The Hindu : Arithmetic and alliances

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 26, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Arithmetic and alliances

By Nirupama Subramanian

COLOMBO, MARCH 25 . Buddhist flags line the road into a rich neighbourhood in the Sri Lankan capital where the Hela Urumaya (HU), or National Heritage, has its election office in a well-appointed home.

A stream of shiny cars constantly disgorges workers and visitors into the office. Inside, women dressed in white — the Buddhist colour of prayer — answer the constantly ringing telephones while an army of men charge in and out of rooms with files and pamphlets in their hands.

Only over a month old, the HU is creating history of sorts. All its 280 candidates are monks, the first time that the Buddhist clergy of Sri Lanka is participating directly in politics.

"There is no party today in Sri Lanka that represents the Sinhala Buddhists who make up 76 per cent of our population. We are contesting these elections to fill that gap in Parliament," said Omalpe Sobitha, the deputy leader of the party and one of its leading candidates.

Describing the two main parties, the United National Front (UNF) and the Freedom Alliance (FA), as steeped in "corruption" and "misconduct," Mr. Sobitha, a monk from southern Sri Lanka, said they were no longer qualified to lead the majority population of Sri Lanka.

Though Mr. Sobitha declared that his party was not against the minority groups of Sri Lanka, the HU campaign pamphlets talk of "sending out" Indian workers from the country and shifting churches, mosques and non-Buddhist businesses from Kandy, which they want declared as a sacred city for Buddhists alone.

The entry of monks into the elections and their accelerated campaign has injected a new uncertainty in the close contest between the Ranil Wickremesinghe-led UNF and the Chandrika Kumaratunga-led FA for the Sinhala vote.

The forerunner of the HU, known as the Sinhala Urumaya, contested the 2000 election. It won just one seat, but its candidates then were all lay people.

"This time it is different. Monks command more respect than ordinary candidates," said Thilak Karunaratne, who founded the HU.

The monks do not consider contesting elections as incongruous with or in any way violating the code of discipline of their vocation.

"The ultimate goal of monks is to give spiritual guidance to the people to prepare them for the hereafter. But for this, we have to play our role in secular life to first guide their conduct in this world," Mr. Sobitha said.

Sri Lanka's proportional representation elections make it impossible for any party to win a huge majority even when there is a wave in its favour. Despite a massive swing for the UNF in 2001, the party had only a one-seat majority, that too, with the support of other parties and independents. Likewise, the Peoples' Alliance in the 1994 elections.

In these elections, where the UNF and the FA are both making a strong case before the electorate on their respective platforms of peace and an absence of economic development, there is no perceptible trend that marks out either coalition as a clear winner across the country.

Before the entry of the monks, arithmetic was clearly on the side of the FA, the coalition of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP).

The combined performance of the two parties in the last election, which they contested separately, put the alliance slightly ahead of the UNF in several of Sri Lanka's 22 districts. Under the complicated election system, the winner in each district is awarded bonus seats and the FA is expected to surge ahead with the help of the extra seats.

The monks could change that. Their campaign, playing on the identity crisis of the Sinhala-Buddhists against the growing political clout of the Tamil and Muslim minorities, closely resembles that of the FA, especially its JVP component. The FA strongholds are in rural Sri Lanka.

But the Hela Urumaya has also begun reaching out to the urban middle-classes who form the main vote-base of the UNF.

``The original feeling was that we cut into the FA's votes. But we are starting to have more of an impact in the cities," said Mr. Karunaratne.

Privately, UNF strategists also admit to feeling the heat of the Hela Urumaya. Even a small dent into the electorate by the monks could have an impact on the results of the election in which neither of the two main political groups is expected to emerge with a clear majority.

But the Hela Urumaya might end up defeating its declared intention of "bringing back Sinhala-Buddhist rule" and preventing Tamil and Muslim parties from playing what Mr. Karunaratne described as the "king-maker" role, as they have done in all elections since 1994.

Its impact on the vote-share of the UNF and the FA will make the single largest alliance to emerge after the elections even more dependent on help from other parties to form the government. There are three political groups that can provide such assistance, and all are minority groups. One is the Tamil National Alliance, a proxy of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which hopes to emerge as the single largest minority party in these elections. The other is the fragmented but still crucial Sri Lanka Muslim Congress. The third is the Ceylon Workers' Congress, a party representing the Tamils who work in Sri Lanka's tea plantations.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

News Update

Stories in this Section

A BREAKTHROUGH CRICKET SERIES

SAVING THE TIGER

India and the U.S.-Pakistan alliance

J&K: legalised discrimination

Arithmetic and alliances

A counterpoint to Dr. Swamy