COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s ruling alliance was humiliated Sunday in local elections seen as a test of its leadership and the party of ex-president Mahinda Rajapakse was on track for a shock landslide victory, results showed Sunday.
The midterm polls further strained the uneasy coalition between President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as they faced a resurgent challenger in Rajapakse’s new party.
Official results showed Rajapakse’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna — SLPP or People’s Front — had won 143 of the 182 councils counted so far, out of a total of 340.
Wickremesinghe’s United National Party was a distant second with 17 councils while Sirisena’s Freedom Alliance languished with just seven.
Unofficial results showed Rajapakse’s party comfortably leading in all regions bar the battled-scarred north and east where, as president, he brutally crushed a separatist movement to end the island’s ethnic war in 2009.
The vote affects only the lowest rungs of Sri Lankan politics but the result is being seen as a stinging rebuke to the ruling coalition, which has struggled to pass promised post-war reforms.
The alliance between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe — who teamed up to defeat Rajapakse in a presidential election in 2015 — has frayed as both men have levelled allegations of corruption and back-stabbing against the other.
Wickremesinghe’s UNP had been expected to lead Saturday’s poll while the parties led by Sirisena and Rajapakse were expected to fight for second.
Rajapakse’s surprise dominance was proof the people no longer had faith in the tattered ruling alliance, said SLPP spokesman Gamini Lakshman Peiris.
“This was a referendum on the government. It has no legal or democratic right to remain in power,” Peiris told reporters.
Neither the president or prime minister were commenting on the result. Official sources said both men — who campaigned separately for their respective parties — were meeting senior aides to discuss the next moves.
The UNP had indicated it may go it alone in the next general election in 2020 as the rift between Wickremesinghe and Sirisena and their supporters deepened.
