A record victory, poorly attended

Two portentous results emerged from the parliamentary election in Sri Lanka, results of which were announced on 21 April. First, the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA), led by President Mahinda Rajapakse, won a resounding victory, just six seats short of the two-thirds majority needed for a constitutional change. And second, almost 40 percent of the electorate did not vote. The UPFA victory is unprecedented, and it took place despite a precipitous decline in the regime's vote base between January and April 2010. (The UPFA's total vote in the parliamentary election was nearly 1.2 million less than Rajapakse's total vote in the presidential election, three months earlier.) In some districts, such as the Rajapakse bastion of Hambantota, the UPFA polled fewer votes in April than it did in the presidential election of 2005, and even the parliamentary election of 2004.

The proportional-representation system was introduced by President J R Jayewardene in 1989, partly to prevent any party from obtaining more than a simple majority. In a robust multiparty democracy, this system does indeed prevent victors from gaining huge majorities, as evidenced by the results of all Lankan elections from 1989. But huge majorities can happen when a multiparty democracy is eroded from within, when the main opposition party is debilitated by repeated defeats and is incapable of mounting an effective politico-electoral challenge to the government. Under the leadership of Ranil Wickremesinghe, the opposition United National Party (UNP) has suffered serial defeats; and with each, its politico-electoral strength has haemorrhaged. It was the UNP's debilitated state that enabled the UPFA to score a record victory in the recent polls, despite a sharp decline in its own support base.