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What happened to the Muslim vote?
The most significant development in politics this week would seem to be the resolving of issues that had arisen over the swearing-in of Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister C. V. Wigneswaran. According to reports he is to be sworn in before President Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo tomorrow. Anything less than swearing in before the president would in all likelihood have caused irreparable damage to the process of building bridges between North and South, that has become so important to the reconciliation process in the aftermath of the historic election in the North.
The TNA’s leadership is to be commended for defusing this potential ‘landmine’ that emerged within its ranks, and ensuring that good sense prevailed.
Meanwhile the most striking feature of the three recent provincial council elections, that has drawn the attention of many observers, has been the polarisation reflected in the result. Nationalism seems to have driven the vote in both North and South. The predominantly Tamil Northern Province (89% Tamil) — which elected a council for the first time — resoundingly endorsed the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) while in the North Western and Central provinces where the majority of the population is Sinhala (82.5% and 64.8% respectively) the people stayed with the SLFP-led coalition they chose in 2005.
It’s hard to say to what extent this outcome reflects a lack of options. Just as overwhelming as the mandates secured by the winners North and South, was the underwhelming performance of the main Opposition UNP, fast writing its own obituary with its refusal to face up to the disease that afflicts it. The Southern electorate also clearly signaled its rejection of representatives from extremist parties, none of whom was able to get elected.
But what happened to the Muslim vote? In these elections the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), the biggest party representing Muslims and a coalition partner of the government, decided to contest independently in all three provinces. This approach was adopted during the Eastern Provincial Council election in September last year as well. On both occasions the decision to go it alone came in the wake of perceptions of unfair treatment by the UPFA, so it is not really clear whether this assertion of ‘independence’ is a matter of strategy, or simply a way of registering dissatisfaction with the coalition. Be that as it may it becomes apparent that the results of this ‘strategy’ have been quite different this time around in the North Western, Central provinces and Northern provinces (from the result in the East).
In the Eastern Province election last year the SLMC secured seven seats in a 37 member council where the remaining 30 seats were evenly split between government and opposition. The SLMC was thereby placed in a position of strength, wielding the ability to swing any crucial vote in the Council if it chose to do so. In the recent elections however the SLMC seems to have fared poorly in all three provinces, even showing signs of having been rejected in some districts. The overall result showed a tally of four seats – two out of 52 members in the North Western Province, one out of 58 in the Central Province and one out of 38 in the North.
SLMC leader Rauff Hakeem in a statement expressed satisfaction with the result, thanking voters “for helping our party to retain its core support base in each of the three Provincial Councils.”
Yet in Puttalam (North Western Province) where Muslims form 19% or nearly one fifth of the district’s population, the SLMC polled only 3.95% of the total vote. In Kandy (Central Province) which has a Muslim community of 14% just 1.75% of the voters chose the SLMC. And in the Northern Province where a PC election was held for the first time, the SLMC got 8.5% of the vote in Mannar, in which district they represent 16% of the population.
The Muslim vote appears to have been scattered among other (‘Non-Muslim’) parties in the North Western and Central Provinces. It is interesting to note that Hasan Ali, General Secretary of the SLMC says that although two Muslims were elected in Kandy from the UNP, not one of the Muslim candidates on the lists of the UPFA succeeded in getting elected. This would seem to suggest that not only has the SLMC not been the first choice for Muslim voters, but that the race factor has hardly figured at all in their considerations when choosing which candidate to vote for in these elections.
It would appear that voter behaviour in provinces where Muslims represent a numerical minority, is guided by different considerations than in the East where Muslims constitute 38% of the population. ”Muslims voters did not choose Muslim candidates” says Hasan Ali “The Muslim vote has gone to non-Muslim candidates. The SLMC has no regrets. This is democracy,’ he told the ‘Sunday Times.’
The voting habits outside the Eastern Province differ from those within it, he says. “The problems people face are different in each province.” In Puttalam the SLMC has always held only one seat. In Kurunegala most Muslims have voted this time for Dayasiri Jayasekera who contested on the UPFA list, as they were sure he would get the Chief Ministerial position, he said. And in Matale, most Muslims voted for the son of UPFA’s Minister of Lands and Land Development, Janaka Bandara Tennakoon.
This related to the fact that minister Tennakoon had stood by the Muslim community during the Dambulla mosque attack episode last year, Ali explained. Overall he is satisfied with the result. Eight Muslims in all were elected to the three provincial councils in these elections, and four of them were from the SLMC, and that’s good he says.
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