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Sri Lanka Eris and Elections
Sri Lanka Eris and Elections
| by Tisaranee Gunasekara
Experience showed that even the simplest events always worked out differently from
what one would have thought beforehand.
Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain)
( November 20, 2014, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In modern parlance it would be
called a prequel - to the Trojan War. Eris, Goddess of Discord, appears uninvited at the
wedding banquet of Peleus and Thetis and throws the eponymous apple amongst the
assembled guests, seeding collision, strife and war.
Mahinda Rajapaksa may have intended to do an Eris vis--vis the Opposition with his
decision to have an early presidential election. But his gambit seems to have backfired.
The opposition is indubitably at loggerheads, but so is the government. In fact, the first
serious fissure in the hitherto monolithic UPFA was caused by President Rajapaksas
decision to hold a controversially premature election.
The JHU has left the government but it has not joined the opposition. Doors are still
open, both ways, and the possibility of a rapprochement (at least with a segment of the
JHU) is very much extant. The regimes unusually temperate response to the JHUs
Rajapaksa, the arch-patriot, have pledged to abolish the executive presidency, not just
once but twice, if executive presidency is necessary for territorial integrity and national
defence?
Whatever the future may bring, the Rajapaksas no longer look Teflon.
A minority party or a left party departing the UPFA could have been accused, easily, of
treachery. It is harder to use the same accusation against the JHU. This is a squabble,
almost en famille. The Rajapaksas and the JHU occupy the same politico-ideological
space. Sinhala-Buddhist supremacism is the Rajapaksas mantle of choice (and
necessity) to cover the ugliness of their familial agenda. It is precisely this mantle the
JHU will try to tear apart.
As Marx said of British Indias Sepoy rebellion, There is something in human history
like retribution: and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged
not by the offended, but by the offender himself .
Maths and Politics
In Sri Lanka, voter turnout, on average, is 10% higher at national elections than at
non-national elections.
At the last provincial council elections (held in four rounds over 2 years, from 2012 to
2014), the average voter turnout was around 65%, compared to a voter turnout of
74.5% at the 2010 presidential election.
In 2010, Mahinda Rajapaksa scored 57.88% of the valid vote. At the provincial council
elections the UPFAs average vote was 54%.
This is a drastic decrease; but the decrease becomes even more substantial once the
difference in voter-turnout between national and non-national elections is factored in.
The adjusted figure is around 49% for the UPFA, less than the all important 50% mark.
The added 10% of votes at a future national election will consist mostly of new voters
and uncommitted voters. Their support is not a given for any candidate; it is
something which will have to be fought for and won. If the opposition can run an
attractively effective campaign, it has a chance of winning enough of these voters,
thereby pushing the election into a second round. Even a divided opposition can do it,
so long as they do not target each other and turn the entire campaign into a bathetic
spectacle.
Objectively, the Rajapaksas are vulnerable in 2015 in a way they were not in 2010.
It is in this context the JHUs quasi-departure must be considered. Can the JHU
deprive the Rajapaksas of even a sliver of their electoral base? In 2010 such minutia
would not have mattered; in 2015 they do.
But the JHU can open the doors to Eris in the opposition camp as well. The Rajapaksas
cannot be beaten if the opposition fails to win minority support. If due to JHU
influence, the opposition moves in a Sinhala-supremacist direction, the effect will be
disastrous both politically and electorally. Such a shift will strengthen those Tamil and
Muslim voices arguing for an election boycott - on the basis that the election is a
Sinhala affair. This argument is dangerously fallacious - the government which is
elected will be ruling over not just the Sinhalese but the minorities as well.
So the JHU is, at best, a mixed blessing for the opposition. The Rajapaksas will win, if
the JHU is allowed to recast the oppositional-platform in a Sinhala-Buddhist mould.
Posted by Thavam