Sri Lanka's 1977 General Election: The Resurgence of the UNP

Abstract

THE RECENT CHANGE in the political complexion of South Asia with the electoral defeat of Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party in India and the military take-over of power in Pakistan has now been given a further dimension with the stunning electoral loss of Sirimavo Bandaranaike's Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in the July 1977 general election for the National State Assembly (NSA) of Sri Lanka. The defeat of the SLFP and the reemergence of the United National Party (UNP) as the major political force in the island was anticipated by all observers, but the magnitude of the UNP victory exceeded even the most optimistic projections of its supporters. Furthermore, the total elimination of the Marxist parties from the legislature was a development that even their staunchest opponents hardly expected. In what proved to be the hardest fought general election in Sri Lanka since independence in 1948, the electorate has wrought a remarkable change in the national posture of the country's political parties, and there is little doubt that this general election will attract as much scholarly attention as the 1956 Revolution, which carried S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and his SLFP to power for the first time.