By Sarath de Alwis  –

President AKD is attuned to the rhythm of the universe. He has pronounced that only a group better than the NPP would be trusted by people to replace the NPP, come next elections. On September 23^rd President AKD completes two years in office. Two years in office President AKD remains committed to a Socal Contract of State Accountability and Good Governance.

His reading of power is in sharp contrast to his Minister of Agriculture K D Lalakantha who speaks of refashioning the state apparatus as a mirror image of the party in power.

Throughout history, the fleeting nature of political authority has been captured by philosophers, leaders, and writers. ‘Political Power is like a wave of the sea; it rises, it reaches its crest, and then it breaks and disappears.’

This missive is intended to provoke a closer look at the shifting political landscape and discover what lies ahead.

Parliamentary election of November 14, 2024, resulted in an unprecedented political milestone in the history of representative governance since Independence.   

The Election of President AKD and parliamentary elections that followed ended a happy era of ‘politics as usual’ where rival political parties assumed that periodic elections ensured continuity of unabashed patron client politics.

Reform and a Renaissance    

The NPP led by President AKD promised ‘reform and a renaissance’. Together President AKD and the NPP, secured a historic two-thirds supermajority. They captured 159 out of 225 seats.

Contrast it with CBK’s nearly 65% of the national poll that ended with a hung parliament!

Under our complex system of deciding proportional representation in vote counting, assigning   bonus seats, a single-party’s supermajority was historically deemed possible but nearly impossible.

When the NPP achieved the impossible, this computed system arrived at a landslide for the NPP.

They   seized it as an ostensible mandate for radical systemic change. Veteran JVP ideolog Bimal Ratnayake deemed it as a People’s collective crossing of the Rubicon!

He should brush up on his Shakespeare. Crossing the Rubicon is a momentous moment. Even Caesar spurred his horse with his historic epigram ‘Let the dice fall’!

Dazed by the rapid shift in fortunes, the defeated political factions appear to be sleepwalking through the political landscape.

The recent JRJ commemoration, which saw SP and RW pledge unity and collective resolve, expose the profound hypocrisy embedded within the Grand Old Party and its prodigal offshoot.

Indeed, JRJ opened the economy. Under his watch the 1983 pogrom unfolded. A Separatist war intensified in the north. We watched another uprising in the south.

In response the State Apparatus was made an instrument of terror. Under his successor Ranasinghe Premadasa systemic abuse of power reached proverbial proportions.

Under the Coman Man’s President R Premadasa, the National Carrier Air Lanka ordered Two Airbus A320 narrowbody jets and five Airbus A340-300 widebody jets.

CBK administration reduced the order. It was a different time and a different world. Airbus Industries, a consortium of several European Countries, was competing with Boeing.

Airbus Industries based in Toulouse France devised the system of financing sales of their own product by innovative propositions including ample grease to seduce third world clients and Arabian oil producing kingdoms. SLFP parliamentarian C.V. Gunaratne at the time queried Air Lanka purchase of Airbus in parliament. UK’s Office of Seirus Frauds appeared years later!     

Out of the abyss

Crawling back out of an abyss is no easy task. NPP victory passed the torch to a new generation of mostly monolingual yet politically savvy activists.

The parliamentary election despite its quirks in the form of national list members of opposition groups decisively finalized the collapse of traditional political dynasties and crony networks.

Most notably the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) the Rajapakse Family’s political machine was reduced to near oblivion.

However, beneath the surface of this historic victory lies a complex electoral reality.

Rather than indicating an absolute consensus across the population, the NPP’s supermajority was heavily amplified by opposition voter fatigue, strategic fragmentation, and the collapse of the traditional base of clientelist politics that greased successive governments since Independence.

If the NPP assumes that their parliamentary dominance equates to a permanent, rock-solid nationwide consensus, it would be a dangerous political miscalculation.

Strange Math of Calculating Proportionality and Voter Turnout accounts for the NPP’s super majority.

A nuanced analysis of the data reveals that the NPP’s leap from a 42.31% vote share in the September Presidential election to a 61.56% vote share in the November Parliamentary election was not solely driven by a massive influx of new converts.

Instead, a major catalyst was the collapse of the voter bases of Sajith Premadasa, Ranil Wickremesinghe and of course Mahinda Rajapakse. Politics as usual has ended with the election of President AKD.

During the presidential election, the combined opposition of Sajith Premadasa of the SJB managed 32.76% and independent incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe got 17.27%. Together it was a clear majority of over 50% of the active electorate.

Just two months later, the SJB’s raw vote count plummeted drastically to just 1,968,716 votes (17.66%), while Wickremesinghe led New Democratic Front (NDF) managed only 500,835 votes (4.49%)

This steep decline highlights a critical phenomenon: a vast portion of the electorate that voted against President AKD in September chose to stay home in November.

Demoralized by the presidential defeat and foreseeing a similar setback as a foregone conclusion, those voters who opposed the AKD candidacy defected via non-participation.

Because the proportional representation system allocates seats based on the percentage of ballots cast, this selective apathy artificially inflated the NPP’s seat conversion rate, granting them 70% of parliamentary seats on roughly 61% of the vote.

Illusion of Solid Support Base 

A disorganized opposition must not be mistaken for a permanent expansion of the NPP’s ideological base. The collapse of the SLPP to a meager 3.14% and the division of centrist voter base between the SJB and NDF left a vacuum that the NPP easily swept through.

The last parliamentary election was a “rejection of the old guard” and a conditional “acceptance of the new.”

The NPP masterfully exploited on post Aragalaya anti-corruption sentiments and the desire to break free from the ruling elites accumulated folly that culminated with the 2022 economic crisis and sovereign default.

However, a significant portion of their parliamentary support is a “protest vote” rather than a deeply rooted ideological alignment with any left-leaning socioeconomic policies. The NPP knows it.

The opposition remains fragmented, but if a cohesive, credible alternative emerges or if economic hardships persist, the voters who sat out the last parliamentary elections may well decide to re-engage in defining the contours of our way forward, fracturing the fragile consensus the NPP currently claims it enjoys.

Governing past Supermajority

I was 28 years old in 1970 when the Unitd Front Coalition beat the Dudley Senanayake led Government with a two thirds majority.  I was 34 years old when JR’s UNP beat Prime minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s government with a five sixth majority. I have witnessed unfolding history.

History warns that supermajorities in Sri Lanka have always been a double-edged sword. Earlier Presidencies that wielded two-thirds majorities namely President JR’s and Presidents MR and GR all succumbed to hubris, misinterpreting parliamentary dominance as absolute immunity, which ultimately led to policy overreach and public backlash.

President Dissanayake’s administration faces the monumental task of balancing its anti-corruption, social welfare rhetoric with the rigid fiscal constraints imposed by international lenders like the IMF.

With a parliamentary supermajority, the NPP can no longer point to legislative obstruction or deep-state interference to excuse slow progress.

Every policy failure, economic bottleneck, or delayed reform will rest squarely on their shoulders

Inescapable Conclusion

The 2024 parliamentary election undoubtedly re-mapped the contours of Sri Lankan politics, shattering long-standing barriers and giving the NPP an unprecedented tool for governance.

That said, the 159-seat supermajority is an institutional distortion produced by opposition fragmentation and selective voter turnout, rather than a reflection of an absolute, monolithic national consensus.

To govern sustainably, the NPP must respect the nuances of this mandate. Treat the supermajority not as a blank check from a unified populace, but as a fragile window of opportunity granted by an electorate waiting to see if the rhetoric of change can survive the reality of governance.

On moral issues there can be not left or right.  It is either right or wrong.