The Kandy News Online Edition
January - February 2009
Email your articles and letters to the: editor@kandynews.net

Home

Provincial Council Elections
UPFA Confident - UNP Relies Heavily on SB contd.

For SB Dissanayaka the stakes are very high. This is his coming out party from court enforced political sabbatical. For him the CPC is a stepping stone to things much higher, perhaps the leadership of the UNP and eventually a shot at the presidency itself. Given the uncertainty surrounding his civic rights the final court ruling will come after the election he is more or less in a win-win situation. The ideal for him would be to win the election we shall analyze the prospects of that shortly and the court rules for him. If he loses the election he still will have a significant political platform as the leader of the opposition in the provincial council as long as the court rules for him. A large personal preference vote for Dissanayaka would send an important political message to the country. Elsewhere in this newspaper we have given figures that show that the highest ever preference vote in a Central Provincial Council election was garnered by Keheliya Rambukwella in 1999 when he polled 141,552. This is the figure to beat.

Both parties and their respective chief ministerial candidates promise a lot of wonderful things for the province and the voter. These range from the usual jobs for the unemployed to better schools, hospitals and roads not to mention special programs to empower women. Both are of course private-sector friendly and would look for additional revenue and foreign assistance. They probably mean well but Sri Lankan voters know better about how election promises are kept.
We spotted one rather innovative promise from Mr., Dissanayaka. He says that he would create five executive councils of the Donoughmore type for the five ministries that will bring in all 58 members of the Council to give them a role in the administration. This is an attempt to make the administration more bipartisan. How successful this would be in practice, if it was ever attempted is yet to be seen.

Finally let's look at the numbers. In this election the province has 1,746,000 registered voters (Kandy 955,000, Nuwara Eliya 452,000 and Matale 339,000). Kandy elects 30, N'Eliya 16 and Matale 10 members to the PC. The winning party in the province gets two bonus seats to make a total of 58 members. To get a majority a party or a coalition group must have a minimum 30 members.

In the 2004 election UPFA won 28 seats polling 426,000 (47.9%) plus the two bonus seat given to the winning party to win a majority of 30. UNP won 26 seats with 410,000 votes (46.1%) and the Up-Country People's Front won 2 seats, both from N'Eliya polling 38,000 votes. In that election the JVP contested as a part of the UPFA and the CWC contested as a part of the UNP. The UPFA had a majority to form the provincial government.

Note how close the results were. In Kandy and Matale UPFA beat the UNP by a margin of two seats in each but in N'Eliya UNP won by the same margin. In a total provincial poll of 889,000 the difference between the two parties was a mere 16,000 (1.8%).

However, today the election is conducted under significantly different conditions. The CWC and the Up-Country People's Front are contesting under the UPFA. This greatly improves the prospects for UPFA in N'Eliya in particular where the Tamil vote is about 57%. But it is not accurate to consider that the Tamil vote is monolithic. There were reports last month that CWC and UPF who are bitter rivals for the plantation vote were clashing in some plantations areas. The UPF even threatened to withdraw from the UPFA coalition. Each of the Tamil parties has produced a breakaway group that supports the UNP. S B Dissanayaka is also said to be quite popular in the Tamil community. Most important there is no reason to assume that the Tamil voters in the Central Province share the same enthusiasm of the Sinhalese for the military victories in the north. However, this is not a sentiment that UNP can openly exploit either for obvious reasons.

The Muslim population is not very significant in N'Eliya but in Matale they account for about 9% of the vote and in Kandy for as much as 13%. Traditionally the Muslims have heavily favoured the UNP. The UNP will get a boost from the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) that is contesting on the UNP list. But the UPFA also has some prominent Muslims in their ranks. The Deputy Minister Faizar Musthapha who is not a candidate is one. A L M Uvais from Udunuwara is an example of a respected Muslim candidate contesting on the UPFA ticket.

The final result will depend very much on how the Sinhalese vote that accounts for 65% of the provincial vote (Kandy 74% and Matale 80%) splits. The government is banking on the success of the war. Apart from the patriotic fervor gripping the Sinhalese community in particular, rural areas that have supplied the vast majority of the soldiers also earn an income from the military. They will give solid support to the UPFA. This was evident in the provincial council elections in NCP and Sabaragamuwa that were conducted last August.

The president's personal participation in the election campaign is the greatest asset working for the UPFA. He has been meeting with key groups in the province from business leaders to academics and using his personal charm and good natured friendship to canvass for his party.

The UNP is pressing home the cost of living issue for what it is worth. This may resonate more with some urban voters than rural voters. But from what one sees in the campaign in the last few weeks S B Dissanayaka's leadership and personality probably would matter more than any other single factor working for the UNP. But he is fighting an uphill battle.

PA is also at a slight advantage when it comes to second rankers. There are quite a few names Thilina Tennakoon, Dilum Amunugama and Lohan Ratwatte to name a few who not only have name recognition but also can mobilize fairly powerful political machines that their senior family members have established in the area. There are some UNP contestants Lucky Jayawardane, Chitra Manthilaka and Shanthini Kongahage for example who also can mobilize their own networks.
As regards networks, one usually unspoken but nevertheless a very real factor is caste. This can be as portent as the ethnic factor in deciding the vote, especially the preference vote. All parties and especially all candidates play this card subtly when it favours them, particularly to get the preference vote. Since 1956 when S W R D Bandaranaike's MEP won the 1956 general election there is some evidence from many parts of the country to believe that the caste issue and social class issues go together to some degree favoring the SLFP and more recently the JVP.

We do not have a scientifically conducted poll to make a forecast of the result. Nevertheless, the data that we have allows us to indulge in a bit of speculation. We have four recent sets of election results to go by, the 2004 October PC election, 2005 December presidential election, 2006 local government elections and the 2008 August PC elections in Sabaragamuwa and NCP.

First, the total poll that we can expect. In the last presidential election in November 2005 just under 80% of the voters in the province cast a valid vote. That indicates a ceiling. But in the provincial poll of 2004 in Kandy and Matale the turnout was around 52% and in N'Eliya 62%. The voter turnout in the 1993 PC election was a high 77% and in 1999 72%. As far as one could see there is no great visible enthusiasm on the part of the voters for the present election. Thus it may be reasonable to expect an average turnout of 60%. In absolute terms this means around 1.1 million votes.

The usual pattern is for Nuwara Eliya to produce a slightly higher turnout because the CWC has the capacity to turn out its bloc vote. Very roughly we can expect around 600,000 to 650,000 votes from Kandy , 300,000 from N'Eliya and 220,000 from Matale. For a party to win a seat it will have to poll around 19,000 votes in N'Eliya, 20,000 to 22,000 votes in Kandy and Matale.

The real issue is the distribution of the poll\among the different parties. N'Eliya is complicated by the fact that in the 2004 PC election and the Nov 2005 presidential election the CWC was with the UNP but this time it is with the UPFA. In Kandy and Matale where JVP has some support the party was with the UPFA in those two elections but is contesting on its own this time except for the Weerawansa breakaway group.

The elections in the last few years give some clues. The JVP polled about 80,000 votes in the 2006 local government elections. In the 2004 general election they got 64,000. In the Sabaragamuwa PC elections last August the party polled 2.2% and in the North Central Province 5.0%. Based on all these figures in CP the likely result for the JVP is around 50,000 votes and two seats next Saturday.

The real question is how the vote will split between the two main parties UPFA and UNP. The UPFA won both Sabaragamuwa (52% to 46%) and NCP (54% to 45%) in the 2005 presidential election. In the 2008 PC election they UPFA increased its vote share by 3 percentage points in Sabaragamuwa to 55% and by 2 percentage points to 56% in the NCP. UNP lost 6 percentage points in Sabaragamuwa down to 40% and 7 percentage points down to 38% in NCP. Note that the UPFA gained a few percentage points in each of the two provinces despite JVP contesting independently.
But in the case of Kandy and Matale the UNP won in 2005. ThusUPFA has to fend off the JVP challenge and also catch up with the UNP. The 2004 PC election results as well as the 2006 local government elections results suggest that it is likely to happen in the absence of a huge poll surprise. A swing of 6 percentage points for the UPFA will put it ahead and in Kandy and in Matale a swing of 3 percentage points. In the case of N'Eliya a massive swing of 20 percentage points is required. It is likely that the CWC and a UPF would be able to deliver that to the UPFA.

In elections there can be surprises. But as of today the situation appears to be more favourable to the UPFA. But S B Dissanayake is a fighter and it is always risky to under-estimate him. Either way the next Central Provincial Council is bound to be an interesting place that would attract the attention of the people beyond the boundaries of the province.