Sri Lanka Presidential Election - January 8, 2015

[jaichind]

Isnt Jayalalithaa locked up now? not sure how much Modi cares. But yeah I would be surprised if Tamil turnout goes above 15-20%.

Jayalalitha is out on bail.  Modi seems to have a good relationship with Rajapaksa  so he is not doing much.  AIADMK and DMK are obviously raising a lot of noise over the Tamil issue but with DMK being so weakened in the 2014 election that it could not do much and AIADMK is to focused on keeping Jayalalitha out of jail.  PMK is breaking with NDA/BJP/Modi over this so in that sense the BJP chance to take advantage of AIADMK and DMK weakness in TN is being lost.  I guess Modi figured it is worth it to get a good regional partner in Rajapaksa.

[jaichind]

Sri Lanka is one of those cases where I feel the election system had a huge impact on how politics and then the civil war developed.   The original Tamil conflict really got escalated in the late 1960s when the center-left SLFP and center-right UNP got into a competitively Sinhalese extremism battle when it should have been a debate over economic policy direction.   The reason is because of the FPTP system.  Since Sinhalese/Buddhist dominated seats formed a clear majority of the seats it was always possible for either of the two parties to out-compete each other for the Sinhalese extremist vote and sweep all the Sinhalese seats while the Tamil parties might win the remaining 15-20% of the seats dominated by Tamils.  So the FPTP system actually encouraged a political strategy for both parties to gain power by bashing Tamils and catering to the Sinhalese extremists.  If the election system was more based on PR, the Tamil parties which would win 15-20% of the vote plus potentially a Sri Lanka Moor party taking another 10% would hold the balance of power which would mitigate the tendency of the two parities toward Sinhalese extremism.  As it is the competitive Sinhalese extremism provoked Tamil extremists like LTTE and the rest is history.

[jaichind]

Turnout was 60% by 2PM.  Most likely turnout will match it not exceed the 2010 turnout of 75%.  Turnout was higher than expected in Tamil-dominated areas of the north and east which seems like bad news for Rajapakse.  Of course if turnout in Sinhalese areas also stays high that could help Rajapakse who managed a landslide victory in 2010 even though the opposition backed the general that actually won the 2009 war against LTTE.  Sirisena's chances has to be based on higher Tamil and Moor turnout (seems to be true) and hope that the marginal Sinhalese Rajapakse voter does not vote (does not seem to be true.)  That Sirisena, based his Sinhalese credentials can swing a lot of Sinhalese votes to him does not seem likely.  It will have to be based on pro-Rajapakse Sinhalese voter not coming out to vote.  Sirisena will have to hold Rajapakse's share of the Sinhalese vote to around the low 60% to have a chance. 

[jaichind]

With nearly a third of the ballots officially declared, Sirisena has 52.49 percent of the vote and Rajapakse 46.21 percent.  As noted before  Rajapakse has conceded.