Sri Lanka Parliamentary Election - August 17, 2015

[politicus]

On January 12 President Sirisena announced he would hold a parliamentary election shortly after completing a 100 days reform program, so most likely in late April. New elections was one of his central campaign promises.

http://www.dw.de/sri-lankas-sirisena-announces-parliamentary-elections-swears-in-new-cabinet/a-18186301

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-2906325/Sri-Lankas-new-leader-delays-forming-cabinet.html

[politicus]

Rajapakse's Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) split after their leaders defeat when a section of its Central Committee broke away and pledged support to Sirisena.

[politicus]

Not particularly surprising. So are we going to see something like SLFP-Sirisena and SLFP-Rajapaksa?

No, there was a split - also in the parliamentary group, but it turns out Rajapaksa actually gave up. The CC was split 55-42 in Sirisenas favour, so his side would have inherited the party assets anyway.

https://www.ceylontoday.lk/51-82528-news-detail-slfp-seconds-from-splitting-hands-over-party-reigns-to-ms.html

Still, now that the government is going to investigate Rajapaksa for a conspiracy to hang on to power illegally and his inner circle for corruption there will likely be some desertation of Rajapaksa loyalists.

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So he's just completely folded? How long before he ends up living in a flat in the City of Westminster then?

He could also end up living in a jail in Sri Lanka if convicted for the coup attempt/conspiracy. Not sure if they would risk that, though - exile would seem preferable, if not exactly just. But they are certainly going for a conviction for the coup attempt/conspiracy. Also lots of corruption he could be charged for.

The 100 day trimming the bloated bureaucracy/establishing anti-corruption measures reform program is fairly ambitious.

Sirisena has reduced the cabinet from 67 to 27. He has promised to do away with most of the executive powers of the presidency, but is so far also Minister of Defence as constitutionally mandated. They need a new parliament to start changing the constitution.

All "political appointees" in the civil service will be purged (and this process has started). Diplomats appointed by Rajapaksa are being recalled and hundreds of civil servants have been told to resign.

There are supposed to be independent public commissions set up to oversee the judiciary, police, public service and elections department, so no direct influence of the government on these institutions (in principle).

The Tamil National Alliance has refused to join his unity government, but say they support the 100 day program.

[politicus]

Regarding who is in charge in Sri Lanka it is generally assumed that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe (65) from UNP (also PM 1993-94 & 2001-04) and former President Chandrika Kumaratunga (69) (1994-2005) from SLFP are the two most influential figures, also more influential than Sirisena himself. The question is who SLFP will choose as PM candidate and if they will even run a candidate against Wickremesinghe or go for a grand coalition in order to reform the country.

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Rajapaksa says he will try to become PM, because the new government has "endangered the country's unity" by being soft on the Tamils.

http://news.yahoo.com/sri-lankas-ex-president-rajapaksa-vows-political-return-153255896.HTML

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The government has given up it's plan to call an election on April 23 to be held in mid-June as it needs more time to get it's reform program implemented and fears a Rajapaksa comeback if it hasn't delivered on reform promises and gotten at least some corruption convictions of old Rajapaksa cronies.

Since Sirisena is not obliged to call an election before April 2016 he may postpone it until next year.

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This looks like it is going to be a very complex rematch between Rajapaksa and Sirisena. I will not go into details about the parties, since I did that in the presidential election thread, but try to present the basics.

After he defeated Rajapaksa Sirisena was elected chairman of their common SLFP party, but it remained  dominated by Rajapaksa loyalists and he relied on the right wing UNP as the dominant party in his government (which also included some of his own SLFP supporters, but not the party as such), while most of SLFP tried to block his reform agenda (he has basically just been able to curtail his own presidential powers..). To break the deadlock and avoid getting totally dependent on the right wingers in UNP (and former president Chandrika Kumaratunga) he invited SLFP to officially join his government and became chairman of the broader UPFA alliance (the alliance around SLFP Rajapaksa formed). This alliance with the Rajapaksa loyalists in SLFP put him in a dilemma since Rajapaksa's supporters wanted the ex-President to become UPFA's PM candidate and Sirisena's supporters wanted the him to prevent Rajapaksa from getting on the party's candidate list at all. Sirisena chose to accept Rajapaksa as a parliamentary candidate, but not as UPFA's PM candidate. Officially their PM candidate will only be decided after the election. Sirisena's supporters then formed the United National Front for Good Governance (UNFGG) with UNP and some Muslim and Tamil parties + a group of Sinhalese right wing nationalists in order to combat Rajapaksa and UPFA.

So Sirisena is the nominal leader of the party/alliance dominated by Rajapaksa loyalists, while his own supporters (still officially part of SLFP) and the Prime Minister (Ranil Wickremesinghe from UNP) in his national coalition government are running against it! He is therefore officially neutral.. but rumoured to still prefer his supporters to win (many of whom claim he has betrayed the "revolution"  by allowing Rajapaksa to run).

Simple as that

[politicus]

There are 225 seats and 196 will elected in 22 multi-member constituencies using PR, while the remaining  29 seats will be allocated in proportion to the parties share of the national vote.

Some parties contest in some constituencies as part of an alliance and in others under their own banner.

There are 21 parties, but more than 200 groups without party status are also contesting.

Main parties/alliances:

United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA), the Rajapaksa loyal part of SLFP and their allies (mostly small leftist parties, a couple of Tamil "collaborator" parties (pro-government paramilitaries from the civil war) + the UNP breakaway Liberal Party and the Hill Tamil plantation workers Ceylon Workers' Congress)

United National Front for Good Governance:

- the Sirisena loyal minority part of SLFP
- United National Party (UNP), Conservatives
- Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC)
- All Ceylon Muslim Congress (ACMC)
- Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA), Indian or Hill Tamils
- Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU)/National Heritage Party, Sinhalese Nationalists/Buddhist fundis


Other important parties:

Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)/People's Liberation Front, Communists, running in all constituencies.

Tamil National Alliance, Sri Lankan Tamils, only running in the five (Sri Lanka) Tamil majority constituencies in the North and East.

Democratic Party, former Army Chief General Sarath Fonseka's officially Liberal party.

Buddhist National Front (Bodu Jana Peramuna), an alliance between the Sinhalese/Buddhist extremist Bodu Bala Sena and United Lanka Great Council (Eksath Lanka Maha Sabha), running in the 16 Sinhalese majority constituencies.

[politicus]

I hope Sirisena wins again. He's been great so far. I take it he will continue to improve relations with India? That'd be good although Modi still sucks, I don't care how big a landslide he got.

Rajapaksa is a bigot and too willing to let China overrun the country, like building that new port and airport near Colombo. 

There is the interesting question to what extent Sirisena is his own man at this point, but he has clearly tried to distance himself from his backers.

The aftermath of this election will be at least as interesting as the actual results.

[politicus]

God, FPTP probably Fs up Sri Lanka more than any other country. The seat totals are never anywhere near proportional.

There are 225 seats and 196 will elected in 22 multi-member constituencies using PR, while the remaining  29 seats will be allocated in proportion to the parties share of the national vote.

Some parties contest in some constituencies as part of an alliance and in others under their own banner.

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UPFA's main mistake was not trying to get JVP to join it in an alliance like in 2004 and 2005.  But I guess for that to take place Rajapaksa has to be in the background which is a no go from his point of view.

They tried, but were turned down.

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Turns out PR is

UPFA   12
UNP     13
JVP        2
TNA       2

Which means total seat count will be

UPFA    95 seats
UNPF   106 seats
JVP         6 seats
TNA      16 seats
SLMC      1 seat
EPDP      1 seat

The 106 seats are for United National Front (UNF), not UNP alone. They then furthermore had the United National Front for Good Governance as a front org.

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Who does the Eelam People's Democratic Party back now?

UPFA/Rajapaksa

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JVP accuses Sirisena of tampering with the Constitution to create additional ministries - there are 48 in the new government. According to the Constitution there are only allowed to be max 30 cabinet ministries, but if it is a "national government" there can be more, but such a government is supposed to incl. all parti, not just the two big alliances.