Sri Lanka Election: Big win for Mahinda Rajapaksa’s party, PM Modi congratulates
Sri Lankan President Gotabya Rajapaksa has announced his party’s major victory in the country’s parliamentary elections.
His brother Mahinda Rajapaksa is now expected to be made the Prime Minister once again, who had served as caretaker since November.
The Sri Lankan People’s Front (SLPP) of the Rajapaksa family won a two-thirds majority in the Sri Lankan general elections, which the party also needed to carry out the proposed ‘constitutional changes’.
The party has won 145 seats out of a total of 225 seats. Also, five seats have been won by the allied parties of Sri Lanka People’s Front.
SLPP also won the presidential election in Sri Lanka 9 months ago after which Gotabya Rajapaksa took the oath of office on November 18.
Voting took place on Wednesday in Sri Lanka. Votes were counted on Thursday and the results have been officially announced on Friday morning.
Shortly before the results were announced, Mahinda Rajapaksa tweeted and informed that ‘Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi telephoned and gave him a message of good luck on the election.’
He wrote that “With the unprecedented support of the people, they will work to further improve Sri Lankan relations with India”. He wrote that ‘Sri Lanka and India are good friends’.
Sri Lankan politics has been dominated by the disputed Rajapaksa family for the last two decades.
Mahinda Rajapaksa had previously been the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka from 2005 to 2015.
According to the results, a new group led by the son of former President Ranasinghe Premadasa has now emerged as the main opposition party in Sri Lanka. Ranasinghe was assassinated in 1993.
Sri Lanka is one of the few countries to conduct elections during the Corona Virus epidemic, although the polling date was postponed twice due to the epidemic there.
This is really a big victory for the Rajapaksa family. In just nine months after winning the presidential election, Gotabya Rajapaksa won his coalition with a two-thirds majority.
Rajapaksa has been very popular among the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka because of his devotion. The Sinhalese constitute a quarter of the Sri Lankan population, who attribute Rajapaksa to the end of the separatist organization Tamil Tigers in 2009. At that time Rajapaksa used to be the Defense Secretary of Sri Lanka.
There is a large section in Sri Lanka which believes that ‘being in power gives the Sri Lankan government stability and they have also done well against the corona virus epidemic’.
Gotabya Rajapaksa was accused of human rights abuses during the civil war and was said to have targeted the voices raised in the protest. Although he has always dismissed such allegations, but these allegations have not left him.
The rising Sinhalese nationalism during the elections has also worried Sri Lankan minority communities.
Muslim leaders say that their community still faces the anger that arose following the bombings by some Islamic extremists on Easter last year. More than 260 people were killed in those blasts.
After the overwhelming majority of Sri Lankan general elections, the Rajapaksa family may try to change the constitution of Sri Lanka and increase the powers of the President to change the rules made by the previous government which increased surveillance on the government.
Social workers are already fearful of the dwindling space for dissent and criticism. They are afraid that this situation may take the form of a gradual and severe dictatorship.
