By Rajan Philips –

Rajan Philips

The general view seems to be that Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Sajith Premadasa are the clear front runners, but opinions differ as to who is first and who is second depending on which candidate one is rooting for. The general view is also that Ranil Wickremesinghe is running third, but there is no definite indication of how close or far behind he is. Those who support him say that he is surging. But no one is seriously suggesting that either of the front runners could get over 50% to be declared the winner after the first count.

So, for the first time after eight presidential elections, the winner is likely to be determined based on the 2^nd or 3^rd preferential ranks that voters end up marking for either of the first two candidates on the otherwise discarded ballots of the other 36 candidates including the third placed candidate. Importantly, the preferential ranks marked on the ballots of the first two candidates will be discarded and will not be counted against each other!

A run on the Vote Banks

In the 2019 election, Gotabaya Rajapaksa won 52% of the vote, Sajith Premadasa 42%, Anura Kumara Dissanayake 3%, and all others 3%. With Namal Rajapaksa in the fray, the vote for all candidates other than the first three could be significantly higher at 10% or even 15%, leaving 85% or 90% of the votes to be divided among the three main candidates. The vote proportion that Namal Rajapakse manages to get would critically impact what the three main candidates will be able to draw from GR/SLPP’s 52% vote bank.

The biggest loser already is Ranil Wickremesinghe and will lose big unless he is able to get Mahinda Rajapaksa to soften the filial campaign for his son. There could also be some impact on the vote tally of Anura Kumara Dissanayake who is likely drawing the bulk of his expanded new support from the GR/SLPP vote bank. SP too is hoping to draw votes from the same bank, although his primary efforts must be to preserve as much as possible of the 42% sources that he managed in 2019.

RW’s second predicament is that he is not able to peel away as much he would like to from the SP/SJB vote bank. Further, as an independent candidate RW cannot vigorously canvass on old UNP loyalties. The true UNP loyalty hopes for either SP or RW to give up the contest in favour of one of them standing as a single candidate. That is not going to happen. It is not only too late for that, but the voters will also see the cynical ploy in it and punish them by voting for AKD.

There are musings that a good number of those who vote for RW or SP may not choose either man for their second preference, but AKD instead. The palpable reason seems to be that many non-left voters appreciate AKD’s seeming sincerity and his anti-corruption platform but are wary of casting their (first preference) vote for a leftist candidate; hence, the second preference. Another concern about AKD and the NPP among urban middle class voters would appear to be the paucity of information about AKD’s team – especially who would be his economic advisors and who would be his senior ministers in a potential NPP government after the parliamentary election.

That said, Mr. Dissanayake should be commended for positively clarifying on Wednesday, at a meeting in Divulapitiya (as reported in the Daily Mirror, Sept. 4) that the NPP “will not violate the Constitution if elected on September 21,” and that he will continue with the current parliament and government, as required by the Constitution, until parliament is dissolved after one and a half months. But he has promised to make new appointments to the Boards and Commissions of important state agencies on the very morrow of his potential election. That is all appropriate and the people will get an early flavour of a potential NPP government. But we are getting ahead of ourselves here!

All of this is to say something about the simmering vibes that AKD might get a good chunk of second preferential rankings from those who vote for SP or RW. That may prove crucial if preferential votes are counted to determine a winner after an inconclusive (no one passing the 50% mark). Given the way that the 2019 vote banks of GR/SLPP and SP/SJB are expected to be divvied between the three front runners, no candidate is likely to get more 40% on the first count. And what is also likely when preferential are added is that whoever comes first after the first count will remain first and be declared the winner.

There is also a possibility, however remote, that one of the two front runners could end up with a clear (50% +) victory depending on how the two vote banks are drawn from. The dynamic here would be that if those voters who are now leaning towards RW or NR sense that it is either SP or AKD who is going to be the eventual winner, they might abandon RW and NP and migrate to SP or AKD and in numbers sufficient enough to make one of them scale the 50% fence.

This would be a substantial swing in the current situation but quite common in parliamentary elections unlike in presidential elections. Sri Lanka alternates between parliamentary and presidential elections and the former still infects the other. That there will be a parliamentary election immediately following creates a situation of permanent election momentum. This again will favour Sajith Premadasa and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, but not Ranil Wickremesinghe because he is now an independent one-man party with no plan or prospect for the succeeding parliamentary election.      

Ethnic Accounts

There are two other layers in the two main vote banks from the 2019 election. One is the district account and the other makes up the ethnic accounts. Of the 22 electoral / administrative districts, Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the majority of the votes in 16 districts, and Sajith Premadasa in six districts that included the two districts in the Northern Province, three in the Eastern Province, and the Nuwara Eliya District in the Central Province. Of the 42% SP polled, nearly 26% was from the six districts – three of which are Sri Lankan Tamil Majority districts, two where Tamils and Muslims constitute the majority, and one includes significant numbers of the Malaiyaha Tamil community.

Including the numbers of the three groups in the other districts (mostly in the Western, Central, and to a lesser extent Southern Provinces) Sajith Premadasa’s tally would have included about 30 to 35% of all of what could be collectively called the Tamil speaking voters. Maintaining this support, or how these voters divide themselves between the candidates in this election, would be critical to Mr. Premadasa’s outcome on September 21. To be clear, issues and considerations will be specific to and vary between the three groups, or electorally distinct ethnic accounts.

The 16 districts that Gotabaya Rajapaksa won are Sinhala majority districts and accounted for 93.5% of the 6.9 million people who GR repeatedly asserted voted for him. GR ran as an unabashedly Sinhala Buddhist candidate and convincingly won with 52% of the total votes. His victory exploded the plural presuppositions of the elected presidential system – i.e., a winning presidential candidate will require the support of non-Sinhala voters and must reflect their interests.

The redeeming vacuum in this month’s election is that there is no one running as a Sinhala Buddhist candidate of any claim or consequence. Remarkably, Namal Rajapaksa would seem to have closed that chapter for good in the family political book. Ultra nationalists will have to look elsewhere to discover a new authentic candidate. The aftermaths of the 2019 Easter bombings may have their own reverberations on September 21 and influence the voting of the Sinhala Catholics.

But by and large, the Sinhala majority voters are most likely to be concerned over economic conditions and cost of living issues. Even though a sampled majority of them do not think that any of the three frontrunning candidates has a convincing approach to navigate through the current crisis. One would hope that this unsurprising negativity will not result in a lower voter turnout. That will be unfortunate, for it is the voting shifts within this segment of voters that will determine the fortunes of the frontrunners and the eventual outcome.

Put another way, what matters is how the two frontrunners, as well as Ranil Wickremesinghe and Namal Rajapaksa in their side races, will draw on the Sinhala ethnic account to make up the bulk of their vote tallies. To be sure, there are subaccounts within this segment based primarily on socioeconomic circumstances along with locational factors. The caste factor is not as overt in presidential elections, except perhaps in 1988 and 2010, as it is in parliamentary elections where the proportional distribution system becomes a battle over caste preferences.

Going by the 2019 results, Gotabaya Rajapaksa obtained more than 50% of the vote in 15 of the 16 districts where he got the majority vote. The lone exception was Badulla, where he got 49.29%. He exceeded 60% in four districts – the three southern districts and Monaragala. He barely passed 50% in Kandy (50.43%) and Puttalam (50.83%); and  got close to 60% (59+%) in three districts – Gampaha, Kalutara and Ratnapura.

On the other hand, Sajith Premadasa exceeded 40% in five of the 16 districts (Badulla, Colombo, Kandy, Polonnaruwa and Puttalam), and came close to 40% in Matale. Five of these districts include significant numbers of Tamil speaking voters, which again demonstrates the extent of his support from this voting segment in the 2019 election. The Easter reverberations could be a factor in the Colombo and Gampaha districts.

The motivations among the Tamil speaking voters will reflect the state of politics among the Tamils, the Muslims and Malaiyaha Tamils. Anura Kumara Dissanayake has insistently taken a direct approach to the three communities and avoided agency mediation through their political organizations. He is also long on the rhetoric of equality but quite short on the specifics of devolution which is an unavoidable spatial frame for enabling equality. That could be a critical factor for the Sri Lankan Tamil voters and among Muslim voters in the Eastern Province.

The main Muslim organizations appear to have joined the camp of Sajith Premadasa, but an aragalaya of young Muslim voters are being anticipated to support Dissanayake. The Malaiyaha Tamil organizations are divided between SP and RW, some of them exchanging blows on television, while AKD would seem to have made direct inroads into this group and might be able draw from their account.

The Sri Lankan Tamil political organizations are in a state of indecision, if not disarray, over whom to support in the election. Last Sunday, there was a formal announcement that the ITAK (Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchchi) would be supporting Sajith Premadasa and not the Common Tamil Candidate, P. Ariyanenthiran of the Tamil National Common Structure alliance. The ITAK announcement was soon repudiated and is now expected to be reversed in favour of Mr. Ariyanenthiran. That could have consequences for the election. All in all, it is quite a pathetic manifestation of self-determination.