It was a victory that has not brought smile. Instead it has forced the Rajapaksa camp to wear a thinking cap and brood over what had made the popular vote plunge by 21 per cent in the Uva provincial election.
The ruling United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance (UPFA) has won 19 of the34- seats to the provincial legislature in the country’s central hills area. Uva is one of the poorest provinces, with the Moneragala district the most poverty-stricken in the country. Around 20 percent of the people are impoverished Tamil-speaking plantation workers.
UPFA has lost six seats. And saw vote share plummet from 72 per cent in 2009 to 51 per cent. In Badulla, the largest district in the province, the ruling combine conceded Badulla, Welimada and Hali-Ela to the opposition. It managed to retain the remaining two seats, Uva-Paranagama and Bandarawela, by a slender margin of around 200 votes each.
A big setback this is to UPFA since Mahinda Rajapaksa is said to be toying with plans to hold Presidential election early next year, nearly two years ahead of time.
Admittedly, the result is reason for the United National Party (UNP) to sport a broad smile though it is in disarray. It improved its seats tally to 13, up by four, and increased vote share to 40 percent, up from 22 percent in 2009. Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP) and United Socialist Party (USP) campaigned for the UNP.
The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) too has put up a good show. Its presence in the UPC will be a respectable as the voters have rewarded it with an extra seat taking its tally to two, and doubled its vote share to about 5 percent.
Political observers see the UPC result as protest against the government. And aver that it fits into a pattern that has been noticed when elections were held in the Western and Southern provinces last March. In both provinces, the UPFA failed to retain its strength; it lost 12 seats in the Western and 5 in the Southern provinces. In the Tamil majority Northern Province, where elections were held for the first time, the UPFA had conceded ground to the TNA, which was seen before the war as a LTTE proxy.
President Mahinda Rajapakse himself had led the campaign and sought a decisive win to strengthen his hands. His main poll theme was that the opposition was conspiring with “foreign powers” and the Tamil Diaspora for “regime change” in Colombo. He had presented himself as a victim of an international conspiracy and as a target of global vilification in the name of war crimes for crushing the separatist LTTE. On the other hand, the opposition went to the town with the allegation that the government had resorted to intimidation and violence against its political rivals. The opposition parties also charged the government with openly using state resources in pump prime its prospects at the ballot box.
Well, President Rajapakse welcomed the Uva result as “a mandate for the government to accelerate its massive development drive”. UPFA general secretary Susil Premjayantha attributed the poll reverses to sticking to the old faces. Failure to field young and new faces in the Badulla District resulted in the seat losses, he said.
The media was less charitable. The Island saw the verdict as a “thundering slap” to the UPFA. “Now that the people of Uva have given it a slap but stopped short of booting it out, the UPFA will have to mend its ways and address the burning issues people are faced with if it is to avert an electoral disaster in the future”, the daily said in an editorial.
The Daily Mirror held the view that the electorate has sent a clear message of disenchantment with the Rajapaksa government.
“The message from the people is clear. They are unhappy and disturbed about the growing disparity between the rich and the poor, the soaring cost of living, the rampant corruption, the breakdown in the rule of law, the lack of accountability or transparency and severe blows to the pillars of democracy,” the daily wrote.
-by m rama rao
