By C. A. Chandraprema

In The Sunday Island the week before last, this writer posed the question Whether Harin Fernando was going to be the UNP’s new political superstar. (Political Watch 14/9/2014) In the view of this writer, the UNP had managed to get only 25% and 26% of the vote respectively at the Southern and Western provincial council elections held earlier this year and between that time and now absolutely nothing had happened in the UNP to make that party any different to what it was when the previous two PC elections were held.

pic via: facebook.com/murad.mohamed.5209

The only factor that was different was that while the UNP did not have dynamic chief ministerial candidates in the Southern and Western provinces, this time at the UVA PC election, they had a good candidate in the form of Harin Fernando who because of his youth was a suitable candidate to pit against Sashindra Rajapaksa.

At the just concluded UVA provincial council election, the UNP had basically nothing to offer the people of Uva other than Harin. They had not changed their policies or even achieved internal unity. Yet they have achieved a remarkable turnaround in their fortunes at this election. Therefore the credit should go to Harin who led the campaign. This writer will answer the question that he posed the Sunday before last and declare that Harin is now a superstar in the UNP. He has managed to wrench the UNP out of a decade long depression. Of course the Badulla district in which he contested has always been a key power base of the UNP. The UNP always managed to win the Badulla district even in the worst of times. For example when the UNP government fell at the 1994 parliamentary election after wielding power for 17 years, they still managed to retain the Badulla district with no less than 54% of the vote.

At the presidential election held in 1999 which the UNP lost they still managed to come out on top in the Badulla district getting 47.9% of the votes cast as against the PA’s 46.3%. Even at the 2005 presidential election which the UNP lost they still got no less than 53% of the vote in the Badulla district. So this is a district in which the UNP has traditionally had the upper hand. After 2005, with the war victory, the UNP was on the back foot even the Badulla district getting only 32% of the vote at the 2010 parliamentary elections. (We cannot take into account the 2010 presidential election because the UNP did not contest that election) This time with the energy that Harin lent to the election campaign, he seems to have been able to mobilise the dormant UNP vote in the district. Making the vote percentage of a party leap forward by more than 12 percentage points between two elections just four years apart, is no mean feat. Whatever sacrifice that Harin made by resigning from parliament has been fully worth it, if not for him, then at least for the party. Though it may not bring him immediate rewards, in the medium to long term, he will undoubtedly benefit by becoming the UNP’s unchallenged leader in the Badulla district.

Talking of mobilising the dormant UNP vote, the turnaround in the Moneragala electorate is also worthy of note. Several days before the election, this writer did an interview with Vajira Abeywardene the UNP Galle district leader who had been campaigning in Wellawaya. In that interview, Abeywardene said that the the Wellawaya electorate had the highest number of voters in the Moneragala district and that the UNP had got over 31,500 votes in that electorate at the 1999 presidential elections and 39,000 votes at the 2005 presidential elections. He told this writer that he had put in place a mechanism to motivate dormant UNP voters to go to the polling booth and indeed that strategy seems to have worked. The UNP got over 35,500 votes in the Wellawaya electorate at Saturday’s vote. The UNP got just over 12,000 votes in the Wellawaya electorate at the 2010 parliamentary election so this improvement represents an enormous leap forward. All due credit to Vajira for that!

In the Moneragala District as a whole the UNP has not done too well, getting only 31.9% of the vote, but even this represents an enormous improvement over the 18% that they got at the 2010 parliamentary election! In the Moneragala district, too, the UNP is now gradually narrowing the gap to 42% of the vote they polled at the 2005 presidential elections. What is significant about the improvement in the Moneragala district is that it does not have a significant minority vote and the 23,000 plus new votes they had got in just the Wellawaya electorate are all Sinhala Buddhist votes. In the Badulla district however there seems to have been a quiet move to get the minority vote – the Muslim vote and a part of the Indian Tamil vote to the UNP.

The government will have to watch out for this one – minority parties quietly spreading the word among their voters to vote for the UNP while still outwardly remaining in the fold of the government. A comparison of the UVA PC election results with past elections results going back two decades shows that the UNP could not have improved its showing in the Badulla district without significant numbers of minority voters. But when the minority leaders remain within the government while quietly encouraging their voters to vote for the UNP, that gives the impression that the Sinhala Buddhist vote has turned against the government in a big way. Perhaps the government should have a policy of making it mandatory for minority party leaders to appear on the election platform and campaign for the government if they are to remain in the cabinet.

The government should also pay more attention to close allies like the Jathika Nidahas Peramuna. The governments victory in the Uva-Paranagama electorate would have been significantly better had the JNP contested on the UPFA list. The same can be said of the Bandarawela electorate. Though the UPFA lost in the Welimada electorate, they could have reduced the gap to almost next to nothing if the JNP had been within their fold. Having an ally especially someone so prominently associated with the UPFA contesting separately gives people the impression of collapse and this too undoubtedly contributed to the UPFA’s vastly reduced showing in the Badulla District.

Courtesy:The Island