Are alliances the key in Sri Lanka’s up-coming Presidential election?

In the past few weeks newspapers were rife with speculations of a possible presidential or parliamentary election that was ‘coming soon’. Confirming most of these speculations, President Mahinda Rajapakse announced the presidential elections and sent directives to the election commissioner to do the needful in this regard.  Ending the long speculation of the common candidate, the UNF and the JVP also announced that they will field General Sarath Fonseka as their common candidate in the upcoming presidential election. Political analysts are already busy with their predictions on the outcomes of the most awaited hustings.  Political Analysts and regular newspaper columnist who unconditionally supported the Rajapakse regime and General Fonseka during the war are now finding themselves in total discomfiture, as on the one hand, they want to seal their allegiance to President Rajapakse by predicting his potential victory while also being careful not to deny General Fonseka’s ability to be a formidable challenge to that.  I guess, this precarious stance can only be appreciated given the obvious prevailing conditions.

As the incumbent, President Rajapakse has access to public resources and will be able to mobilse the government apparatus for his electoral advantage as all the previous presidents did in the past. In addition, the spectacular victory against the LTTE that ended 30 years of war in the country would definitely make President Rajapakse a more popular presidential candidate than what he was in November 2005.  His personal charisma, Sinhala Buddhist outlook and his links to the South has made him more popular than any party leader in the country. Therefore, as many political analysts pointed out, few months ago, his victory at a presidential election was a highly predictable and an overwhelming one. The opposition’s finding of a potential checkmate in General Fonseka has made making predictions of elections results no longer easy.

Of course, understandably the government is irritable over General Fonseka’s political debut as he has the potential to eat into Rajapakse’s nationalist vote bank. This prompted the government and its allies to further criticize the opposition of being severely weak as they could not find a candidate from their own parties to contest. That is true! So what? What would determine the election result which is highly unpredictable at the moment? Is it the party, personality or something else that plays the central role in the presidential election?

If one looks at the presidential elections around the world we have evidence to argue that in some cases the party and in others’ the personality was instrumental in bringing about electoral victories. In the US presidential election of 2009, probably the world’s most celebrated election victory, Barak Obama used his party machinery to the maximum while exploiting his charisma and his unique social condition elegantly, to draw support across the party lines. If we reexamine the 2005 presidential election in Sri Lanka, I believe that Rajapakse deserved full credit for his marginal victory over the UNP candidate, because he did not enjoy the full benefit of the party machinery that he belonged to at a time when he had bitter relationship with the former president Kumaratunga, who was also the leader of the SLFP. However, he managed to rope in Sinhala nationalist and anti-UNP parties to elevate himself to strong presidential candidate. During the 2005 election campaign, Rajapakse formed his own new alliances with JVP who was at loggerhead with his party, to support his election campaign.

Like in many democracies that practice presidential system, in Sri Lanka’s presidential election also, the main candidates drew electoral support beyond their party bases by using cleavages based politics in addition to the support he/she received from his/her party bases. At the 2005 election, JVP decided to support Rajapakse despite pulling out of the SLFP led government barely a year before. The JHU, who voted against the UPFA in parliament defeating the UPFA speaker candidate DEW Gunasekara, nevertheless, extended their support for Rajapakse at the election.  This shows that presidential candidates, especially the front runners, are not necessarily  prisoners of political parties. These candidates can and would walk across parties using their multifarious skills and strengths while capitalizing on the party allegiance of voters toward his/her party. Hence, I believe even the upcoming presidential election could turn out to be a battle between two individuals with an advantageous potential of ‘the war hero’ walking into Rajapakse’s Sinhala nationalist voter base while also enjoying the support of the bases of the UNP and the JVP.

However, unlike in the previous elections, in the forthcoming election President Rajapakse will be able to fully mobilize not only his party machinery but also his position as the executive president to get himself reelected for the second term. The recently released ‘thousand rupee’ currency note with the identical picture of that on his election campaign poster is perceived as the extreme use of his good office for electoral benefit. On the contrary, his opposition contender, General Fonseka, will resort to mobilizing the party machineries of UNF and JVP who recognize him as their common candidate.  Hence, this time round, candidates will use not only use their own popularity but also party machineries to achieve their goals.

What worked in 2005?
What worked for Rajapakse at the 2005 presidential election? According to the pre-election poll reports (Social Indicator-CPA, 2005), people placed their confidence in the capacity of the UNP candidate, Ranil Wickramasinghe on the issues such as handling the peace process, reducing the cost of living, and Tsunami reconstruction.  Masses felt that Rajapakse is more capable in terms of preserving law and order, protecting Sri Lankan culture, safeguarding the country and protecting their religion. However, the Sinhala community placed greater trust in Rajapakse than in Wickramasinghe on all the issues including the handling of the peace process. On the contrary, the ethnic minority communities, Tamils, Muslims and Estate Tamils placed overwhelming trust in Wickramasinge on all the issues put forward to them. So, it was evident that Rajapakse was a strong preference of the Sinhala community due to his Sinhala nationalist appeal as was shown by the poll results. Hence, despite the overwhelming support of the minorities, Wickramasinghe lost the election simply due to his inability to convince majority of the Sinhala community of the country.

What would work in 2010?
First of all a remarkable difference in the political context then and now are well recognized by the author. The war and the LTTE, that bred the Sinhala nationalism in south is no longer present and as a result has diminished the strength of the ethnic cleavages in mobilizing electoral support in the present political context. However, although, there are attempts to revive the Sinhala Buddhist ultra nationalism (with anti conversion bills etc) that is fast losing its currency, I do not believe that Sinhala nationalism would be a decisive factor at this election. Not only because there is no visible threat to the Sinhala Buddhists that parties can capitalize on, but even if one manages to find such a threat during the election campaign, both candidates are equally capable of tapping into such a nationalist voter base. Then there was widespread anger and disappointment over the UNF peace process and the violence of the LTTE that President Rajapakse greatly benefited from. At present, President Rajapakse and General Fonseka are sharing the same share of credit for destroying the LTTE and achieving what Sinhala national preferred as the best solution to the country’s ethnic conflict. More importantly, the LTTE is not there anymore to impose forced election boycott that helped Rajapakse immensely to achieve his marginal victory over the UNP candidate, Wickramasinghe. Even if the LTTE’s so-called transnational government wanted to enforce election boycott this time, their capacity to make it an effective imposition on Tamils in Sri Lanka is highly doubtful. Therefore, famous campaign issues such as, rampant corruption, establishing democracy, fighting against dictatorship, criticism towards dynastical politics, unemployment, waste of government resources and cost of living etc would once again gain credence in mobilizing voters for or against a candidate.

People decide their party support on the basis of various factors. In a utopian world, voters are adequately informed on party and party policy and they make a rational choice in selecting their party or candidate by maximizing the benefits for them. However, in reality, people hardly know much about the parties and their policies, so, they use some ideological position to distinguish them from other (us vs them). As it was shown in the pre-election poll, once they chose their electoral choice, people considered their candidate as educated, honest, experienced and gifted with good leadership skills, although sometimes quite contrary to the reality. Hence, the million dollar question is what would be that decisive factor that people would use to decide their presidential candidate. Obviously, in the previous election they were ‘ethnicity’ and ‘national security’. If it is competition between socialist and liberal camps we could assume that ‘class factor’ would play a crucial role. However, ironically, in this election the left and the right seem to have found common grounds against the incumbent.

Conclusion
So, how does one rally voters around each candidate in this presidential election?  On one hand, General Fonseka, who claimed that this country belongs to the Sinhala Buddhists seems to beckon minority voters, especially Tamils as the presidential candidate. On the other hand, President Rajapakse, who entertained ultra-Sinhala Nationalist over four years, now claims he is expecting a mandate of the people of the North and East. So, in this context, candidates would not be able to approach neither a rational voter nor an ideology based voter to receive their support. Thus, I can imagine only two possible scenarios.  A worst case scenario would be a highly violent election that would lead to widespread election malpractices allowing certain elements to rob the vote particularly in the recently liberated North and East.  The best case scenario would be that the two candidates and their parties begin a rigorous bargaining process with other smaller parties and also possibly with local representatives of the rival political camp pitching in. Especially as most parties are affected by internal defections, there is a great potential for candidates to approach certain sections of their rival parties in forging alliances. In addition, since minority parties too have shown interest in joining alliances, this option would be further tempting to the main candidates. The candidate who forms the largest alliances would be in an advantageous position to win the upcoming presidential election. So let’s wait and see how fascinating partnerships would emerge in days to come.

Pradeep Peiris is a pollster and he heads the Social Indicator, the survey research unit of the Centre for Policy Alternatives.