Conspiracy theories, warnings and prudence

Wednesday 4th September, 2024

Conspiracy theorists are working overtime as the presidential election approaches rapidly. Some of them have warned that there is the possibility of certain ultra-radical elements creating trouble during the interregnum between the end of voting and the announcement of the final result in the event of no candidate succeeding in securing more than 50% of the total number of valid votes to win the presidency straightaway, and preferential votes having to be counted; the runner-up and his party will take to the streets, refusing to concede defeat and plunging the country into chaos, and some western powers are likely to step in to install a puppet regime here, conspiracy theorists have warned. Dissident SLPP MP Wimal Weerawansa gave a big fillip to this conspiracy theory in an interview with Hiru TV on Monday night.

Weerawansa is campaigning for the Sarwajana Balaya party in the ongoing presidential race, and therefore one may argue that his claims should not be taken seriously. However, what he has warned of is not unprecedented. Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena has revealed that some Colombo-based ambassadors representing foreign powers pressured him to take over the presidency in violation of the Constitution in the aftermath of the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa amidst mass protests in 2022.

Even in the US, the integrity of the electoral process has not remained unquestioned due to unfortunate incidents such as the vote recount dispute in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, where George W. Bush won against Al Gore. Ahead of the quadrennial US presidential election in 2020, the then President Donald Trump kept on saying that his political opponents would manipulate the electoral process and resort to various malpractices to engineer his defeat. His claim that the presidential election would be ‘stolen’ struck a responsive chord with his supporters, who stormed the US Capitol in January 2021 and disrupted a joint session of the Congress convened to certify the results of the presidential election (2020), which Trump had lost to Joe Biden. That riot marked a new low in US electoral politics, and it was America’s robust democratic institutions and systems that helped bring the situation under control.

In this country, too, a presidential candidate refused to concede defeat. One may recall that following the conclusion of the 2010 presidential election, those who had backed Opposition common candidate Gen. Sarath Fonseka refused to accept the final result, and launched a campaign, claiming that the election had been ‘stolen’, and Fonseka was the ‘People’s President’. They included the UNP and the JVP. They held several protests but subsequently gave up their campaign.

There have also been several instances where public faith in Sri Lanka’s electoral process severely eroded. The 1982 referendum, the 1988 presidential election, the 1989 general election, held during the presidencies of J. R. Jayewardene and R. Premadasa respectively, and the 1999 North-Western Provincial Council election during President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s tenure are cases in point. Those contests were marred by large-scale rigging and violence. The less said about the 18 by-elections held during the Jayewardene government in 1983, the better. Suffice it to say that the then Opposition’s victory in four of them was nothing but a miracle, given widespread violence and rigging the UNP resorted to. Incumbent Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, who won the Maharagama by-election in 1983, cannot be unaware of the despicable methods employed by the UNP, which he has joined forces with four decades later. What enabled the UNP to consolidate its power by winning the presidential and parliamentary polls in the late 1980s through undemocratic means was the JVP’s terror campaign, which helped the Jayewardene and Premadasa governments intimidate voters, chase polling agents away and stuff the ballot boxes.

It may not be advisable to dismiss the aforesaid warning as a figment of the conspiracy theorists’ imagination. Although there is no need to panic because that warning is based on speculation rather than evidence, it will be prudent to have a contingency plan ready to face any eventuality.

One can only hope that the Election Commission, the police and the security forces will take every possible scenario into consideration and act accordingly. There is a pressing need to educate the public on the preferential vote counting process and shorten the waiting period when the entire nation is on tenterhooks, anxious for the electoral outcome. Nothing should be left to chance.