The party of Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake yesterday won a majority in parliament, according to official election results, providing a solid mandate for his program for economic revival.
Dissanayake’s National People’s Power Party (NPP) won at least 123 of the 225 seats in parliament, according to partial results released by the Sri Lankan Elections Commission.
The Samagi Jana Balawegaya, or United People’s Power Party, led by opposition leader Sajith Premedasa, had 31 seats.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Dissanayake was elected president on Sept. 21 in a rejection of traditional political parties that have governed the island nation since its independence from British rule in 1948.
He received just 42 percent of the votes, fueling questions over his party’s outlook in Thursday’s parliamentary elections.
However, the party received large increases in support less than two months into his presidency.
In a major surprise and a big shift in the country’s electoral landscape, his party won the Jaffna district, the heartland of ethnic Tamils in the north, and many other minority strongholds.
The victory in Jaffna marks a great dent for traditional ethnic Tamil parties that have dominated the politics of the north since independence.
It is also a major shift in the attitude of Tamils, who have long been suspicious of majority ethnic Sinhalese leaders. Ethnic Tamil rebels fought an unsuccessful civil war from 1983 to 2009 to create a separate homeland, saying they were being marginalized by governments controlled by Sinhalese.
According to conservative UN estimates, more than 100,000 people were killed in the conflict.
Veeragathy Thanabalasingham, a Colombo-based political analyst, said northern voters chose the NPP because they could not find a local alternative to traditional Tamil political parties, with which they were disillusioned.
“The Tamil parties were divided and contested separately, and as a result the Tamil people’s representation is scattered,” Thanabalasingham said.
Of the 225 seats in parliament, 196 were up for grabs under Sri Lanka’s proportional representative electoral system, which allocates seats in each district among the parties according to the proportion of the votes they get.
The remaining 29 seats — called the national list seats — are allocated to parties and independent groups according to the proportion of the total votes they receive countrywide.
Voters were drawn by the NPP’s cry for change in the political culture and an end to corruption, because they perceived the parties that ruled Sri Lanka so far caused an economic collapse.
Dissanayake’s promise to punish members of previous governments accused of corruption and to recover allegedly stolen assets also raised much hope.
Jeewantha Balasuriya, 42, a businessman from the town of Gampaha, said he hopes Dissanayake and his party will use their resounding victory to rebuild the country.
“People have given them a strong mandate. I am hopeful that the NPP will use this mandate to uplift the country from the present pathetic situation,” Balasuriya said.
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