NPP's post-LGE challenges

AT last, the long-awaited Local Government Elections, which former President Ranil Wickremesinghe and before him the Rajapaksa Government avoided for fear of exposing their growing unpopularity among voters, have proved that the seven-months-old NPP Government, amidst all negative propaganda and baseless accusations levelled by a dispirited and policy bankrupt Opposition, continues to command respectable support all round the country.

- By Dr. Ameer Ali

True, there has been a swing against NPP which is normal for every Government while in office. But that swing must be considered in the light of a drop in voter turnout from 69% at the Parliamentary Elections to 62% at LGE. Yet, to win 267 of a total 341 councils and to hold the second largest majority in several others is no evidence of any rejection or a waning star. NPP has every reason to feel buoyant.

However, the future success and survival of NPP Government depends solely on the delivery of its promises, which cover three pivotal areas: clean governance at all levels, economic development with equity and ethnic reconciliation cemented by a secular democratic constitution.

Clean governance

If there was one promise that dominated the election campaigns of AKD and NPP and on which they received an overwhelming mandate to govern it was to end corruption at all levels of governance. When the British handed over the government to the local elite, the latter inherited an efficiently run public administration and a resourceful economy with great potential for development. But once ethnoreligious parochialism crept in to shape the mode of governance, inefficiency and corruption became unstoppable. Successive governments promised to end corruption and punish or remove the corrupt. It never happened.

As the Indian film director and actor Shekhar Kapur once commented on corruption in India, Sri Lanka too followed a similar track: “the corrupt accuse the corrupt of being corrupt and the corrupt investigate the corrupt and absolve the corrupt of being corrupt”. Transparency International, on a scale of 0 (utterly corrupt) to 100 (almost no corruption) found Sri Lanka standing at 32 in 2024 worsening from 40 in 2012.