The SJB yesterday called upon the NPP government to hold the much-delayed Provincial Council (PC) polls soon. Its call is bound to go unheeded, for the JVP/NPP is not ready for an election. Having suffered a string of defeats in the cooperative society elections during the past several months, the government is trying every trick in the book to postpone the PC elections further. The outcome of last year’s local government polls is not something the JVP/NPP can be really proud of; its efforts to sweep the polls did not reach fruition although it managed to bag a majority of local councils.
A midterm electoral setback could be the undoing of a government however powerful it may be. The fate that befell the Mahinda Rajapaksa government following the Uva PC polls in September 2014 is a case in point. The UPFA won the Uva PC, but the number of its seats dropped from 25 to 19. The number of UNP’s seats increased from 7 to 13. The JVP, which had only one seat in the previous council, secured 02 in 2014. President Rajapaksa, in his wisdom, advanced a presidential election, and lost the presidency to Maithripala Sirisena in January 2015.
So, it is highly unlikely that the NPP government will hold the PC polls anytime soon. The Opposition is not strong enough to pressure the government politically to take a huge electoral gamble by holding an election.
It is doubtful whether the Opposition is really keen to face an election at this juncture despite its rhetoric. The SJB and other Opposition parties have closed ranks and defeated budgets in a considerable number of NPP-controlled local councils and won cooperative society elections. But their fragile unity is not going to survive an election that they will have to contest separately. A split in the anti-government vote will stand the JVP/NPP in good stead. However, the situation is likely to change if the UNP and the SJB come together to contest future elections.
What enabled the UNP to improve its electoral performance in the Uva Province in 2014 and gain a strategic opening to topple the Rajapaksa government a few months later was a rapprochement between two factions led by Ranil Wickremesinghe and Sajith Premadasa.
The SJB leaders who are demanding that the PC polls be held soon ought to tender an apology to the public for the role they played in postponing the PC elections indefinitely in 2017 while they were in the UNP-led Yahapalana government. The UNP and the SLFP, as Yahapalana allies, were wary of facing an election in 2017 and therefore amended the PC Elections Act to delay the PC polls. None of the political parties represented in Parliament at the time, including the UNP, the SLFP/UPFA, the ITAK, the SLMC, and the JVP, opposed the obnoxious amendment to the PC Elections Act. The current SLPP leaders were dissident members of the UPFA. The original amendment Bill was to provide for a quota of 30% for female candidates on the nomination papers submitted for the PC elections, but it was changed beyond recognition at the committee stage to facilitate the postponement of the PC polls. Article 78 (3) of the Constitution says, “Any amendment proposed to a Bill in Parliament shall not deviate from the merits and principles of such Bill.” But the aforesaid political parties took the bad amendment for granted; the PC polls were made to disappear, as it were.
The incumbent government has said the PC polls will be held under the Mixed Proportional (MP) system. The delimitation of electoral boundaries, which is a prerequisite for holding the PC polls under the MP system, will take about one year, according to the Election Commission. The only way to hold the PC election soon is to legislate for it to be conducted under the existing Proportional Representation system. If the SJB is serious about having the PC polls held soon, it should campaign for amending the PC Elections Act, in Parliament. Let it be urged to fish or cut bait.