After being out of the limelight of a few years, provincial councils are back in focus, with elections to three of them now overdue and polls to the other councils also due before the next presidential and general elections in 2020.
Not surprisingly, the Joint Opposition (JO), now operating as the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) in its new political incarnation, is agitating for elections to the three provincial councils that are overdue to be held immediately. These are the councils in the North Central Province, the Eastern Province and the Sabaragamuwa Province.
This week, SLPP Chairman Prof. G. L. Peiris announced that the party would seek the intervention of the Supreme Court to compel the National Elections Commission (NEC) to conduct elections to these three provinces. Peiris, a former Professor of Law, said a writ of mandamus would be sought from the court later this month.
Election delays
This is because polls have been delayed due to new legislation, the Provincial Councils (Amendment) Act No. 17 of 2017 being enacted in Parliament in September last year. The Act was signed in to law by Speaker Karu Jayasuriya a few days after it was approved by Parliament.
This also comes in the wake of the NEC and its outspoken Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya declaring that the onus was on Parliament to expedite the process of conducting provincial polls by reaching a consensus on all the relevant issues. The NEC cannot forcefully conduct elections when there is a lack of consensus, Deshapriya has indicated.
The government cites the new legislation as being the primary reason for the delay in conducting the elections. The new laws call for a delimitation commission to freshly determine the composition of each provincial council. It will be recalled that local government elections were also similarly delayed for the same reasons.
The recently enacted legislation also allows for the system of elections to be overhauled. It provides for the implementation of a new system which is a mix of the proportional representation and the first past the post system. This mixed system was adopted at the local government elections in February.
Even if the delimitation is undertaken expeditiously, the issue of how the election should be conducted is still in the balance. Several political parties including the Democratic Left Front led by Minister Mano Ganesan and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress led by Minister Rauff Hakeem want the polls to be conducted solely under the proportional representation system. If they are to have their way, the recently amended legislation would have to be amended again.
The government has maintained that while it has no intention of postponing provincial polls, these issues related to delimitation and the lack of a consensus on the system of elections to be adopted are delaying the polls.
Meanwhile, the SLPP which has been buoyed by its success at the recent local government elections in February this year, where it swept to power in a vast majority of the local councils pushing the United National Party (UNP) to second place and relegating its parent party, the Sri Lanka Freedom party (SLFP) to a distant third position, is calling for immediate polls.
Using state resources
The SLPP feels that it can replicate its local elections victory at provincial polls, if they are held in the present political climate. It also feels that such a victory would provide the party with the ideal springboard to galvanise the masses ahead of the presidential and general elections, due in less than two years’ time.
The SLPP’s de facto leader, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, used the provincial council elections to his advantage when he was in power, staggering them in stages so that state resources could be focussed on the councils that were going to the polls.
Just as much as he cashed in on victory in the Eelam war by holding presidential and general elections in 2010, Rajapaksa kept up the momentum of elections by holding provincial council polls regularly- and winning all of them, except in the Northern and Eastern provinces.
The polls for the councils for which elections are now due- North Central, Sabaragamuwa and the East- were held in September 2012. The United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance (UPFA) recorded convincing victories in Sabaragamuwa and the North Central Province but, despite emerging as the single largest party in the Eastern Province, lost overall control of that council. The UPFA polled 51 per cent of the overall vote while the UNP finished a distant second at these polls, registering 28 percent of the vote.
Elections for the Central, North Western and Northern provinces followed in September 2013. The UPFA again recorded victories in the Central and North Western provinces while the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) easily won the first ever elections held to the Northern Provincial Council. The UPFA polled 56 per cent of the overall vote, compared to the UNP’s 22 per cent.
In March 2014, polls were held to the Western and Southern provinces. The pattern of UPFA victories was replicated again. The slice of the UPFA vote was 55 per cent as against the UNP’s 27 per cent.
It was however the provincial polls held to the Uva Provincial Council in September 2014 that heralded the first sign of trouble for the UPFA. The UPFA won that election but its share of the vote fell to 51 per cent, while that of the UNP jumped to 41 per cent.
Provincial Council elections
The results of the Uva Provincial Council spurred the UNP into action and two months later the party engineered the defection of Maithripala Sirisena to run against Rajapaksa. After the Presidential election in January 2015, a number of UPFA councillors crossed over to the UNP to back Harin Fernando which enabled him to secure the position of Chief Minister, ending the UPFA’s control of the council.
This propelled Fernando into the national limelight. He was to later resign and contest the general elections in August 2015, where he was rewarded with victory and a Cabinet minister’s portfolio. This was not the only instance where provincial council elections have foretold the underlying political sentiments in the electorate.
The Southern Provincial Council elections in 1993 saw the UNP winning 27 seats including the two bonus seats. However, the SLFP led Peoples’ Alliance (PA) and the Democratic United National Front (DUNF), with 22 and 6 seats respectively, joined forces to command a majority. Therefore, the UNP lost power in the Provincial Council.
However, at the time of the budget speech, a councillor, Wimal Fransiscu, went missing. Without his vote, the budget could not be passed and this led to the Council being dissolved and fresh polls being called. It was alleged then that the UNP was instrumental in ‘abducting’ Fransiscu.
However, in the subsequent elections held in 1994, the PA led alliance won 32 seats to the UNP’s 23 seats, obtaining a clear majority.
Therefore, it is not surprising that political parties both in government and the opposition attach great significance to provincial polls, unlike the local government elections which are considered less significant in terms of assessing the national political climate.
At this stage, while the government is in no mood to rush provincial council elections, conversely the SLPP want them held as soon as possible. That is only to be expected because it was their victory at the local government elections that gave the SLPP the fillip that they needed to claim the mantle of an emerging political force.
With the issue now being canvassed in court by the SLPP, it remains to be seen whether they will be held this year and if they do- what they would foretell about the political pulse of the people.
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