Ruling JVP-NPP strategists would be tearing their hair to make head or tail out of Tuesday’s nationwide Local Government (LG) Election results. Independent of their unconvincing cover-ups, of which there are many already, they should be wondering as to why they lost a substantial 18 per cent vote share that they had added in the parliamentary elections over the presidential polls, but vanished again this time round.
For the ruling combine, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake polled 42.31 per cent votes. This went up to a heady 61.56 per cent in the parliamentary elections but is back to 43.26 per cent now. In the magic called ‘second-preference vote-count’, the addition of just 100,000-plus votes could skyrocket this figure to a surprisingly high 55.89 per cent is what now stands exposed, so to speak.
Against this, the runner-up Sajith Premadasa’s (SJB) tally went up from a moderate 32.76 per cent to a substantial 44.11 per cent, by the addition of 167,000-plus votes between the two rounds is what added mystery to the JVP-NPP myth. The additional 18 per cent that the Dissanayake leadership added to the pool in the parliamentary elections, giving them a convincing 159 members in the 225 Parliament, is what political magic is made of in this country.
Simply put, this 18 per cent add-on voters between the presidential and parliamentary elections have deserted the JVP-NPP combine. Or, that is what the vote count in the Local Council Polls. True, the issues are different among all three elections, and they are very complex in the LG Polls, where personalities and personal relations at the grassroots level, too, play a substantial part.
All told, yet, there are reasons to conclude that this 18 per cent were mostly the votes of the traditional pool of ‘non-committed voters’, whose actual figures are much more. When voting in the Presidential Election, they were possibly wary about the JVP, going by their unforgettable and at times unforgivable track record.
Yet, when it came to the question of ‘political stability’, this 18 per cent ensured that President Dissanayake had the right numbers in Parliament, to give him a full five-year term without threat from his political adversaries. Recall how UNP campaigners were telling the nation that past President Ranil Wickremesinghe would be back in power in six months and how SJB leaders, starting with Sajith Premadasa, were parroting that the Government would not last more than two months, and they made the decision for the undecided voters.
There was no such threat to the stability of the Government or the President’s command over Parliament when it came to the LG Polls, so the undecided voters decided to go their way. Or, so it seems. Did they necessarily want to desert the JVP-SJB out of sheer habit, or did the latter fail to retain them? The latter seems to be the case.
Figure of speech
The ‘figure of speech’, if that is one, over the poll percentages does not stop there. Interestingly, the Rajapaksas’ SLPP, which polled a measly 2.57 and 3.14 per cent vote shares in the past two outings, has trebled the figure to nine-plus per cent this time. Already, you have Namal Rajapaksa shouting from rooftops how it was the first step towards the SLPP (and the Rajapaksas) reclaiming power in the next Presidential Election.
Against this, incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was pushed to a distant third place in the presidential poll with a 17 per cent vote share and a low 4.49 per cent in the parliamentary election, has just managed to retain 4.69 per cent in the LG Polls. By itself, the UNP-led combine’s vote share in the parliamentary polls and the local government elections should hold the electoral logic in place.
If Wickremesinghe got more votes than what the UNP combine’s core entailed, it owed to the belief that he had managed the economy well in the post-Aragalaya era, and needed to be thanked and even allowed a full elected term. Today, after the LG Polls, the Wickremesinghe camp may not have it in them to talk about an early return of the ageing leader. Former Minister and camp-crosser Rajitha Senaratne, too, would have to think many times more before coming up with such wild claims hereafter.
For now, for the UNP combine, Wickremesinghe has promised to support SJB in local bodies, starting with the prestigious Colombo Municipal Council, if that would help keep the JVP-NPP wolf away. Figures for the Colombo Council will require more than the UNP seats and votes to make it happen, given the distance that the SJB has to cover to catch up with the ruling combine – which, however, has not crossed the halfway mark this time, either.
The Colombo Council has 117 seats, of which the NPP has obtained only 48. They are followed by the SJB (29) and the UNP (13). The SLPP has five, and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), ordinarily an ally of the SJB, has four.
Even granting that all of them stay together, both the NPP and the NPP-rivals would require more support to make the numbers to be able to run the city council. The worst part is that either camp that gets to have its major is going to face defection threats at every turn, and could well begin wondering if it was at all worth the risks to their national image, after a point.
For the record, the UNP is losing the capital’s cosmopolitan council for the first time in 50-plus years. For the same reason, the centre
-left JVP-NPP would want to have their mayor hoisted on the city council, in a now-or-never battle of minds rather than of wits. For the very same reason, the other, centre-right camp would not want to have it.
Grassroots presence
Where does it all lead to? The JVP-NPP needed to win as many local councils, or at least as many local council seats as possible, for more reasons than one. To begin with, they needed control over downstream elected bodies to smooth out the governmental processes, where they are still in the long and unending learning curve.
Two, and more importantly, the NPP / JVP strategists should acknowledge at least now that their previous performances were ‘accidental’ after a point, and that they needed to have a greater grassroots-level presence if they could hope to retain it. The Local Government Election results have helped them do just that. It has, however, not given them the dominance at the grassroots, as they had wished and hoped for.
More importantly, the JVP-NPP needs this grassroots-level support, which they did not have, at least as much, in the past. They will need to stabilise it and expand it, if they have to win the Provincial Council Elections that are now due for years, if not ages, followed by the next round of presidential and parliamentary polls.
The question now is whether the PC Polls will be held, as indicated later this year, or if the Government will want to delay it further, based on the visible outcomes of the LG Elections. If so, what if someone moves the Supreme Court as they did in the case of the LG Polls and the Honourable Judges set a deadline for the Election Commission (EC), and also the Government, in the matter.
After all, the JVP, while in the Opposition, was crying loud over the delayed LG and PC polls, and rightfully argued that there was no justification for either – barring the Covid period. It is another matter that the Covid hit the nation and the world long after the legitimate deadlines for the two elections had long since passed – and more so in the case of the Provincial Council Elections.
The fact remains that the Government combine has to prove itself between now and the PC Polls if it has to make the grade. Then, it will have to win most, if not all, PCs if it has to be seen as the front-runner in the Presidential Election, whose fate would also be decided by the constitutional reforms that President Dissanayake has put off until his third year in office.
It is here that the LG Poll results in the Tamil North and East will stand out. After snubbing their own Tamil polity and leaders of long, relatively in favour of the JVP-NPP, if only to make a point, the Tamil voters of the North, especially, have gone the ITAK way in particular.
Even then, they have not trusted the ITAK entirely. For ITAK to make sense of the outcome, they will have to (learn to) work with other Tamil groups, especially Gajan Ponnambalam, who is steadfast in his politics and personal ambitions. But ‘Tamil demands’, starting with a common federal platform, is going to haunt the NPP, which has been taunting them all through the past months, since the Parliamentary Poll victories, especially in the northernmost Jaffna District.
All of it together says more than what is visible, and all of it hides more than what is visible!
(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst and Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)