1.6 lakh votes.

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In the province as a whole, PA secured 43.68 per cent of the votes in the district while the UNP was close behind with 43.23 per cent. However, the main beneficiary of voter disaffection with PA seems to have been the Janatha Vimukthi Perumina (JVP) that led the unsuccessful 1971 and 1988 armed insurrections and is now attempting a more democratic comeback.

Written off a few years earlier, the JVP polled over five per cent of the votes and a total of 15 seats in these elections, gaining representation in each of the five councils.

The party polled nearly seven per cent votes and secured six seats in the Western province. In Kumaratunga’s family pocket-borough of Gampaha, one of the threedistricts of the Western province, they secured 7.48 per cent of the votes.

As for the PA, it now has a messy situation on its hands. Only in the north-central province comprising the districts of Anuradhapura-Polonnaruwa did the ruling coalition manage a clear majority. In the Western province, the narrow victory margin has led to a hung council in which the JVP could well emerge the king-maker. In the central province, a coalition of parties representing the Indian Tamil estate workers led by the octogenarian Suavyamoorthy Thondaman will decide which party will take over the reins of the provincial government.