Presidential election in Sri Lanka 2005

The 2005 presidential election in Sri Lanka took place on November 17, 2005. The election was won by the candidate of the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA), founded the year before , Mahinda Rajapaksa . Rajapaksa's election victory was favored by the fact that large parts of the Tamil minority and, to a lesser extent, the Muslim minority in the north and east of the country were unable to vote due to the civil war .

prehistory

Mahinda Rajapaksa (2006), UPFA candidate

Ranil Wickremesinghe (2003, then Prime Minister), UNP candidate

The election was a rotating election as the six-year term of office of President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who was elected in 2000, came to an end. According to the provisions of the constitution, she was not allowed to run again for a third term. Kumaratunga had tried to extend her term of office by one year, as a kind of compensation for the fact that the previous term of office had been shortened by one year due to early elections. She had called the Sri Lankan Supreme Court for this. However, the Supreme Court ruled that the election had to take place in 2005.

In February 2002 there was a ceasefire between the government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe ( UNP ) and the separatist rebel organization of the LTTE ( Tamil Tigers ). Prime Minister Wickremesinghe's policy, however, did not meet with the approval of President Kumaratunga and her party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), who accused the Prime Minister of making too extensive concessions. Because of these differences, early parliamentary elections were held on April 2, 2004 , which were won by the UPFA coalition of parties that was newly formed under the leadership of the SLFP. Mahinda Rajapaksa then became Prime Minister of a UPFA-led minority government. Shortly after the general election, the ceasefire began to dissolve and open violence between the LTTE and government forces resumed.

The second serious event was the tsunami of December 26, 2004 , which hit the east coast badly, killing about 40,000 people and leaving half a million people homeless. The entire Sri Lankan tourism industry suffered a severe slump.

Election mode

→ Main article : Elections in Sri Lanka

The choice was made according to the mode that has been in force in Sri Lanka since 1989. 196 of the 225 members of parliament were elected in a total of 22 multi-person constituencies. A separate 5% blocking clause applied in each constituency. The voters had the opportunity to sort the candidates on the party lists according to first, second and third preference. A further 29 parliamentary seats were determined by proportional representation based on the relative nationwide share of the votes of the parties.

Admitted candidates

A total of 13 candidates were accepted for election by the Sri Lankan Electoral Commission.

Name of the candidate	Nomination by
Wimal Geeganage	Sri Lanka National Front
Chamil Jayaneththi	New Left Front
Ajith Kumara	Jayaweera Arachchige Democratic Unity Alliance
Siritunga Jayasuriya	United Socialist Party
P. Nelson Perera	Sri Lanka Progressive Front
Wije Dias	Socialist Equality Party
Anura De Silva	United Lalith Front
Aruna de Soyza	Ruhunu Janatha Party
Mahinda Rajapaksa	United People's Freedom Alliance
Ranil Wickremesinghe	United National Party
Achala Ashoka Suraweera	Jathika Sangawardhena Peramuna
Victor Hettigoda	Eksath Lanka Podujana Pakshaya
Hewaheenipallage Shantha Dharmadwaja	United National Alternative Front

Election campaign

The election campaign was heavily influenced by the personalities of the two main opponents Mahinda Rajapaksa (UPFA) and Ranil Wickremesinghe (UNP). The outgoing President Kumaratunga had a tense relationship with both and did not play a major role in the election campaign. Rajapaksa managed to win the support of the Marxist-nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Buddhist - Sinhalese Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) for his candidacy alongside the UPFA . In addition to the UNP, Wickremesinghe was supported by the Ceylon Workers' Congress (CWC), the Up-Country People's Front (UCPF) and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC). The Tamil National Alliance in the north declared itself neutral. The main topic of the election campaign was the smoldering civil war. Rajapaksa took a much tougher stance than before, probably to keep the JVP and JHU supporting him in line. He promised to renegotiate the agreements with the LTTE, which was widely understood by his constituents to mean that he wanted to take heightened military measures against the LTTE. Wickremesinghe tried to present himself as the better negotiator and promised the Muslim minority a better participation in future negotiations with the LTTE. A second topic was the reconstruction after the devastation of the tsunami. Here the debates of mutual corruption allegations and embossed.

Result

Absolute or relative majorities in the 22 constituencies: Mahinda Rajapaksa Ranil Wickremesinghe majority for Ranil Wickremesinghe, with extremely low turnout (below 0.2%)




Majorities in the 160 electoral districts: Mahinda Rajapaksa Ranil Wickremesinghe majority for Ranil Wickremesinghe, with extremely low voter turnout (less than 0.2%) majority for Mahinda Rajapaksa, with extremely low turnout (less than 2%)





The outcome of the election was extremely close. Rajapaksa won 50.29% of the vote (4,887,152) and Wickremesinghe 48.43% (4,706,366). Both candidates won a majority in 11 constituencies each. All other candidates ended up far behind. The turnout was 73.7%.

Turnout was extremely different across the country. While it was consistently over 70% in the predominantly Sinhalese districts, it was very low in the predominantly Tamil northern province . Of the 250,386 eligible voters registered in the Vanni constituency, 85,874 (34.3%) voted. In the constituency of Jaffna only 65 votes (0.2%) were cast of 55,499 eligible voters. The constituency did not actually take part in the election. In the Trincomalee constituency , the turnout was 152,428 out of 238,755 (63.8%). In the Eastern Province , too , the turnout was below the national average. In the Batticaloa constituency , 154,615 out of 318,728 (48.5%) voted and in the Digamadulla constituency 288,208 out of 396,453 (72.7%).

Two reasons were responsible for the low turnout: firstly, the government had not set up any polling stations in the areas controlled by the LTTE for fear of attacks. Voters therefore had to travel longer distances to get to the nearest polling station. The second reason was more decisive. The LTTE had decided to boycott the elections and the population feared retaliation from the LTTE if they ignored. According to election observers, it was not Rajapaksa but Wickremesinghe who would have won the election if the residents of the northern and eastern provinces had been able to vote more widely.

One sent to Sri Lanka EU -Beobachtermission under the direction of former EU parliamentarian John Cushnahan concluded in its final report to the Court that it compared to the parliamentary elections last year have been improvements. However, these improvements were limited to the south of the country, while the electoral process in the north and east was inadequate due to violence and legal uncertainty and the forced election boycott by the LTTE. The voter registration also had shortcomings. The mission complained that public money had been misappropriated for the government's election campaign and that the state media had not done its job of impartial reporting. Overall, however, there was an opportunity for voters to obtain information from a variety of sources. In view of the difficult framework conditions, the electoral process was carried out in a remarkably professional and impartial manner.

candidate		be right	percent
	Mahinda Rajapaksa	4,887,152	50.29
	Ranil Wickremesinghe	4,706,366	48.43
	Siritunga Jayasuriya	35,425	0.36
	Achala Ashoka Suraweera	31,238	0.32
	Victor Hettigoda	14,458	0.15
	Chamil Jayaneththi	9,296	0.10
	Aruna de Zoya	7,685	0.08
	Wimal Geeganage	6,639	0.07
	Anura de Silva	6.357	0.07
	Ajith Kumara Jayaweera Arachchige	5,082	0.05
	Wije Dias	3,500	0.04
	P. Nelson Perera	2,525	0.03
	Hewaheenipellage Shantha Dharmadwaja	1,316	0.01
All in all		9,717,039	100.0

On November 19, 2005, Mahinda Rajapaksa was sworn in as the new President of Sri Lanka.

literature

• W. Mishler, S. Finkel, P. Peiris: The 2005 presidential and 2004 parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka. Notes on Recent Elections. In: Electoral Studies. 26, 2007, pp. 196-231. doi: 10.1016 / j.electstud.2006.03.005

Web links

• Election results on the Department of Elections website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} W. Mishler, S. Finkel, P. Peiris: The 2005 presidential and 2004 parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka. Notes on Recent Elections. In: Electoral Studies. 26, 2007, pp. 196-231. doi: 10.1016 / j.electstud.2006.03.005
2. ↑ ^{a b} Presidential Election - November 17, 2005. (PDF) Sri Lankan Electoral Commission, archived from the original on December 9, 2009 ; accessed on August 1, 2015 . 
3. ↑ EUROPEAN UNION ELECTION OBSERVATION MISSION SRI LANKA PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 17 NOVEMBER 2005 FINAL REPORT. (pdf) EODS website (www.eods.eu), accessed on August 29, 2020 (English).