Saturday, 13 December 2014 00:00
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For the first time the total number of registered voters in Sri Lanka has gone beyond 15 million. It is nearly a million voters more than the number registered for the 2010 presidential election. While the figure in 2010 was 14,088,500, the eligible voters in the 2015 election – everyone over 18 years – will be 15,044,490 – an increase of 955,990. The present number is based on the 2014 electoral register.
Contesting the presidential election on 8 January 2015 are 19 candidates – three less than the last Election in 2010. Seventeen candidates are from registered political parties. (There are 65 political parties registered with the Department of Elections.)
Two objections – one raised by Dr. Wijayabahu Karunaratane (against candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa) and by Dr. Nath Amarakoon (against candidate Maithripala Sirisena) were rejected by the Elections Commissioner.
A feature of the Parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka, particularly in the early days, has been the large number of independent candidates contesting. This trend is not visible in the presidential election. In fact, there wasn’t a single independent candidate in the first two elections – in 1982 and 1988 – and in the fifth in 2005. The most number of independents (five) contested in 2010. Earlier, there were two in 1994 and three in 1999. Possibly this is because of the plethora of registered political parties.
Of the registered parties, only a handful is known to be active. The position was quite different in the 1980s. In the first presidential election, all six candidates were from well-known parties. They were from the United National Party (J.R. Jayewardene), Sri Lanka Freedom Party (Hector Kobbekaduwa), Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (Rohana Wijeweera), All Ceylon Tamil Congress (G.G. Ponnambalam), Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Dr. Colvin R. de Siva), and Nava Sama Samaja Party (Vasudeva Nanayakkara). (The list is in the order the candidates secured votes.)
In the second election where three candidates contested, all three (UNP, SLFP and Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya – SLMP) were active parties. Candidates from ‘unknown’ or lesser known parties (the ‘not so serious’ ones) came on the scene thereafter. A high official of the Elections Department recently identified them as “proxies of powerful candidates”.
Even though so many candidates contested, the real contest has always been between the two major political parties – SLFP and UNP. From the third election onwards, no candidate (except the JVP candidate in 1999) from the other parties could muster even one percent of the total votes cast. In the 2010 Election, the total votes polled by 20 out of the 22 candidates amounted to 204,444 (1.9%). They forfeited their deposits totalling Rs. 1,125,000 since who polls less than 5% lose the deposit. (Party candidates have to deposit Rs. 50,000 each while the fee for an independent is Rs. 75,000)
A more recent feature is the emergence of alliances. The trend began with the 1994 Election when the leader of the SLFP, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga contested from the People’s Alliance (PA), which had been formed earlier to contest the general election. She was then Prime Minister, having won that election. The PA comprised of seven parties including the SLFP, LSSP, CP and SLMP. She won a second term in 1999, also as the PA candidate.
When Mahinda Rajapaksa contested in 2005, the PA had changed to the United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) with some parties from the PSA opting out and new parties like the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) joining the Alliance. He won his second term as UPFA candidate and has come forward for the 2015 Election, also from the UPFA.
The UNP continued to field a candidate until the 2010 election when the party decided to support the New Democratic Party candidate Sarath Fonseka who contested as the common candidate of the Opposition. In the 2015 election too, the UNP is supporting the common candidate, Maithripala Sirisena.
