Channelling ethnicity through electoral reform in Sri Lanka

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Channelling ethnicity throughelectoral reform in Sri LankaAmita Shastri aa Department of Political Science , San FranciscoState University , CaliforniaPublished online: 04 Aug 2006.

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Channelling Ethnicity through ElectoralReform in Sri Lanka

AMITA SHASTRI

This article analyses the impact that electoral changes in Sri Lanka have

had in encouraging greater inclusion of ethnic minorities and inter-

ethnic cooperation. It examines the data for elections held after 1990

and finds a gradual increase in the number of minority candidates,

MPs and cabinet ministers. It also finds a greater influence by the min-

orities in the election of the president and over the policies of the two

major parties towards the issue of power sharing. These positive

trends are, however, impacted on by other aspects of the constitutional

and political system which are highly destabilising.

Electoral rules have political consequences. Not only do they specify the

process through which a country’s decision-makers will be elected, but they

also have an impact on and structure the patterns of mobilisation and represen-

tation of different segments of the population. Whether and how such rules can

be employed to help overcome ethnic differences is a matter of keen interest

amongst scholars of ethnically divided societies.1 This article analyses the

impact that the electoral reforms adopted in Sri Lanka in the late 1970s

have had in providing a basis for greater inter-ethnic cooperation.

A central aspect of the debate on electoral systems and the impact they

have on moderating or exacerbating ethnic divisions has revolved around

the relative merits of the proportional system of elections versus the plurality

system. One influential approach, associated with Arend Lijphart and his

model of ‘consociational’ or ‘consensus’ democracy, suggests that the pro-

portional system of representation (PR) allows for a fairer and more effective

Amita Shastri is Professor in the Department of Political Science, San Francisco State University,California.

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, Vol.43, No.1, March 2005, pp.34–60ISSN 1466-2043 print=1743-9094 onlineDOI: 10.1080=14662040500054362 # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd.

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direct representation of minorities and their interests in the legislature, and

thus in the political system. It compels larger parties, typically dominated

by the majority community, to accommodate and enter into coalitions with

smaller parties representing minority interests. Elite-level coalitions, which

give minority parties a veto over the decisions of the whole, coupled with

group autonomy over their own affairs, encourage a politics of moderation

and consensus, it is argued, and contribute to longer-term stability and

support for the system. In contrast, the plurality system of elections with its

winner-take-all bias systematically discriminates in favour of leading parties

and against smaller parties, unless the latter have territorially concentrated

bases of support.2 Critics of the system, such as David Horowitz and Benjamin

Reilly, however, point to the dangers posed by the perpetuation of small

ethnically-based parties through PR to the emergence of broad-based non-

ethnicised governance. Towards this end, they have advocated the use of

‘vote-pooling’ electoral systems, such as the preferential system, which

create incentives for politicians to reach out across ethnic group boundaries

to gain the levels of support necessary to win the election.3 Both sides of

the debate raise issues relating to effective representation and governance

which have presented a particularly acute problem in ethnically divided

democracies in the developing world, such as Sri Lanka.

On assuming power in 1977, Sri Lanka’s centre-right government of the

United National Party (UNP) was faced with a deepening ethnic divide and

an incipient separatist movement. In an effort to reshape the political arena,

it moved to carry out a far-reaching electoral reform to encourage a politics

of ethnic moderation and integration. It attempted to move away from the

competitive dynamics of ‘ethnic outbidding’ that had emerged between the

two major parties over the previous three decades under the plurality electoral

system, and introduce new forms of election which it hoped would encourage

cross-ethnic coalition building.4 It introduced a preferential system of election

for the position of the new powerful executive president and a proportional

system of representation for the members of the legislature through the new

constitution it promulgated in 1978.

As the effective implementation of the reforms did not take place for over

a decade, an analysis regarding the impact of the reforms can most reliably be

made by focusing on the elections that took place after 1990. Fatefully, soon

after it came to power, the UNP regime proceeded to sabotage its own efforts

by promoting its short-term interests in a blatant fashion, further deepening the

political divisions and polarisation. As numerous studies highlight,5 the

conduct of elections in the 1980s was deeply impacted by the partisan, arbi-

trary and intimidatory actions of the UNP as the ruling party, resulting in

a policy of non-cooperation by the other major opposition party, the

Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP); the insurgency launched by the

ETHNICITY AND ELECTORAL REFORM IN SRI LANKA 35

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People’s Liberation Front (the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna or JVP) in the

south of the island, and the ethnic civil war with the Liberation Tigers of

Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the north. There were serious irregularities and pol-

itical manipulation characterising the presidential election and the parliamen-

tary referendum in 1982. An even more serious situation of emergency,

widespread insurgency and violence prevailed during the 1988–89 presiden-

tial and parliamentary elections. Indeed, the antagonism generated by the

UNP’s actions continued to sully political relations between the parties in

the subsequent period.

Consequently, this article analyses the data for the parliamentary elections

held in August 1994, October 2000 and December 2001, as well as the align-

ments for the presidential elections in the same period, using both primary and

secondary sources of available electoral and statistical data.6 In looking at the

instituted systems of elections, I seek to assess how far they were successful in

achieving their purpose. To what degree did the PR system help integrate

members of the minority communities into the national polity as party candi-

dates? What was its contribution in getting minority members elected to

parliament? Have the minority communities emerged to exercise a

critical influence in the election of the president? It is my hypothesis that,

in keeping with the expectations of electoral theory, minority numbers and

influence will have increased in the political system.

In this analysis, I find that the numbers of candidates and members of par-

liament (MPs) belonging to the minority communities have increased gradu-

ally in the legislature, a development in keeping with expectations, but not to

as great a degree as might have been expected. This outcome seems largely

due to the tensions created by the troubled context, especially the continued

hostilities between the government’s armed forces and the LTTE. Likewise,

despite the severe constraints caused by the continued divisions and hosti-

lities, the ethnic minorities can be judged to have had a greater influence in

the election of the chief executive, and gradual modification of the policies

of both the major parties on the issue of power sharing. Yet, as I argue

at the end of the article, while these are positive trends, the workings of

the electoral system remain impacted upon and limited by other aspects of

the constitutional system and politics of the island which provide cause for

serious concern.

The next section outlines the details of the electoral reforms which were

instituted by the UNP. The sections following analyse and identify the

trends in the 1990s related to the ethnic distribution of candidates by party,

the ethnic distribution of members of parliament in general and by party,

and the ethnic composition of the cabinet and the presidency. Various

problems and issues relating to the existing system are then discussed,

followed by the conclusions.

36 COMMONWEALTH & COMPARATIVE POLITICS

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E L E C T O R A L R E F O R M S T H R O U G H T H E 1 9 7 8 C O N S T I T U T I O N

There were two major changes made in 1978 to restructure the political frame-

work in Sri Lanka. The first was a change to a Gaullist-style presidential

system from the Westminster parliamentary model under which Sri Lanka

had functioned since independence in 1948. The second was a change in

the system of the election of representatives to the national legislature.

Members of the legislature would now be elected on a proportional basis

rather than the British-style single-member district plurality (SMDP) system

which had hitherto been in place.7

Sri Lanka’s plural society in 1981 consisted of the Sinhalese majority

forming 74 per cent of the population, Sri Lankan Tamils who formed

13 per cent, Muslims who were seven per cent, and Upcountry Tamils who

were six per cent of the population. Given the context of a small island with

well-developed communications and transport, and a population which was

literate and politically mobilised, the acute and rising competition for votes

and power by the major parties in the previous plurality system had led to

each party competing for the vote of the majority Sinhalese population.

Fear that the other major party would appear as a more effective champion

of Sinhalese interests had led each major party in power to renege on promises

made to smaller parties representing the interests of the Sri Lankan Tamil and

Upcountry Tamil minority communities, resulting in anger and alienation

within these communities.

Under the new electoral arrangements, the chief political official would no

longer be the prime minister elected by the majority party in parliament, but a

powerful executive president elected directly on a preferential basis by a

majority of those voting nationwide. At a presidential election a voter

would rank each candidate according to his or her preference. If no candidate

got a majority of the votes in the counting of the first preference votes, then the

second and, if need be, the third preference votes of all the candidates except

the top two would be counted. The candidate who got a majority of 50 per cent

plus one vote would be declared the winner.8

The parliament would be elected on a proportional basis, with the system

that was introduced in Sri Lanka being a closed party list by district. It expli-

citly did away with the limited number of multi-member constituencies which

had been provided previously to enhance the representation of minorities in

multi-ethnic urban areas. Under the new rules, as amended in 1988, 225

members would be elected on three principles. The distribution of 196 seats

to the 22 multi-member electoral districts created across the island was

made in proportion to the electorate residing in that district, modified by an

initial allocation of four seats to each province.9 Each party was required to

put forward a list of candidates equivalent to the number of seats in the


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electoral district plus three to fill any vacancies that might occur between

elections. Small parties and independents were required to put forward a

joint list to compete. At a general election, each voter would vote for a particu-

lar party list, and was allowed to cast three preference votes for candidates

belonging to that party list. Any party which failed to get five per cent of

the votes in an electoral district would be disqualified from getting a seat.

The party with the largest number of votes in a district was awarded a

bonus seat ‘off the top’. The remaining seats would be distributed to each

party according to the proportion of the votes it got. Candidates on a party

list would be declared elected in order of their preference votes.10 In addition,

15 per cent (or 29) parliamentary seats would be distributed in proportion to

the national vote won by any party which got a minimum of five per cent of

the vote in any district. These ‘national MPs’ would be selected by the

party leadership after an election from a list of nominees it submitted for

the party before an election. Each party was enjoined to make its list, as far

as practical, representative of all communities in the national population ratio.

The progenitor of these changes and leader of the ruling party, President

J.R. Jayawardene, had rationalised the changes as necessary on various

counts. Being directly elected by the whole people, the new executive presi-

dent would be free from dependence on unstable parliamentary majorities

or coalitions in the legislature. Such a president, he argued, would provide

both stability and continuity of policy for the six-year term for which he or

she was elected – critically important, he felt, in a developing country like

Sri Lanka.11 Just as importantly, he argued, ‘A President elected by the

people will have to depend on the minority vote: he cannot go against

them: he cannot be a purely Sinhala Sabha man; he must be a man who

commands the confidence of the people throughout the island irrespective

of caste, race or creed’.12

A proportional system of election to the legislature would reflect the

degree of popular support enjoyed by a particular party or coalition. It

would result in an outcome democratically superior to than the one delivered

by the previous plurality system which had increasingly inflated the number of

seats allocated to the leading party in comparison to the proportion of votes it

had won. The new PR system would thus tame the increasing volatility that the

previous electoral system had exhibited in the sharp swings in seats won by

first one major party and then the other in the 1970 and 1977 general elec-

tions.13 The size of these wins (of over two-thirds of the seats in the legisla-

ture) had freed the ruling party to unilaterally carry out arbitrary

constitutional and political changes, free of any check by the opposition in

the legislature.

It was also explicitly argued that the electoral arrangements would make a

positive contribution in increasing the influence of the minority ethnic


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communities in the elections of the legislature. As one of the main architects

of this constitution, A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, wrote later, it was expected that

more effective representation of minority communities would occur through

the elections for the legislature.14 With voters required to vote for party lists

and seats allocated to each party in proportion to the votes it had won in a

particular multi-member electoral district, it was expected that all parties

would take note of the ethnic composition of the electorate in a constituency

and attempt to develop a party list which included members of those ethnic

groups in order to attract their votes. The chances of candidates belonging

to ethnic minority groups were thus enhanced. This stood in contrast to the

previous system in which competition between the two leading candidates

in a single-member constituency to win a plurality of the votes often led

them to compete for the votes of the ethnic majority in a constituency and

neglect the concerns of minority voters.

In a political context in which the two major parties, the UNP and

Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), had won 36 and 28 per cent of the vote

on average in the eight elections that took place between 1947 and 1977,15

and a winning presidential candidate had to get a majority of the votes

polled, it was expected that the minority communities, constituting around

26 per cent of the electorate, would have a decisive influence in swinging

the election in favour of the presidential candidate with the most accommodat-

ing position on matters of minority concern. Presidential candidates, therefore,

would have an incentive to assume more centrist, moderate positions attuned

to minority sensitivities. The new preferential system thus had clear ‘vote-

pooling’ characteristics encouraging cooperation across ethnic lines. In con-

trast, under the previous parliamentary method of selecting the political

executive the party leader had to win a plurality of votes in his or her much

smaller single-member district and then be elected by his or her party or

coalition in the legislature to assume leadership as prime minister.

The new method of electing the legislature and the political executive was

thus expected to have various macro-effects in ethnic terms in the political dis-

course and policies. There would be less incentive for the two major parties to

engage in a pattern of ethnic ‘outbidding’ which had become the bane of

Sri Lankan politics. In contrast, it was expected that the new system would

encourage the dynamics of cross-ethnic coalition building at the constituency

as well as national level. If voters continued to vote along party lines as in the

past, it was expected that the MPs of ethnic minority parties would hold the

balance of power in parliament on any substantial issue.

Other features specific to the system instituted in Sri Lanka added to the

perception that it was less biased against minorities. According to one esti-

mate, it reduced the greatest disparity between variations in the population

size of electorates from 1:3 to 1:2.16 This brought the new system closer to


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the ideal principle of one person–one vote–one value. In doing so, it margin-

ally reduced the additional weighting that had previously been provided to the

minority-dominated Northern and Eastern Provinces. Instead, this change

dramatically shifted the centre of political gravity to the south-west region

of the country, the traditional stronghold of the UNP and the left-wing

parties, so that the populous Western and Southern Provinces combined

would elect around 40 per cent of the legislature in the future. The up-

country area suffered a corresponding loss of weighting – with the two

electoral districts of Kandy and Badulla suffering an absolute decline in the

number of representatives returned to parliament despite the overall increase

in seats. With the up-country plantation workers slowly regaining their fran-

chise after a hiatus of 50 years, it was estimated that these changes would

adversely affect the SLFP and the weight its support base in the rural Sinhalese

population had enjoyed since the party emerged in the late 1950s.17

It was expected these changes would strengthen the position of the min-

ority voters and parties in general as ‘kingmakers’ at the constituency and

national level respectively. We turn now to examine the pattern of partici-

pation by minorities in the elections held after 1990.

E T H N I C D I S T R I B U T I O N O F C A N D I D A T E S B Y P A R T Y

To see how broadly the various political parties tried to reach out to different

ethnic groups and augment their appeal in ethnic terms, I analysed the party

lists of candidates for the elections in October 2000 and December 2001.

As Table 1 highlights, different political parties followed different strategies

depending on their strength and orientation.

Six parties won more than one per cent of the national vote in 2000 and

five did so in 2001. Together they got 96–97 per cent of the total votes

polled. The data for these parties are analysed here. The People’s Alliance

(PA – in which the SLFP was the largest party) and the UNP were by far

the most significant in terms of their popular support – winning 37–46 per

cent of the votes polled. Amongst the smaller parties, the left-wing Sinhalese

Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP, People’s Liberation Front) did very well in

both elections and expanded its voter base to six per cent of those voting in the

first election and to nine per cent in the second. The National Unity Alliance

(NUA, the main component of which was the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, or

SLMC, representing the East Coast Muslims mainly) won over two per cent of

the vote in 2000 and just over one per cent in 2001. The right-wing

pro-Sinhalese party, the Sinhala Urumaya (SU, the Sinhala Front) got

1.5 per cent in 2000 but failed to achieve even one per cent after that. The

coalition of pro-Sri Lanka Tamil nationalist parties, banded together under


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the party label of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), got 1.2 and 3.9

per cent in the two elections.

As a major party, the UNP put up a full slate of candidates across the whole

island in both the elections. Its opposing coalition, the PA, put up a full slate in

all districts in both elections except the northernmost district of Jaffna, which it

left entirely to its smaller ally, the independent group led by Douglas

Devananda of the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP). Interesting to

note is that the two smaller stridently Sinhalese parties, the JVP and the SU,

also fielded a full slate of candidates in both elections. Evidently this was in

keeping with their assertive claims favouring control by the Sinhalese majority

over the territory of the whole island. They did this despite having a virtually

non-existent support base in several parts of the island, especially the ethnic

minority districts of the north-east, as an examination of the preference

votes in the various districts revealed. While the votes that these two parties

were able to win in large parts of the island were very scanty, overall their

TABLE 1

ETHNIC DISTRIBUTION OF CANDIDATES BY PARTY: PARLIAMENTARY

ELECTIONS 2000, 2001 ( PARTIES WHICH WON MORE THAN 1% OF THE

NATIONAL VOTE )

Year Party % VotePolled

PartyTotal

Sinhalese� SLTamils UCTamils Muslims

2000 PA 45.1 250 205 12 10 23NUA 2.3 172 46 15 9 103TULF 1.2 36 0 34 0 2UNP 40.2 262 194 27 9 32JVP 6.0 262 231 19 4 8SU 1.5 262 262 0 0 0Total 1,187 938 107 32 168As percentage

of total96.3 100 79 9 2.7 14.2

2001 UNP 45.6 262 197 23 16 26TULF 3.9 70 1 64 2 3SLMC 1.2 30 0 1 0 29PA 37.2 250 201 9 9 31JVP 9.1 262 224 19 3 16Total 874 623 116 30 105As percentage

of total97.0 100 71.3 13.3 3.4 12

Note: � Politicians belonging to very small ethnic groups (together less than 1% of population –like Burghers, Parsees, Chetties) and who do not identify with the other minority groupshave been included with the Sinhalese in these tables.

Source: Computed from Department of Elections, Parliamentary General Election 10th October2000, Detailed Results (Votes and Preferences), by electoral districts; and ParliamentaryGeneral Election 5th December 2001, Detailed Results (Votes and Preferences), byelectoral districts.


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strategy seems to have been to garner any extremist Sinhalese vote wherever it

was to be found and strengthen their claim to seats for candidates from their

national list. As a result of this strategy, for instance, the JVP won two national

seats in the election of 2000 and the SU won one; but the results also revealed

the relatively low level of popular support enjoyed by both, especially the SU.

In the 2001 election, as a consequence of its successful parliamentary man-

oeuvring in the lead-up to the election, the JVP strengthened its position

and was able to win three national seats. The SU, however, was racked by

an internal party crisis and gained no seats in that election.

The breakaway wing of the SLMC, led by Rauff Hakeem, competing as

the NUA in the 2000 election, was more selective than the above parties

and put up candidates only in areas where it had some support. These were

mainly in the urban and the coastal areas of the south-west and east of the

island. As its lower figure for candidates indicates, the TULF and its allied

Tamil parties put up candidates even more selectively, limiting themselves

to their traditional bases of support in the predominantly Tamil districts of

the north-east, that is the four districts excluding Digamadulla (or Amparai).

Analysing the candidate lists for their ethnic inclusiveness, the UNP could

be judged as the most broadly inclusive party, with a spectrum of candidates

across ethnic lines. As Table 1 shows, though it fielded a larger number of

candidates than the PA in both elections, it had fewer Sinhalese candidates

on its lists than the PA, and more minority candidates, especially Muslims.

While, in keeping with its strongly pro-Sinhalese orientation, the candidates

of the JVP were overwhelmingly Sinhalese (231 of its total 262 candidates

in 2000, for instance), surprisingly, it did put up slates entirely made up of

Sri Lanka Tamil candidates in the north-eastern districts, besides Amparai.

This approach of the JVP stood in sharp contrast to its stridently anti-Tamil

rhetoric since the late 1980s, and was a change from its almost exclusively

Sinhalese slate of candidates in the 1994 parliamentary election.18 This

seems to indicate pragmatic considerations gaining ground in the JVP, reflect-

ing the influence of the logic of the electoral system.

In the case of the minority parties, while most of the NUA candidates were

Muslim, as might be expected, it had a surprising mix of candidates from other

ethnic groups too – indicating an effort on its part also to attract votes from

members of other ethnic groups to strengthen its position. On the other

hand, the TULF had mostly Sri Lankan Tamil candidates, with only two of

its 36 candidates being Muslim. It had no Sinhalese or Upcountry Tamil can-

didates. In keeping with its extreme right-wing Sinhalese nationalist ideology,

the entire slate of SU candidates was exclusively Sinhalese.

Not shown in Table 1 but observable through a cursory examination of the

data was the fact that often a candidate belonging to an ethnic group which

was not dominant in a particular party ranked low, if not last, on the party


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list in terms of preference votes won. While this is not a surprising finding

given the prevailing pattern of ethnic loyalties, the very inclusion of such

candidates on the list itself can be deemed a positive development in terms

of signalling a desire for greater cross-ethnic inclusiveness and appeal by

the various parties in the public and political arena.

E T H N I C D I S T R I B U T I O N O F M P s

As indicated in Table 2, the island is divided into 22 large multi-member

constituencies, electing any number of candidates ranging from 20 in the

most populous district of Colombo to only four in Trincomalee. To arrive at

what could be considered an ethnically proportional number of MPs in each

district, I used the Census of 1981 data of the population’s ethnic distribution

in the electoral districts listed on the left side of the table. Dividing the total

population (or 100 per cent) by the number of contested parliamentary seats

for the district yields the fraction of population in the district which could

elect an MP if it voted together. On the right side of the table are listed the

number of MPs that one might expect to belong to the different ethnic

groups in each district if the population were to vote only for candidates of

their own ethnicity. Figures for the 29 national seats and for the total

number of seats are also given at the bottom of the table, based on the

ethnic distribution of the population for the island as a whole. As the table indi-

cates, there are fully 11, or half, overwhelmingly Sinhalese districts in which it

would be unlikely for a minority candidate to get elected. There is one over-

whelmingly minority district – that of Jaffna – in which Sri Lankan Tamils

form the majority of the population. There are six districts which have a

more clearly plural character in the Sinhala-majority parts of the island. In

the other four districts of the north-east ethnic minorities form the majority

of the population, and these districts have a clearly plural character as well.

Table 3 shows the distribution by ethnicity of the MPs elected in the

various electoral districts in the three parliamentary elections of 1994, 2000

and 2001. As can be seen in the table, the ethnic proportions rose to those

expected in half the districts in the latter two elections – from eight out of

22 districts in 1994, to 11 districts in 2000 and 2001.

Overall, in these three elections, as can be seen in the last row of Table 3,

relating to the island-wide count, Sinhalese are over-represented in parliament,

as are the Muslims. The Sri Lankan Tamils are under-represented, but not as

severely as the Upcountry Tamils. This runs counter to the expectations gene-

rated by electoral theory but seems to be in keeping with the historical pattern

and legacy in Sri Lanka. It indicates that the political alliance and patterns of

cooperation built up between the Sinhalese and Muslim political elite from

before independence continued to hold to mutual advantage. The Sri Lankan


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TABLE 2

EXPECTED ETHNIC DISTRIBUTION OF SEATS BY ELECTORAL DISTRICTS

Electoral Districts Ethnic Distribution of Population 1981 (%) Electoral Seats�

1994Expected Distribution of Seats

Sinhalese SLTamil UCTamil SLMoors Sinhalese SLTamil UCTamil SLMoors

Ethnically homogenous districtsHambantota 97.1 0.6 0.1 1.2 7 7Galle 94.5 0.9 1.4 3.2 10 10Matara 94.5 0.7 2.2 2.5 8 8Kurunegala 92.9 1.2 0.5 5.0 15 15Moneragala 92.7 2.0 3.2 1.9 5 5Gampaha 92.0 3.5 0.4 2.7 18 18Polonnaruwa 91.4 2.0 0 6.4 5 5Anuradhapura 91.1 1.4 0.1 7.1 8 8Kalutara 87.2 1.2 4.1 7.4 10 10Kegalle 85.9 2.2 6.7 5.0 9 9Matale 79.9 5.8 7.0 7.0 5 5Jaffna 0.8 95.2 2.4 1.6 10 10

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Ethnically heterogenous districtsRatnapura 85.0 2.4 10.6 1.7 10 9 1Puttalam 82.6 6.6 0.5 9.9 7 6 1Colombo 77.6 10.0 1.2 8.3 20 16 2 2Kandy 74.3 5.0 9.4 10.5 12 9 1 1 1Badulla 69.1 5.9 20.2 4.2 8 6 2Nuwara-Eliya 42.1 12.7 42.7 2.0 8 3 1 3Amparai 37.8 20.0 0.4 41.5 6 2 1 2Trincomalee 33.4 34.3 2.1 29.3 4 1 1 1Vanni 10.2 59.8 15.7 13.6 6 1 3 1 1Batticaloa 3.4 70.8 1.2 23.9 5 3 1

Contested Seats 196 153 22 8 9National List 29 21 4 2 2Total 74 13 6 7 225 173 26 10 11

Notes: �Numbers in bold in this column indicate that the ethnic distribution of the population is dispersed in such a way that it cannot be estimated whichgroup would get the last seat. There are four such districts.Also, Anuradhapura had seven seats in 1994. Nuwara-Eliya had seven seats in 2000 and 2001, as did Trincomalee. Jaffna had nine seats and Puttalamhad eight seats in the latter two elections.

Sources: Population figures from the 1981 Census. District seat figures from The Island, 16 August 1994.

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TABLE 3

DISTRIBUTION OF SEATS BY ETHNICITY OF MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT: 1994 – 2001

Electoral District Seats 1994 2000 2001

S SLT UCT SLM S SLT UCT SLM S SLT UCT SLM

Ethnically homogenous districtsHambantota 7 7 7Galle 10 10 10Matara 8 8 8Kurunegala 13 1 15 15Moneragala 5 5 5Gampaha 18 18 17 1Polonnaruwa 5 5 5Anuradhapura 7 8 8Kalutara 9 1 9 1 10Kegalle 8 1 9 8 1Matale 5 5 5Jaffna 8 2 9 9

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Ethnically heterogenous districtsRatnapura 10 0 10 0 10 0Puttalam 7 0 8 0 7Colombo 18 0 2 17 0 3 17 1 3Kandy 9 0 1 2 9 0 3 10 0 2Badulla 7 1 8 0 7 1Nuwara-Eliya 4 0 4 2 5 4 0 3Amparai 4 0 2 3 1 3 2 1 4Trincomalee 1 1 2 1 0 3 1 1 2Vanni 1 4 0 1 2 3 0 1 0 4 0 2Batticaloa 3 2 3 2 3 2

Total elected 196 158 16 6 16 159 16 5 16 157 19 4 16National List 29 20 2 2 5 18 1 4 6 16 3 3 7Island-wide 225 178 18 8 21 176 17 9 22 173 22 7 23Percentage of total 100 78 8.4 3.5 9.7 77.3 8 4 10.2 75.5 10.7 2.7 11.6

Notes: Numbers in bold denote deviations from an expected figure.

Sources: Computed from eletoral returns in The Island, 20 Aug. 1994, 2; 17 Oct. 2000, 1; 18 Oct. 2000, 1; Daily News, 10 Dec. 2001, 13; 12 Dec. 2001, 1; 13Dec. 2001, 1; 18 Dec. 2000, 1; 19 Dec. 2001, 28; Department of Elections, Parliamentary General Election 10th October 2000, Detailed Results(Votes and Preferences), by district; and Parliamentary General Election 5th December 2001 (Votes and Preferences), by district.

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Tamil under-representation reflects both the alienation of the community from

electoral politics as well as the threats and pressure from the LTTE on aspirants

from the community to discourage active participation in the system. The con-

tinued poverty, segregation and separate tight political organisation of Upcoun-

try Tamils no doubt account for their under-representation.

It is encouraging to note that a gradual movement towards greater ethnic

proportionality in representation seems to be discernible across this period.

The proportion of Sinhalese MPs dropped from 78 per cent of the legislature

to 77.3 per cent and further to 75.5 per cent over the three elections. Interest-

ingly, while the position of over-representation of the Muslims improved

further over the three elections, and that of the Sri Lanka Tamils improved

slightly towards greater proportionality, representation of the Upcountry

Tamils, who were already the most clearly under-represented group,

dropped over this period. While it is possible that these trends are merely arti-

facts or quirks of these particular elections, a knowledge of the larger politics

suggests that they reflect related developments in Sri Lankan politics. On the

one hand, the ethnic fighting for advantage between the central government

in Colombo and the separatist LTTE seemed to be reflected in both the

major parties actively wooing and maintaining Muslim support. On the

other, the weakening position of the Upcountry Tamils, from all indications,

reflects the passing away of S. Thondaman, the community’s powerful and

pugnacious leader. In the absence of his formidable bargaining skills, fewer

Upcountry Tamil MPs were nominated to the national lists, in large part

because the UNP nominated fewer in 2001.

The Muslims were more strongly represented than their proportions in the

population would warrant in the south-western districts of Colombo, Kandy,

Kurunegala and Kegalle – indicating the Sinhala-majority districts in which

they exercise more influence and are avidly wooed by the major parties.

They also seem to have been keenly sought after as allies in the north-east

in Jaffna, Vanni, Batticaloa and Trincomalee. For instance, there were two

Muslim MPs in Jaffna in 1994 – a constituency in which none might be

expected – one on the SLMC ticket and one nominated by Douglas

Devananda’s independent group. Similarly, the JVP had a Muslim MP win

a contested seat on its ticket in Gampaha.

Yet, it also needs to be noted that improvement in the representation of the

minorities seems to have come significantly from nomination as MPs on

national lists, rather than election through party lists at the district level.

This suggests that coalition politics at the national level amongst the elite

rather than any major changes in electoral behaviour at the mass level exhib-

ited through cross-ethnic voting for minority candidates caused these changes.

The homogenous nature of half the electoral districts would reinforce this

tendency in that compensating proportional representation would be sought


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by and awarded to small minority groups/parties at the national level for mobi-

lising pockets of minority voter support in dispersed constituencies.

The real significance of the changes effected by the new system becomes

evident when the trends under the new system are compared to the situation

that prevailed previously under the plurality system, when the Sinhalese

were highly over-represented in parliament. As Table 4 shows, in the last par-

liamentary elections held under the plurality system in 1977, the Sinhalese won

nearly 82 per cent of the seats, a figure that dropped to 78 per cent in the 1994

election under PR and has been dropping since, until in 2001, at 75.5 per cent, it

was fairly close to the overall Sinhalese proportion of the population. The rela-

tively more favourable representation of the Muslims and, to a lesser degree,

the Upcountry Tamils in the recent period is evident as well. This emphasises

that in the midst of the political horse-trading, defections and realignments that

were characteristic of electoral politics in the 1990s, there was a gradual move-

ment towards ethnic proportionality and inclusion as well.

E T H N I C C O M P O S I T I O N O F M P S B Y P A R T Y

How ethnically inclusive were the various parties as regards those who got

elected to the legislature and the executive? Looking at the ethnic composition

of MPs belonging to the different parties, we find that in a carry-over from

their profiles and legacy from the past, the UNP seems to have been the

party most accommodative of the minorities, especially the Muslims, as can

be seen in Table 5. In 1994, it had a proportionate degree of Upcountry

Tamil representation on its list, primarily due to its alliance with the Ceylon

Workers Congress (CWC). The PA continued to be mainly a Sinhalese

party in terms of ethnic composition, with only one Sri Lankan Tamil and

one Muslim MP elected on its lists. Its main strength and support from the

minorities came from the minority ethnic parties with whom it formed a

coalition – the SLMC, which had an all-Muslim contingent of MPs; the

TABLE 4

ETHNIC DISTRIBUTION OF SEATS IN PARLIAMENT, 1977, 1994 – 2001

Ethnic Group Sinhalese SLTamil UCTamil Muslim

Percentage of seats wonPlurality system 1977 81.6 10.7 0.6 7.1PR system 1994 78.0 8.4 3.5 9.7

2000 77.3 8 4.0 10.22001 75.5 10.7 2.7 11.6

Percentage of population 1981 74.0 13.0 6.0 7.0

Source: 1977 figures from data in A. J. Wilson, Breakup of SriLanka, 35; other figures from data inTable 3.


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EPDP, DPLF (or PLOTE) and the TULF, which had almost all Sri Lankan

Tamil representatives (Devananda’s group had a Muslim MP from Jaffna as

the exception); and the Chandrasekharan group from Nuwara-Eliya, repre-

senting the Upcountry Tamils. Soon after the election in which the PA

emerged as victor, the Upcountry Tamil CWC switched its support from the

UNP to the PA on a conditional basis.

Determined to win a strong majority in parliament to enable it to push

through its devolution package, the PA had a stronger cross-ethnic character

TABLE 5

ETHNIC DISTRIBUTION OF MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT BY PARTY

Party TotalMPs

Sinhalese SLTamil UCTamil Muslim

1994 parliamentIn government PA 105 100 1 4

SLMC 6 6Conditional support TULF 4 4

Ind Gp 2Jaffna(EPDP)

9 8 1

DPLF 3 3Indep Gp-N Eliya 1 1

In opposition UNP� 94 77 1 7 9SLPF (JVP) 1 1

2000 parliamentIn government PA 107 92 2 4 9

NUA 4 4EPDP 4 4Indep Gp

2-Digamadulla1 1

Conditional support TULF 5 5TELO 3 3ACTC 1 1

In opposition UNP 89 74 1 5 9JVP 10 10SU 1 1

2001 parliamentIn government UNP 109 88 2 6 13

SLMC 5 5Conditional support TNA�� 15 15In opposition PA 77 71 2 1 4

EPDP 2 2DPLF 1 1JVP 16 14 1 1

Notes: �six of the seven MPs belong to the CWC, which switched to supporting the PA threemonths after the election.��Coalition of TULFþ TELOþACTC

Sources: Computed from electoral returns in The Island, 18 Aug. 1994, 1; 19 Aug. 1994, 2 and 3;20 Aug. 1994, 2; 13 Oct. 2000, 1 and 2; 14 Oct. 2000, 17; Daily News, 19 Dec. 2001, 28.


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than the UNP in 2000. It aggressively forged links with various minority

parties in 2000 and tried to get them to run on its list. It succeeded with

Ferial Ashraff’s wing of the SLMC and the CWC. It also maintained its

alliance with the minority ethnic groups: the NUA (Rauff Hakeem faction

of SLMC), the Devananda-led EPDP/independent group in Jaffna and a

similar group in Amparai. Members of the other Tamil parties who lent it

conditional issue-based support were all Sri Lankan Tamil. In contrast, the

JVP remained exclusively Sinhalese in character, as did the SU. The fragmen-

tation of the political process and the minority parties in the north-east associ-

ated with the frustrating stalemate emerging on the ethnic issue was more

apparent in this election: the number of Tamil parties successful in getting

into parliament increased from four to five and the SLMC split – though

both groups restlessly agreed to remain allied to the PA in a post-election

coalition. The hard bargaining that preceded and followed the 2000 election

was evident in the oversize cabinet of 44 ministers that President

Kumaratunge put together after the election.

The debacle faced by the PA in parliament in the latter half of 2001,

followed by a dissolution of parliament after only a year, led to a reversal

of the political situation. The UNP moved more aggressively and successfully

to recruit political leaders of minority ethnic backgrounds than the PA. This

resulted in a very strong contingent of Muslim MPs on the UNP lists, the

CWC was back in alliance with the UNP on the latter’s party lists, and the

UNP established an alliance with the Rauff Hakeem faction of the SLMC, a

predominantly Muslim party. The Tamil parties banded together as the

Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in synchrony with the LTTE’s wishes, and

provided conditional support to the government in its search for a resolution

of the ethnic conflict by positing the need for a ceasefire and unconditional

negotiations with the LTTE. As a result of its debacle in parliament prior to

the election, the PA had fewer Muslim and Upcountry Tamil MPs, but

overall looked more multi-ethnic than it had in 1994. It retained the consistent

support of the EPDP and Democratic Peoples Liberation Front (DPLF), both

small Sri Lankan Tamil parties. The PA also entered into a wary and shaky

alliance with the JVP. The latter, in turn, grew in strength in the 2001 election

as a result of its political bargaining with the PA, largely at the latter’s

expense. As already pointed out, the JVP demonstrated a surprising desire

to broaden its appeal ethnically by gaining a Muslim MP and appointing an

Upcountry Tamil as one.

E T H N I C C O M P O S I T I O N O F T H E C A B I N E T A N D P R E S I D E N C Y

In the highest reaches of state power, in the cabinet and the presidency, ethnic

biases in representation similar to those seen at the lower levels of the political


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system are evident. If a hypothetical 24-member cabinet were roughly ethni-

cally proportional to the population at large, one would expect it to include 18

Sinhalese, three Sri Lanka Tamils, one Upcountry Tamil and two Muslims. As

Table 6 illustrates with regard to the cabinets formed after each election

between 1994 and 2001, Sinhalese and Muslims were somewhat over-

represented and Sri Lanka Tamils clearly under-represented. This situation

mirrors the larger ethnic divisions in the society as well as the LTTE’s

hostile attitude to cooperation and participation by any Sri Lankan Tamil in

the structures of state power independent of its control.

It is pertinent to note that all persons holding the most powerful position of

executive president have been Sinhalese. Indeed, of the four persons who have

held the office of president since 1978, all but one had the highest class, caste

(Goyigama or farmer) and family-kinship connections.19

Yet, unlike the past, the election of the president has been critically depen-

dent on alliances forged with representatives of the minority groups. The latter

have emerged as ‘kingmakers’ in critically swinging a winning margin of

votes in favour of the particular candidate promising them policies most

accommodating to minority interests and autonomy. In the parliamentary

and presidential elections of 1994, the SLFP led by Chandrika Kumaratunge

reinvented itself to forge a broad multi-ethnic coalition with smaller ethnic

parties by promising them a cessation of the war, talks with the LTTE and

the widest possible regional devolution of power that had been pledged to

TABLE 6

ETHNIC DISTRIBUTION OF CABINET POSITIONS

Party Total Sinhalese SLTamil UCTamil Muslim

1994 cabinetIn government PA 23 20 1 � 2

SLMC2000 cabinetIn government PA 44 38 1 1 4

NUAEPDPIndep Gp

2-Digamadulla2001 cabinetIn government UNF/UNP 25 22 0 1 3

SLMC

Expected numbers 24 18 3 1 2

Notes: � CWC joined the ruling coalition within three months and its leader S. Thondaman becamea cabinet member.

Sources: Computed from reports in The Island, 20 Aug. 1994, 8; 20 Oct. 2000, 1 and 2; DailyNews, 13 Dec. 2001, 1.


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the minorities hitherto.20 The failure to deliver, due to the non-cooperation of

the LTTE and the UNP, led Kumaratunge to reaffirm her pledge to institutio-

nalise a decentralised political system, and win a second term of office in

December 1999 and parliamentary elections in 2000 with the help of the

minorities. Her inability to carry through her promises led to a switching of

support by the minority parties to the UNP. The latter was able to win the

parliamentary election in 2001 with a narrow margin of one seat through its

promise of ending the war by entering into an unconditional ceasefire with

the LTTE and talks promising an unspecified but even more generous

devolution of powers to the minority areas of the north-east than had been

offered by Kumaratunge.

In his analysis of the Sri Lankan preferential system, Reilly points out that

the winning presidential candidate has attained a clear majority of votes on the

basis of first preferences alone, and that the major presidential contenders have

never seriously campaigned for secondary preferences across ethnic group

lines.21 Thus, the ‘vote pooling’ feature of the preferential system leading to

a moderating and stabilising influence on politics and policy, as posited by

Horowitz and Reilly, does not seem to have made itself manifest.22 In my

view, however, it is precisely the fact that the institutional incentives all run

in one direction, of potential Tamil/minority second preference votes giving

the margin of victory to particular Sinhalese presidential candidates, and not

vice versa (an aspect noted by Reilly), that leads Tamil/minority leaders to

negotiate direct deals and coalition arrangements with the Sinhalese leader

of their choice. This support is then expressed through their support base

voting directly for the presidential candidate on first preferences, rather than

supporting and voting for a candidate of their own who is not likely to win.

Interestingly, Tamil candidates standing as presidential contenders have

been supported by the LTTE and have given voice to its independent minority

view which has not been explicitly accepted by either of the major parties.

P R O B L E M S W I T H T H E E X I S T I N G S Y S T E M

As an Upcountry Tamil MP acknowledged, the electoral rules were an

improvement from the past but still suffered from a number of shortfalls.23

Of greatest concern perhaps was the fact that violence had become a

serious and endemic feature of elections. The Election Commissioner stated

emphatically in an interview: ‘Disturbances in the electoral process only

started after 1977 – after the 1978 Constitution was promulgated and the

introduction of PR’.24 The most important reason for this was that parties,

searching for winning candidates in large multi-member constituencies and

faced by a dearth of ‘quality candidates’ for elections, increasingly tended

to nominate those individuals who either had access to funds to finance


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their campaigns or had ‘other power’ – namely, muscle power or force – with

which to coerce their way to victory.25 The struggle by individual candidates

on a party list to get the largest possible number of preference votes led to

violence– something which had previously been waged only across party

lines – becoming an intra-party affair. Voters and candidates of minority

ethnic communities were inevitably disadvantaged in this regard in areas

where they lacked a sufficient concentration of population.

Criticism that the PR system diluted the previous close relationship that

existed between a voter and his or her representative in a district also holds

validity. It seems to have impacted on members of minority communities par-

ticularly, especially in districts with a small number of representatives. Even

after the 1988 reforms expanded the number of seats and lowered the district

cut-off, it continued to be the case that in seven of the 22 districts which had

six members or less each, significant ethnic minority groups would go unre-

presented. For instance, in a district with six members, a party would have

to get 20 per cent of the population voting in its favour to be able to win a

seat (as one of the six seats would be a bonus seat). In a district like

Trincomalee with only four members, a party would need to have one-third

of the voters casting their vote in its favour to be able to win a seat. In such

districts, the proportion of a minority group would have to be substantial for

it to hold the possibility of electing one of its own independently. This particu-

larly affected the representation of the Upcountry Tamils, who formed the

most socio-economically deprived ethnic group on the island and significant

proportions of whom lived dispersed across constituencies in numbers too

small to elect a member of their own community. Some of the under-

representation of the dispersed minority voting population was rectified by

the award of a greater number of national list seats by a party to its

members of minority background. Despite this, as Table 3 illustrates, the

proportion of the Upcountry Tamil MPs especially, as well as Sri Lankan

Tamil MPs, remained lower than the proportion of their respective ethnic

groups in the population overall.

In contrast to the experience of Upcountry Tamils, the fear of Muslims that

the new system would leave them with less representation than the previous

one26 does not seem to have come to pass. Indeed, as the data show, the differ-

ences and conflicts between the two Tamil groups seem to have improved

the bargaining position of politicians from the Muslim community overall,

so that both major parties sought to woo Muslim voters by nominating

Muslim candidates. In the 1990s, Muslims of the Eastern Province strategically

supported the SLMC, led by M. Ashraff, as a party explicitly demanding

autonomy for their areas.

The argument for proportionality obviously presumes that members of a

minority group in a constituency or at the national level act in unity to be


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most effective. The reality, however, remained that the allocation of such seats

by the major parties dominated by the members of the majority community

remained at the latter’s discretion.27 It was used by the leadership of the

major parties to attract individual leaders and segments of the minority com-

munities, resulting increasingly in political divisions, fragmentation and fac-

tionalism within each of the minority communities.28 By the early 1990s

this process was most evident within the Sri Lankan Tamil community –

the community most affected by the twists and turns of the civil war in the

1980s and the ensuing political differences regarding the most desirable

tactics, strategy and goals to protect Tamil interests.29 By the close of

the 1990s, growing divisions were evident among the Muslims as well.30

The last to experience this trend were the Upcountry Tamils, who had

remained tightly unified under the leadership of S. Thondaman. After his

death, his trade union and party, the CWC, also faced leadership struggles

and splits.31 This was unarguably the flip-side of the process noted earlier

in this analysis – the greater presence and representation of members of the

minority communities as candidates, MPs and ministers within the various

Sinhala-dominated parties.

At the time it was introduced, the new system was roundly criticised for

being harmful to the forging of inter-party coalitions. It was feared that the

requirement of a joint party list would work against small parties and inde-

pendents entering into coalition agreements. They would lose their distinct

image by merging on a joint list with another larger party. It was also

argued that the smaller party would lose its claim to the election subsidy

provided by the state to a party according to the votes polled by that party

in the previous election.32 In retrospect, the system seems to have worked

as predicted for the parties of the old left; but the new leftist party of the

JVP and a number of the small ethnic minority parties, such as the CWC

and SLMC, seem to have been able to maintain an assertively independent

existence. They have apparently done this by resorting to the tactic of enga-

ging in an independent electoral campaign to demonstrate their popular

support and then using their demonstrated clout to extract concessions from

one or the other major party. In the recurring situation of the two major

parties winning a closely balanced number of seats – something anticipated

by the 1978 constitution-makers – this tactic has been used repeatedly –

and very effectively – by several of the smaller parties (such as the SLMC,

JVP and various Tamil parties) to leverage and bargain for a greater share

of power and for issues important to them.33 On other occasions, these and

other parties sought to anticipate trends and preferred to forge pre-electoral

alliances to increase their effectiveness – as the various Sri Lanka Tamil

parties and the SLMC did with the SLFP-led PA coalition in 1994 and

2000, the CWC did with the UNP for the 1994 and 2001 election, or as the


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Tamil and Muslim parties did with the broadened UNP-led United National

Front (UNF) coalition in 2001. In most of these situations, the alignments

forged by the smaller parties helped tilt the balance of power in favour of

the cooperative coalition and its associated major party. This led to recurring

situations of tough, even opportunistic, bargaining in which the smaller

partner tried to get additional seats and ministerial appointments for its

leading figures to compensate for the compromises in its positions it would

be compelled to accept as a junior partner in the coalition. This active hard-

nosed political bargaining and threat of defections (often followed by

action) gave the political process a volatile, unstable and unseemly character.

Electoral fraud, violence, material inducements to encourage defections, and

brinkmanship increasingly characterised the political process and contributed

to the growth of cynicism about it.34 The alienation engendered has sometimes

led to dismissal of the politicians of minority ethnic groups as narrow-minded,

selfish opportunists (the Muslim and Upcountry Tamil politicians) or politi-

cally impotent (the Sri Lanka Tamil politicians).35 Fortunately, it does not

yet seem to have undermined belief in democracy itself.

Simultaneously, the sharpened competition for power between the two

major parties raised the stakes of the political game and shortened the time

horizons of politicians in the calculation of their interests. Most importantly,

it has fed into a persisting inability of the major parties to reach a consensus on

major issues pertaining to resolving the ethnic conflict on the island. Each of

the major parties has been recalcitrant in agreeing to the specifics of the com-

promise to be offered to the LTTE and the structure of power to be devolved to

the north-eastern region. With neither willing to support an agreement

initiated by the other in power, out of concern that the achievement would

redound to the latter’s political credit, the passage of any proposal for consti-

tutional reform has proved impossible since this requires a two-thirds vote

in its favour in parliament. Yet it is only with such bi-partisan support in

the legislature that any agreement can be presented to and hope to gain the

approval of the majority of the people in a referendum.

It remains disputed as to what electoral arrangement would work better

in Sri Lankan conditions. In representations made to the Draft Constitution

Committee in 2000, the larger parties declared themselves in favour of a

mixed system on the German model, in which a proportion of the seats

would be designated as single-member plurality seats, while the others

would be filled on a proportional basis along party lines. Rather than half

the seats being filled on a plurality basis, as in Germany, this view favoured

a reversion to the pre-1978 arrangement of 168 (of the now 225) seats

being filled on a plurality basis. Bonus seats would be done away with

while, in deference to small parties, the provision for national list MPs

would be retained. Not surprisingly, as the plurality seats would inevitably


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favour the two large parties in the Sinhalese majority of the south-west, the

smaller parties (JVP, CWC, SLMC and all the Tamil parties) remained

opposed to this proposal and preferred a continuation of the existing system

with modifications.36

Reviewing the situation, it seems that there is no ‘ideal’ electoral system

which will satisfy all parties and help resolve Sri Lanka’s political disputes.

What is clear is that, as argued by Colomer in a recent paper, once a pro-

portional system of representation has been established, it tends to endure

by creating a behavioural-institutional equilibrium in its favour.37

Instead, what Sri Lanka’s pluralist society needs in its next phase of

political engineering is a satisfactory devolution of power to its provincial

regions and localities to allow for both ethnically and non-ethnically organised

groups and individuals to participate in the processes of decision making and

power sharing at different levels of the polity. This alone will take the press-

ures off the beleaguered coalition of forces at the centre, and the challenges

posed by hyper-politicised forms of ethnicity.

C O N C L U S I O N S

Analysis of the data relating to the impact of the electoral system on the pat-

terns of representation and participation by members of different ethnic groups

seems to suggest a complex reality relating to the constitution of ethnic iden-

tities in Sri Lankan society.

As an instituted process for the election of representatives, the reformed

system seems to have already shown noteworthy signs of reshaping the politi-

cal arena in the desired direction by encouraging greater recruitment and rep-

resentation of ethnic minority candidates and MPs. However, as the PR system

is wont to do, it also appears to have encouraged a proliferation of smaller

ethnically oriented parties with their particularistic agendas relating to their

own ethnic constituencies. Given a situation of continued and sharp compe-

tition between the two major parties, the importance of politicians and

parties belonging to the minority ethnic groups has increased by providing a

decisive edge to each major party over the other in turn. This ‘kingmaker’

role of the smaller parties has enhanced their importance and bargaining

power, especially with regard to the election of the president, and the creation

of pressure on the executive to come forward with more ethnically inclusive

policies.

At the same time, the electoral system has increased both the potential

for instability in the political system and the political fragmentation of the

ethnic minorities. The larger ethnic conflict has had an impact on the fragmen-

tation of the minority parties – the various Sri Lanka Tamil parties, the


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parties/groups representing the Muslims – and now most recently the process

seems to be manifesting itself with regard to the Upcountry Tamils. This has

made for a more fluid, unpredictable political system which has augmented

short-term calculations and incentives and been injurious to larger, collective

and long-term perspectives. These trends make cooperation by the two major

parties imperative for the promulgation of a new structure of devolution

through constitutional reform to help stabilise the system in the long term.

NOTES

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Workshop on ‘Changing Ethnic Identities inSri Lanka’, American Institute of Sri Lanka Studies and Social Scientists’ Association, Colombo,14 June 2003; and the Annual South Asia Conference, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 23–26October 2003. My sincere thanks to Daya de Silva, P.P. Devaraj, Bhawani Loganathan, SterlingPerera and M. de S. Weerasooriya for help in identifying the ethnic backgrounds of candidates andpoliticians. I am grateful to Jon Fraenkel for his thoughtful comments.

1. See Pippa Norris, Electoral Engineering (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004),ch.9.

2. For instance, Bernard Grofman and Arend Lijphart (eds.), Electoral Laws and their PoliticalConsequences (New York: Agathon Press, 1986); and Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democ-racy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1999).

3. Donald L Horowitz, A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a DividedSociety (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); and Benjamin Reilly, Democracyin Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management (New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2001).

4. The usual pattern of outbidding has consisted of two major parties or blocs trying to mobilisethe votes of members of two different ethnic groups. In contrast, the Sri Lankan pattern hasconsisted of the two major parties seeking to outbid each other for the support of the largestethnic group (the Sinhalese forming 74% of the population) to the detriment of the nextlargest ethnic group (the Sri Lanka Tamils forming 12% of the population).

5. For details, see James Manor (ed.), Sri Lanka: In Change and Crisis (London: Croom Helm,1984); W.A. Wiswa Warnapala and L. Dias Hewagama, Recent Politics in Sri Lanka: ThePresidential Election and the Referendum of 1982 (New Delhi: Navrang, 1983); Sri Lanka,Report of the Commissioner of Elections on the Second Presidential Election of Sri Lankaheld on 19th December 1988 (Colombo: Sessional Paper No.4, 1993); and Sri Lanka,Report of the Commissioner of Elections of the Ninth Parliamentary General Election heldon 15th February 1989 (Colombo: Sessional Paper No.1, 1993).

6. Even during this time, the results were constrained by irregularities in the elections in the warzone of the north-east. Despite this, I have included the electoral figures for the north-east inthe analysis, because these developments do not seem to have impacted on the ethnic compo-sition of the candidates and MPs chosen for these districts. Each party constructed its partylists for each district in accordance with its particular orientation towards the ethnic compo-sition of the population in the constituency (as it existed in 1981) and the ethnic issue as awhole. The 1981 census figures have been used in this analysis as that was the last completecensus done across the island.

7. A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, The Gaullist System in Asia: The Constitution of Sri Lanka (1978)(London: Macmillan, 1980), 43–4, 86–96.

8. Article 94 (1) in Sri Lanka, Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka,1978.


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9. Article 62. In a complex formulation, 36 seats were distributed territorially, four to each of thenine provinces, across the island and 160 on the basis of the population island-wide. The totalnumber of registered voters for an election (based on the register of the previous June) wouldbe divided by 160, yielding the ‘qualifying number of electors’. Each district would beentitled to one member of parliament for each qualifying number of electors in its population.Districts with the largest remainder of voters would be allotted any remaining seats to bedistributed.

10. Articles 95, 96, 98 and 99. The actual number of seats won by a party was determined in thefollowing manner. After deducting the number of valid votes polled by parties or groups whogot less than five % of the votes, the remaining total number of valid votes would be dividedby the number of seats allocated to the electoral district minus one (for the bonus seat). Thisfigure would constitute the ‘relevant number’. Valid votes won by each party would bedivided by this relevant number to determine how many seats it had won in a district.

11. J.R. Jayewardene, Selected Speeches and Writings, 1944–1978 (Colombo: H.W. Cave,1979), 143–4, 149.

12. Ibid., 149.13. Ibid.; and Sri Lanka, Report of the Select Committee on the Revision of the Constitution

(Colombo: Parliamentary Series No.14, 1978), 143. See also A. Shastri, ‘Electoral Compe-tition and Minority Alienation in a Plurality System: Sri Lanka 1947–1977’, ElectoralStudies (Oxford), 10/4 (1991), 326–47; and S. Bastian, ‘The Political Economy of ElectoralReform: Proportional Representation in Sri Lanka’, in S. Bastian and R. Luckham (eds.), CanDemocracy be Designed? (London: Zed Books, 2003), 196–219.

14. Wilson, Gaullist System in Asia, 17–21.15. Shastri, ‘Electoral Competition and Minority Alienation’, 332–3.16. C.R. de Silva, ‘Proportional Representation in Sri Lanka’, Seminar on Universal Adult

Franchise, Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, Colombo, 17 and 18 July 1981, 11. Also publishedin K.M. de Silva (ed.), Universal Suffrage, 1931–1981: The Sri Lankan Experience(Colombo, 1981).

17. A. Shastri, ‘Estate Tamils, the Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948, and Sri Lankan Politics’,Contemporary South Asia (UK), 8/1 (March 1999), 65–86.

18. Preliminary conclusion based on an analysis of the uncertified 1994 candidate lists available.19. C. Baxter et al., Government and Politics in South Asia (Boulder, CO: Westview, 5th edn.

2002), 355.20. C.R. de Silva, ‘The Elections of 1994 in Sri Lanka: Background and Analysis’, The Round

Table (London), 334 (June 1995), 207–17.21. Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies, 119, 124.22. Note 3 above. As correctly pointed out by Jon Fraenkel, ‘The Alternative Vote System in Fiji:

Electoral Engineering or Ballot-Rigging?’, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 39/1(July 2001), 6.

23. Former Upcountry Tamil Member of Parliament P.P. Devaraj, interview with author,Colombo, 27 June 2003.

24. Election Commissioner Dayananda Dissanaike, interview with author, Colombo, 4 June2003.

25. Ibid.26. C.R. de Silva, ‘The System of Proportional Representation in Sri Lanka: A Critique’,

in C. Amaratunga (ed.), Ideas for Constitutional Reform (Colombo: Council for LiberalDemocracy, 1989), 212.

27. Devaraj, interview, 27 June 2003.28. For instance, Devaraj lamented, ‘Minorities have got fragmented by the electoral system.

If they are united they can bargain more effectively. If divided, then it is to no purpose.Concentration on development to their areas suffers’. Interview, 27 June 2003.

29. These were overtly expressed in the support given to the two major parties by moderateelements of the community living in the south-west. Others supported the moderate partyseeking to represent Sri Lankan Tamil interests, the TULF. Younger ex-militant membersof the community supported the EPDP, PLOTE and EPRLF, who opposed the LTTE and


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chose to work through more independent non-violent means, often as allies of the PA, themajor party which explicitly favoured regional autonomy within a united Sri Lanka as a sol-ution to the ethnic problem. Other smaller, less clearly defined groups based in the north-east,like TELO, chose to work as political allies and mouthpieces of the separatist and militantLTTE.

30. Moderate Muslims based in Colombo and, to a lesser extent, those based in the EP had alwayssupported the major parties in the centre. Individuals like Shahul Hameed in the UNP andMohammad Fowzie in the PA remained consistent in their loyalties. They were, however,challenged and pressurised by the more independent stand expressed by the SLMC, led byM.H.M. Ashraff, which favoured more regional powers for the Muslim population in theEP. After Ashraff’s death in a helicopter crash in 2000, a leadership struggle ensuedbetween his widow, Ferial Ashraff, who remained allied to the PA, and Rauff Hakeemwho sought to play a more independent role (vis-a-vis the major parties) to retain Ashraff’spolitical mantle and leadership of the SLMC. Hakeem subsequently faced factionalism in hissegment of the SLMC led by A.L.M. Athaullah, and strategically shifted support from the PAto the UNP before the parliamentary elections of 2001, a position he could reverse at anopportune time.

31. Thondaman’s grandson, Arumugam Thondaman, retained the leadership of the CWC, butwas far less forceful. His rival, Chandrasekharan, had already joined the PA, and P.P.Devaraj joined the UNP.

32. De Silva, ‘System of Proportional Representation in Sri Lanka – A Critique’, 213–14.33. The SLMC and the non-EPDP Tamil parties have done this in each election since 1994. The

JVP did so in the 2001 election. On the latter election, see Neil Devotta, ‘Sri Lanka’s PoliticalDecay: Analysing the October 2000 and December 2001 Parliamentary Elections’, Common-wealth and Comparative Politics, 41/2 (July 2003), 115–42.

34. S.T. Hettige, Voter Aspirations in Sri Lanka: Conclusions for a Pre-election Survey (Septem-ber 25–30, 2000) (Colombo: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Publication 45, 2000), 3–4, 39–42.

35. View expressed to me explicitly or implicitly be several public activists, often of the majoritycommunity, in summer 2003.

36. The SLMC proposals advocated a lower cut-off point to allow for more Muslim candidates togain representation (Dissanaike, interview, 4 June 2003; and Devaraj, interview, 27 June2003).

Devaraj expressed a keen desire to explore alternative electoral arrangements which wouldprovide more explicit representation for minority groups – perhaps through ethnic quotas orseparate electorates – an idea which found little favour elsewhere besides some segments ofEastern province Muslims (interview, 27 June 2003).

37. Josep M. Colomer, ‘It’s Parties that Choose Electoral Systems (or Duverger’s Laws UpsideDown)’, Paper presented at the American Political Science Annual Meeting, Philadelphia,28–31 Aug. 2003.


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Documents

Channelling ethnicity through electoral reform in Sri Lanka