Sri Lanka's parliamentary election : 'How great was my victory'

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s ruling coalition has claimed victory in Sri Lanka’s parliamentary election, the first the country has held since the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels. A “triumph of democracy”, a jubilant Mr Rajapaksa called the result. A triumph for the president, to be sure; only the exact margin of his victory is unclear.

The election commissioner put off declaring the final result until April 20th, after reports of malpractice and violence forced him to annul the outcomes of several polling stations and suspend counting at others. Two districts, Kandy and Trincomalee, will have to wait till April 20th before they can be polled again.

As the results have trickled in, Sri Lankans were watching to see if the Alliance would win the two-thirds majority needed to change the country’s constitution. It will not—though it expects to fall just seven seats short of that goal—but Mr Rajapaksa’s United People’s Freedom Alliance has done well indeed.

When the official result is eventually announced it is unlikely to change the outcome of the election significantly. The Alliance has already taken 117 seats against the main opposition United National Party’s 46. Of the 225 seats in parliament, 196 are filled with elected MPs while the rest are shared based on the percentage of votes won by each party. Basil Rajapaksa, the president’s influential younger brother, said the president’s group was heading towards a “thundering majority”. The Alliance is now expecting to win as many as 142 seats.

Sri Lanka’s system of proportional representation makes the magical two-thirds majority hard to reach. But even without it there is no bar against pilfering MPs from opposition parties. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s last coalition was cobbled together with crossover members from several parties, including the UNP and the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna.

The Alliance’s path was smoothed by the fact that the president’s main opponent, General Sarath Fonseka, was forced to conduct his group’s campaign from under heavy guard in a navy camp. Mr Fonseka is in military detention and faces two court-martials. Despite securing more than 4m votes in a presidential election in January, his Democratic National Alliance managed only five seats this time round.

With Mr Fonseka, his only serious challenger, out of the way and the rest of the opposition preoccupied with leadership struggles and intra-party fighting, Mr Rajapaksa is in an enviably stable position. His priorities now are to attract foreign investment and increase trade while defending his army against allegations of war crimes committed during the final stages of the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Turnout was low all across the country but voters were particularly scarce in northern Jaffna and Vanni districts, the areas worst affected by three decades of war. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu of the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence said Tamil political parties need to “refresh and revitalise themselves” if they want to become serious contenders for power. If they fail at this, says Mr Saravanamuttu, Sri Lanka’s relief at having secured something like peace may be short-lived. In 1978 the country seemed to be blessed with a strong executive pursuing economic development in the hope that unity and reconciliation would follow. Instead Sri Lanka ended up with two violent insurgencies, the effects of which are still being felt.

© The Economist