Ceylon: Election-Oriented Politics

Abstract

The Ceylonese Government derives its authority, in both law and practice, from the support of a majority of the members of parliament chosen in a free election. In 1968, in anticipation of the seventh general election which must be held no later than March 1970, and with the governing coalition going through the fourth year of its maximum five year term, there was evident concern in Ceylon over policy issues and party alliances. By the end of 1968, fifteen of the 151 parliamentary seats filled in the election of 1965 had been vacated, almost all as the result of court orders upholding complaints of election malpractices. The special elections held to fill these vacancies, as well as some local elections, revealed a continuing close division of electoral strength between the government parties and their opponents. In the four parliamentary bi-elections held during 1968, the percentages of votes received by the four winners were 50.1, 49.0, 52.0 and 46.7, respectively.' In the 1965 election, 70% of the seats were won with pluralities or majorities of less than 55%. Except in the Tamil areas of the North and East, where regional communal parties and independents dominate elections, electoral alliances produced contests between only two major contenders in all but a few electorates.2 In these circumstances, which are likely to be repeated in the next election, a relatively small increase in the vote received by the opposition parties in 1965 could shift control of the next parliament. It is this prospect which evoked special interest in the parliamentary bi-elections and some local elections in 1968. The results of the bi-elections at Nattandiya and Kalmunai in January and February, respectively, constituted setbacks for the governing coalition, which is dominated by the United National Party (UNP). This was a repetition of the experience of most other bi-elections since 1965. In the February municipal elections at Kandy, the premier city of the populous upcountry Sinhalese area, the UNP won only a bare majority of the council seats compared with its former five-sixths majority. The subsequent defection of two UNP councilmen to the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which dominates the national opposition, resulted in an equal division of seats between the two parties.3 In a June election at Dehiwela-Mount Lavinia, Colombo's