Tuesday 17th June, 2025

The battle for control of the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) is over. It was a foregone conclusion that the SJB and its allies would not be able to slam the brakes on the NPP juggernaut in Colombo. NPP councillor, Vraie Cally Balthazaar, was elected Colombo Mayor yesterday. She received 61 votes while Riza Zarook of the SJB polled 54 votes. Her election was preceded by a row over how the election should be conducted—by a show of hands or a secret ballot. The NPP asked for a secret ballot, but the Opposition pushed for an open vote; the former prevailed amidst protests from the Opposition. Western Province Local Government Commissioner Sarangika Jayasundara, who presided over the election, decided on a secret ballot. The protesters gave in.

The most democratic way to set about electing the Colombo Mayor—or any other local council head for that matter—would have been to allow the councillors to decide, by a show of hands or a voice vote, whether the election should be conducted by secret vote or otherwise. An open vote allows the public to see whom the councillors accused of having taken bribes vote for.

Interestingly, before the 06 May local government polls, the NPP leaders including President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya vehemently condemned all candidates other than those representing the NPP as rogues who did not deserve to represent the public. Therefore, there is no way the NPP can deny that it enlisted the support of some of those ‘rogues’ to seize control of the CMC as well as other hung local councils though secret votes helped prevent the identities of the non-NPP councillors who voted with it being revealed.

Unfortunate as the showdown in the CMC was, it had a positive side. It made the government and the Opposition lay bare their true faces. Both the NPP and the SJB shamelessly made about-turns on their pre-election declarations that they would not join forces with others to secure control of local councils. But they resorted to horse-trading to gain control of as many as 178 hung councils. They accused each other of bribing councillors holding the balance of power. What their flip-flops signify is that they have no qualms about letting their much-flaunted moral scruples, principles and commitment to democratic best practices fall by the wayside when they safeguard their interests.

The SJB ought to realise that deal-making is no substitute for hard work in regaining popular support and recovering lost ground to win future elections. It has to conduct a vigorous grassroots level campaign; its strategy lacks initiation and engagement at the community-based tier of the polity, where the NPP is still strong, especially in the urban sector though its popularity is on the wane, as evident from the outcome of last month’s mini polls. The SJB has a long way to go before it gains wider recognition as an outfit capable of governing the country. First of all, it should resolve its internal disputes.

It is not prudent for the Opposition to seek shortcuts to power. Anomalies could occur in electoral politics, benefiting some parties and politicians in the political wilderness, due to widespread public resentment at the governments in power and aggressive social media campaigns which are far from organic and backed by algorithmic manipulation and intense click-farm activity. The regime changes in 2015, 2019 and 2024 may serve as examples. Gaining power is one thing but living up to the people’s expectations is quite another.

Ideally, the SJB and others should have allowed the NPP to run the hung councils where it secured pluralities, instead of making use of some legal provisions to manufacture majorities. The NPP is also not without blame for this situation; it has proved that magnanimity is not a trait it possesses.

Manufactured majorities may help political parties achieve their short-term objectives, but they do not help win popular elections. In 2018, the UNP-led UNF retained a parliamentary majority and scuttled President Maithripala Sirisena’s efforts to oust it and dissolve Parliament, but the UNP suffered a humiliating defeat in the 2020 general election, where it was left with only a single National List slot. The SLPP managed to secure the election of Ranil Wickremesinghe as President in 2022 and retain a majority, but it was reduced to three seats in the 2024 general election.

The mixed representation system, under which the LG polls are held, has some serious flaws, which need to be rectified. However, the political parties and their leaders should also be blamed for the unholy mess the LG system finds itself. They lack maturity and commitment to democratic best practices. The need for a conciliatory political culture cannot be overstated.

The question is whether the government and the Opposition can be expected to bring about national reconciliation when they cannot so much as adopt a conciliatory approach to running the hung local government institutions in the best interests of the public.

Monday 16th June, 2025

Archbishop of Colombo Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith can be proud of many achievements; yet one key mission remains unfulfilled—his endeavour to secure justice for the victims of the Easter Sunday carnage. During a service at St. Anthony’s Shrine, Kochchikade, on Thursday, he expressed disappointment with the incumbent government’s failure to fulfil its pledge to have justice served to the victims of the 2019 terror attacks. He lamented that a slew of recommendations made by the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI), which probed the Easter Sunday terror attacks, had gone unimplemented. He criticised the Attorney General’s Department for not implementing the PCoI recommendation that legal action be instituted against a former President and some police and intelligence officers for their negligence.

The Archbishop’s disappointment is understandable. Ably assisted by others, he led a successful campaign to prevent a bloody backlash following the Easter Sunday terror attacks, which claimed over 270 lives and left hundreds of others injured. Appealing for restraint, he made a solemn pledge to ensure that justice would be served expeditiously. Six years have elapsed and we have had three governments and four Presidents since the carnage that shook the world. The SLPP came to power, promising justice to the victims of the terror attacks. So did the NPP. Those promises stood both parties in good stead electorally in 2019 and in 2024 respectively. The NPP is lucky that Cardinal Ranjith did not slam it in the run-up to the 06 May local government elections.

Sri Lankan politicians are very ‘promising’. They are apparently adept at only one thing— making promises. They have turned elections into promise-making contests. One may recall how the SLFP-led United Front promised ‘rice from the moon’, of all places, and garnered favour with the rice-loving electorate to win the 1970 general election. In 1977, the UNP promised a righteous society, but after being ensconced in power, it had a notorious killer and rapist given a presidential pardon and released from jail and resorted to barbaric violence to retain its hold on power.

Isms that Sri Lankan politicians profess may be different, ideologically and politically, but there is one particular ism that serves as a common denominator of all of them—their adherence to Machiavellianism. Their guiding principle appears to be that ‘the promise given was a necessity of the past; the word broken is a necessity of the present’. So, it is not surprising that the SLPP reneged on its promise to Cardinal Ranjith, and the NPP has done likewise.

It has been alleged that the SLPP government delayed investigations into the Easter Sunday attacks as it wanted to cover up some military intelligence officers’ links to the terrorists who carried them out. Those who were seeking justice for the terror victims pinned their hopes on the NPP. But the Public Security Ministry and the CID are now under the influence of two former police officers who were at the helm of the CID at the time of the Easter Sunday attacks and faced allegations of failure to act on warnings of impending terror strikes in 2019; these officers were catapulted to their current high-level positions because they are prominent members of the NPP’s Retired Police Collective. So, the integrity of the CID probe into the Easter Sunday carnage is already compromised, as we have argued in a previous comment.

It is doubtful whether even the main Opposition party, the SJB, will go all out to have the Easter Sunday carnage thoroughly probed in case of being able to form a government, for its seniors were in the Yahapalana government, which the PCoI has held accountable for the tragedy. “The dysfunctional Government was a major contributory factor for the events that took place on 21st April 2019. The Government including President Sirisena and Prime Minister is accountable for the tragedy” (PCoI Report, pp. 470-471). The JVP backed that UNP-led administration to the hilt by helping it retain a working majority in Parliament.

Thus, having justice served to the Easter Sunday carnage victims, with the help of politicians and political parties, will remain an extremely uphill task. It looks as if the seekers of justice were left with no alternative but to rally the public to accomplish their mission.

Glorious uncertainties define both cricket and power politics—where nothing is more certain than the unexpected. Explosive starts therein do not necessarily guarantee smooth sailing or easy victories; unforeseen trouble comes from unexpected quarters. Whoever would have thought that the people would ever rise against the SLPP government elected by them with a two-thirds majority in 2020, and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former military officer, would head for the hills a little over two years into office? So, it is only natural that the NPP government is experiencing difficulties on all fronts.

The NPP may have expected the 06 May local government (LG) polls to be a walk in the park for it, but their outcome has left 178 out of 339 local councils hung. It has since been trying to seize control of the councils where it obtained more seats than the runners-up, but could not secure absolute majorities. It has also had to bite the bullet and resort to horse-trading, just like other parties, to enlist the support of its rivals to muster working majorities in the councils where it has obtained pluralities.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake warned, before the 06 May LG polls, that if the NPP’s rivals won any LG bodies, those councils would find it extremely difficult to receive state funds, and that it was therefore prudent for the public to vote for the NPP so that their interests would be served better; the government politicians have been repeating this warning since the conclusion of the polls as well in a bid to prevent its opponents from gaining control of the hung councils. But the Opposition parties, especially the SJB, the SLPP, the UNP and the UPFA, have already closed ranks and seized control of several hung councils, including the Kadugannawa Urban Council, the Kuliyapitiya PS, and the Udubeddera PS. The SLPP, which could not win a single council in last month’s election, has had its members appointed Chairpersons in a couple of LG bodies, with the help of other parties!

Whether the NPP government will shoot itself in the foot by carrying out its threat to stop allocating funds to the local councils which the Opposition has gained control of remains to be seen. Such a drastic course of action will lead to battles on both legal and political fronts and cause public opinion to turn against the government, which has promised to adopt democratic best practices and lead by example.

Some of the Opposition parties have formed a common front, and their coming together bodes ill for the NPP, for that will make the ongoing anti-government campaign better focused and more aggressive. This must be a disquieting proposition for the NPP, which has benefited from its rivals’ disunity. The SJB, the UNP, the SLPP and the UPFA have made a public pledge to work together and jointly administer the local councils under their control. It is popularly believed that Opposition alliances formed in a hurry for expediency usually do not last long, but there have been instances where they worked, the 2015 regime change being a case in point.

Going by the outcomes of the general elections during the past several decades, Sri Lanka has shown signs of returning to alternate power shifts, which characterised electoral politics prior to 1977. This trend has become more manifest since 2015. Gone are the days when political parties had solid vote bases. Floating voters now hold greater sway than in the past and have determined the outcomes of elections, especially in 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2024 and 2025.

The NPP has won elections by attracting the swing voters who previously backed the UNF and the SLPP in 2015 and 2019/20, respectively. But there is no guarantee that the NPP will be able to retain their support in future elections. A significant drop in its national vote share in last month’s LG polls indicates that the NPP has alienated a considerable number of floating voters owing to unfulfilled promises, anti-incumbency sentiments, and serious allegations against some of its leaders.

Signs are that the deepening acrimony between the NPP government and the Opposition in Parliament will percolate down to the local councils, further complicating their administration. Ordinary people will be the losers.