An electoral rout, more complete than that of the UNP at last week's NWP and Central Provincial elections, cannot be imagined. The overall results of the NWP and CP elections did not have any surprises for anybody. Virtually everybody with any political sense knew that the government would be winning handsomely. To some extent, those in the UNP were reconciled to their fate even before the election was held. But there were unpleasant surprises for both the two main parties. From the government side, one of the most unpleasant surprises was the fact that not a single Muslim PC member was elected on the UPFA list in either the Wayamba or Central Province. (We're waiting to see whether the Puttalam electorate would be able to produce one.) In a previous column, we described the effort put in by Faizer Mustapha in the Kandy district and the president's own efforts in this regard, having Muslims brought to his Kandy residence in their thousands. Despite these efforts, not a single Muslim was elected on the UPFA list in the Kandy district and there are no Tamils either.

But on the Kandy UNP list, there were no less than four Muslim members and one Tamil member. The same was to be seen in the Kurunegala district, where the UPFA had no Muslims or Tamils elected, but the UNP had four Muslims elected. In the Nuwara Eliya district things were worse with one of the government's allies the Upcountry People's Front, not having any elected members at all, while the hitherto powerful CWC had only three members elected. On the UNP list however, three new UNP allies, the National Union of Workers of A.Digambaram, the Ceylon Workers' Alliance of S.Sathasivam got two each while Mano Ganesan's Democratic People's Front got one elected. Thus, what we have seen at this election is a revolution in the plantation areas with the two giants, the CWC and the UPF, felled by three newcomers allied to the UNP. Things are never going to be the same in the plantation areas from now on.

The minority vote

The silver lining in the cloud over the UNP is that they have the solid support of the minorities, both the Tamils and the Muslims in the Central and NWP. In the weeks prior to the election, this column posed the question as to whether the minorities were going to vote for ideology and intangibles or for pragmatism and tangibles like the resources that the government can make available to them. Well, the minorities have voted for ideology and intangibles after all. These elections reverses the gains made by the UPFA at the Eastern Province elections where the Tamil and Muslim vote was almost equally split between the UPFA and the UNP. The Muslim vote of the Central Province has always been with the UNP and it is only after the rise of the SLMC that these Muslims voted outside the UNP. Now with the SLMC back in the UNP fold, they were able to garner the Muslim vote. Then again as this column pointed out, the Indian Tamils have always had a cordial relationship with the UNP since the days of Saumyamoorthy Thondaman and this was reflected in the result.

It has been calculated that around 60% of the Muslim voters in the Kandy district had voted with the UNP and that around 70% of the Tamils had also voted with the UNP. It used to be the belief among the Sinhala voter that the minority voters voted with ethnic parties representing them in order to be able to negotiate deals with the government and to maximize the state patronage coming in their direction. But this election seems to have changed that. The minority voter seems to have consciously voted against state patronage both in the NWP and the CP. It used to be like that in the past when the Muslims came into government with the UNP and went into the opposition with it when it lost. If it is simply the case that this old culture has reasserted itself, then that would be OK. But this tendency to prefer ideology and identity as against pragmatism and patronage is worrisome to some extent. Ideology is always a dangerous thing. The last time we had a minority community more interested in ideology and identity politics was the Ceylon Tamils and we know where that took the country.

If we look at the CP and NWP election results from a different perspective, even if we grant that 60% of the Muslims in the CP voted with the UNP, that would mean that 40% voted with the UPFA. And if 70% of the Tamils in the Kandy district voted with the UNP, 30% had voted with the government. The SLFP has for historical reasons always been a Sinhala majority party. It is always the UNP which had the allegiance of the minority voters. From that perspective, 40% of Muslim votes and 30% of upcountry Tamil votes for the SLFP is not bad at all. One cannot expect the minority vote to be split equally between the UNP and the SLFP given their different backgrounds. Even though the election result in terms of numbers looks like a complete rout for the UNP, They had scored their own minor victories. Among those victories was the whopping 181,781 preference votes scored by the UNP chief ministerial candidate S.B.Dissanayake and the 60% and 70% minority vote.

The fireworks begin

But what floored the UNP was that only about 30% of the Sinhala voters had voted for them. In fact one of the reasons for S.B.Dissanayake's phenomenal number of preference votes is the presence of minorities in that numbers in the Kandy district. Had he contested in the Kurunegala district where the minorities are not present in such numbers, his preference vote count would have suffered. While it is some consolation to the UNP that they have got a high proportion of the minority vote, this many not benefit them as much as it would have some years back. The Sinhala voter today looks with suspicion whenever the minorities gang up to support a particular political party. The very fact that the minorities voted in their numbers for the UNP at this election may well serve to erode the UNP's base further among the Sinhalese. When the UNP central committee met last week, there was much soul searching. Analysing the figures of the defeat, Dr Karunasena Kodituwakku had drawn parallels between the defeat of 1956 and the results in the Wayamba province. He had averred that the main reason why the results of the Central Province did not follow the same pattern was because of S.B.Dissanayake's campaign in the Kandy district. The warning that Kodituwakku sounded was that for the first time the UNP had fallen below the 1956 level.

Ranjith Atapattu had started off the discussion saying that one of the causes for the resounding defeat of the party was because there was no grassroots organization. Taking the Hambantota district as an example he had said that in the past ten years, the district committee had met only once and that there was no unity among the leading UNPers in the district. He stated that all that was happening in the district was that loans were being given out. This was a swipe at Sajith Premadasa who has a micro-credit scheme operating in the district. Premadasa was not present at that meeting of the working committee. Atapattu had also said that while the UNP floundered in this manner, Mahinda was doing a lot of work in the district. The man of the match at that session of the working committee was Irwin Weerakkody, a Wickremesinghe protégé and former organizer for Maharagama, who had stood up and said that the problem of the UNP was a crisis of credibility especially among its own voter base. He had analyzed the election result and said that the people had doubts about Wickremesinghe's leadership.

He stated that after every defeat, a committee is appointed. First there was the Panditaratne Report followed by more committee reports. He described all these as cosmetic solutions. Another point that Weerakkody had raised was the question of many ill-conceived comments that had eroded public confidence in the UNP. The example that he cited was Ravi Karunanayake's comment in parliament that the army was claiming to go to Kilinochchi and going to Medawachchiya and that they claimed to be going to Alimankada and were going to Pamankada instead. Weerakkody stated that he had recently been at a gathering with many army officers, and that some of them had singled out Karunanayake's statement in parliament. Commenting on what Weerakkody had said Kurunegala district parliamentarian Dayasiri Jayasekera said they should try to prevent this from getting into the newspapers.

Dayasiri Jayasekera said that they can't face continuous defeat like this and that the party needed a new approach like that of Obama in the USA. He stated that the party's policy on the ethnic issue needs to be discussed and cleared up once and for all so that everybody could speak with one voice. He also suggested that they bring up the suggestion of the abolition of the executive presidency and form new alliances with other political forces such as that of Wickremabahu Karunaratne and Siritunga Jayasekera.. Rukman Senanyake had responded furiously to this suggestion and said that the UNP should not under any circumstances bring up the suggestion of abolishing the executive presidency at this particular moment because that would only make things worse. He said that if the UNP adopted the slogan of abolishing the executive presidency at this stage, people will say that it was the president who is winning the war and that the only way the UNP can stop the war effort is by cutting the ground from under the president's feet.

Senanyake also opposed the suggestion made by Jayasekera to the effect that new alliances be formed. Senanayake had pointed out that alliances had always been formed by the UNP in the past but that was with parties represented in parliament and that he was opposed to forming alliances with what he called 'three-wheel parties'. Moreover, he had said that he was vehemently opposed to changing the party symbol. He pointed out that Chandrika had won in 1994 not because she changed the party symbol from the hand to the chair but because of her personality.

Taking another swipe at Jayasekera, Senanyake had said that he never changed his stance on the war despite all the criticism directed at him from within the party and that his stand today stood vindicated. Senanayake had said that he was steadfastly opposed to granting police powers to the provinces and the example he cited was that of the situation in Anuradhapura that led to the burning down of Dr Johnpulle's house and the way the police acted on that occasion. His point being that such can be a foretaste of what could happen if the provincial authorities were given complete control over the police. Some months ago when Senanyake welcomed the military victories of the government, he was criticized in the working committee by Jayasekera, as reported in this column at that time. Party leader had to intervene to stop the exchange between Senanayake and Jayasekera.

High profile casualties

After all this discussion in the working committee, what will be the outcome? Not much can be expected. The late Professor Stanley Kalpage, who left the UNP in 1999 after a spat with Wickremesinghe had been scathing in his criticism of the way things were discussed in the UNP working committee under Wickremesinghe. One comment that he had made was that he had been in the working committee from the time of Dudley Senanayake and that in those days they would discuss strategy and now (under Wickremsinghe) the working committee meetings discussed nothing of substance.

Certainly after this election the biggest problem confronting the UNP will be as to how to win back a part of the Sinhala vote and for the government it will be as to how they are not going to let the UNP monopolize the minority vote. The question may be raised at this stage whether the UPFA government has done enough to woo the minority vote. From the time of D.S.Senanayake, the time honoured way to win over minority leaders has been to offer them a share of power at the centre by giving them cabinet portfolios. The example of G.G.Ponnambalam, C. Suntheralingam and Sittampalam coming to mind in the first post independence government and Saumyamoorthy Thondaman's role in the J.R.Jayewardene government. From this point of view the Rajapakse government is well ahead of any previous government with a whole host of minority ministers and non-cabinet ministers.

Amidst the gloom following the NWP and CP rout, the UNP prepared to face the Western PC election. The rule at the Central and Wayamba elections was that all electoral organizers who were not holding elected office had to contest the PC election. It was under this rule that the former Diyawadana Nilame Neranjan Wijeratne was compelled to contest the Central Province election. He was the organizer of the Galagedara electorate. He had in fact tried to avoid contesting on the grounds that contesting a provincial election as an ordinary candidate was beneath him as the former Diyawadana Nilame. But Wickremesinghe had forced him to contest and Wijeratne lost, thus ending his political career. Wijeratne is one of the most high profile casualties of the UNP's newest electoral debacle.

Now, when it comes to the Western PC election, the UNP will be deciding at a meeting of the nominations committee today whether the rule that all electoral organizers who do not hold public office have to contest the PC election will apply to the WPC as well. Information reaching the present writer indicates that some electoral organizers of the UNP not holding any public office at the moment are not going to contest the WPC election. Among those who may not contest are Rosy Senanayake, Karunasena Kodituwakku, Bodhi Ranasinghe and others. It will be interesting to see what the ruling of the UNP nominations committee will be today. One thing that can be said about this rule is that by forcing prominent people to contest a second tier election, the UNP is frittering away valuable human assets on losing battles.

Neranjan Wijeratne, having been the Diyawadana Nilame for twenty years, had the kind of name recognition that could have been put to better use. He could for example been a chief ministerial candidate in some beleaguered province for example. But now that he has lost a provincial election, that's the end of his political career. If the UNP fritters away more prominent people like this, they will be hard put to find suitable candidates at a parliamentary election where national level name recognition is more important than at a provincial or local government election.

Fallen bastions

As is usual after an electoral defeat, there are rumblings within the UNP once again. UNP parliamentarians have been meeting in groups to discuss things and they hope to go in a delegation to ask the party leader to resign and cede his place to Karu Jayasuriya. What will come of this is uncertain. Wickremesinghe himself has absolutely no intention of resigning, not now or ever. Despite his family background and book learning, Wickremesinghe has the attitude of a street fighter when it comes to his position. He has expressly rejected statesmanship in the past on the grounds that a statesman is a retired politician - something that he has no intention of becoming. As is usual in circumstances such as the present, a committee headed by Lakshman Kiriella and Kabir Hashim has been appointed to look into the causes of the UNP's defeat and to recommend any changes that need to be made.

Two matters of serious concern to the UNP is the extremely poor showing in the Kurunegala district where the UNP has been traditionally strong. The proportion of votes in the Kurunegala district that went to the UPFA is over 70%. Yet this is one district where the UNP has always managed to maintain a strong presence and despite the debilitating party splits over the past few years, the UNP still has no less than six parliamentarians - Jayawickreme Perera, Johnston Fernando, Dayasiri Jayasekera, Akila Kariyawasam, Amara Piyaseeli Ratnayake and Indika Bandaranayake - not counting Rohita Bogollagama who defected to the UPFA. In contrast to this, districts like Matara and Polonnaruwa have only one UNP parliamentarian each. Even the Colombo district, where the UNP has always been traditionally strong, has only Wickremesinghe himself, Ravi Karunanayake and Mohamed Maharoof as parliamentarians. They have Mano Ganesan as well, but he has a different agenda to that of the UNP proper. So one could say without exaggeration that Kurunegala was, until this election, the UNP's strongest district. The fact that they have been reduced to less than 30% of the vote even in Kurunegala, highlights the plight of the party.

Another thing that has rocked the UNP to its foundations is the way the Catholic vote has gone in Wayamba. The Catholic vote has hitherto been considered the exclusive preserve of the UNP but the predominantly catholic electorates of Chilaw, Nattandiya and Wennappuwa voted overwhelmingly for the UPFA with the UNP getting only an average of 30% or less of the vote. And this without a prominent Catholic leader in the SLFP after the assassination of Jeyaraj Fernandopulle. One anguished UNPer exclaimed that there was no difference between the Buddhist Sinhalese and the Catholic Sinhalese. The reason he adduced was that there were many members of the armed forces in Wayamba. Another cogent reason, albeit one which may not readily come to mind, is the composition of the first family itself. Catholics have no reason to feel excluded from anything. All this will work to the advantage of Neomal Perera, the young UNP dissident who is presently the deputy minister of fisheries. Perera is tipped to be the next organizer for Chilaw. Relatively young, wealthy and of impeccable Catholic stock, he will be the SLFP's next Catholic leader.

What is significant about the UPFA's victory in the Catholic belt is that this government decided to go ahead with the Norochcholai coal power project regardless of the consequences and despite the objections of the Bishop of Chilaw. The UNP government of 2001-2004 in contrast made preparations to implement the project but abandoned the plan at the last moment for fear of losing the Catholic vote. The UPFA went ahead with the project and now has both the project and the Catholic vote. Thus are the bold in spirit rewarded and weaklings discarded.