UPFA divided and crestfallen; Raja Rata turning green
The Anuradhapura District is where former President Mahinda Rajapaksa decided to kick-off his election campaign as the virtual leader of the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), the SLFP-led coalition.
This inaugural rally last month at the Salgado stadium “drew” large crowds. Like all major party rallies nowadays, crowds have to be “drawn” from outer areas making political assessments based on crowds at rallies no longer an accurate estimate of popular support for a party. In fact, when the former President had his rally at the same venue in the historic city before his Presidential election, which he lost, he had a much bigger crowd, drawn by CTB buses; but this is not an indication that, therefore, his popularity in the district is waning. It only means that he didn’t have the state’s resources this time to swell the crowds.
The district once ‘ green’ and then ‘blue’, has now turned ‘ green’ again. Streams of green plastic buntings dominate the district as opposed to the blue buntings. The police have been busy tearing down cutouts of candidates and their posters.
To give some statistics; the district voted 66.5 percent for the UPFA at the 2010 general elections with 221,204 votes. At the presidential election then President Rajapaksa won the district, but the vote base had dropped to 53.59 percent.
Mindful of the fact that the adjoining smaller district of Polonnaruwa is from where the incumbent President Maithripala Sirisena comes, the Raja Rata voters remain in two minds. They are not quite sure whom President Sirisena is actually backing.
Former President Rajapaksa struck a chord when he asked the voters in the district to recall the days when the bodies of soldiers killed in the Northern insurgen- cy were brought back, and the nights when the people in nearby ‘border villages’ had to sleep under trees fearing the LTTE would come to their hamlets and hack them to death. He asked them to recall the days when they had no proper roads and the nights when they had no electricity.
SLFP workers are, however, a disillusioned lot. Similar to the times when the UNP supporters stayed at home when their party was undergoing internal issues, it is now the SLFP’s turn to undergo that agony.
“Hondatama Kalakirila inne,” (completely downhearted) was the point an SLFP supporter was to make referring to the party split caused at the very apex between its current president, Maithripala Sirsena, and the man spearheading the Parliamentary election campaign, Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The contest to secure one of the nine seats from the Anuradhapura District is intensifying as the day of the general elections draws close. Campaigning is getting more intense now with both the UNP and the JVP candidates engaged in vigorous canvassing even though the UPFA campaign has been low key.
A total of 636,733 people are eligible to vote in the district that has several high profile candidates from the two main partiers, the UNF and the UPFA contesting the polls. This year there are 11 political parties and ten independent candidates totaling 250 contesting from the district.
The UNF heavyweights in the area include Chandrani Bandara and P.Harrison while the UPFA’s prominent members include Duminda Dissanayaka, S.M.Chandrasena and Tissa Karaliyadde.
However visible divisions in Anuradhapura between UPFA candidates who support President Sirisena and those who support former President Rajapaksa have become a disadvantage for the party. House-to-house campaigning by UPFA candidates has become rather low key.
The UNF on the other hand is having a strong campaign and is drawing mostly young people who are actively participating in the party s cluster meetings.
The JVP, meanwhile, too is drawing crowds in the district where the party narrowly failed to win a seat in the 2010 general elections. A prominent JVP member, Wasantha Samarasinghe, is leading the campaign there and there is every likelihood that he will win a seat.
Like in most other districts, the strict observance of election rules this time around has led to less visible presence of electioneering with almost no posters and cutouts to be seen, a sharp contrast from the high profile campaigning that took place in the district for the January presidential election.
Police said no serious incidents of election law violations or violence had been reported from the district so far. (Additional reporting by our Anuradha
pura Correspondent, Athula Bandara)