Every pantaloon is running loose

by Kumar David

What larks! Ranil can’t make up his mind whether he is the UNP or SLPP (the party of government bearing fealty to Mahinda) candidate. Mahinda’s colour is a beastly cherry; “the workers’ dye is purple now, it got mixed up with blue somehow” goes the ditty. Sajith is torn between a deal with the UNP (Ranil), or going it solo, or come what may, stitching together some other combine.

The perkiest comedy in town is the SLFP where they are quarrelling about, (i) whether Mrs B’s endowments were masculine enough and whether her voice sufficiently gruff, (ii) whether Pissu Sira should be declared a certified lunatic, and (iii) whether Wijeyadasa should sit on this side or that side of the aisle or park his rump in the gangway between. The political scene in Lanka these April days is a Spring Festival of fun and frolic; every political dunce and pantaloon is running wild.

All this jostling and jockeying is in anticipation of the menacing day when the Elections Commissioner will call upon all men, good and true, to submit nominations for the Presidential Elections due later this year. The glaring addition needed to the line-up in the previous para is Anura Kumara who is likely to score a plurality, but perhaps not a majority on the first count. If you want me to guess; Anura may collect up to 40% and a Ranil-Sajith combo with SLPP riff-raff appended may garner, say, 25%. However, the dark-horse in the current topsy-turvy is the SLFP as I will explain anon.

Since I am writing the article I have to put down numbers, otherwise you will stop reading. So, what the hell, can I spit out 15% for the still residual SLFP national base-vote? Let’s add: 40+25+15 makes 80%. This leaves 20% for all the other riff-raff; cranks like Patali, mentally deranged Field Marshals and assorted candidates offering themselves in the first round of the Presidential Election. Come on, this a fair way doing the sums at this early looney stage. Play with the numbers if you will but your guesses won’t be much different from mine eventually.

Now comes the interesting part. If no candidate scores over 50% on first count, the second preferences cast for the first two, and ONLY these two candidates, are tallied and added to the relevant person. Note this carefully. All other second preference votes are discarded. Second preference votes cast by supporters of all other candidates and for all other candidates are discarded. This seems both illogical and unreasonable but see “Counting Second Preferences” below for further comment.

Now, only a complete nut of an Anura-voter will cast a second preference for the UNP-SJB-SLPP block, and vice-versa. That is no UNP-SJB-SLPP voter in his/her right senses will give a second preference to Anura either. (SJB is Samagi Balavegaya, Sajith’s party). Hence when these relevant or permitted second preferences are included, the absolute number of votes for Anura and the UNP-SJB-SLPP block will remain almost unaltered. I call this the Prohibited Cross Voting (PCV) assumption. So, Anura will be elected president by a margin of 40 to 25 in the afore enumerated scenario. This is a stylised example but is intended to illustrate the lie-of-the-land. Let me explain it a little more.

Implications of PCV behavioural assumption

First let me repeat because it is vital though you will find it obvious when you think it over. Say the results of the first vote count are candidate-A (say Anura) is placed first, and candidate-B (the principal opposition candidate) is placed second, or of course, vice-versa. Then the “Prohibited Cross Voting” (PCV) thesis ensures that the candidate who wins the first round will inevitably become the president because the total votes and the relative positions of these two candidates will NOT change because of the PCV behavioural assumption.

Please take a moment to mull this over, though it is self-evident once you get the hang of it. Win the first count and you are the president! Your relative position (total number of votes) will hardly change a jot thanks to the PCV behavioural assumption. Say the first candidate polls 5,550,000 and the second polls 5, 500,00 at the first count. Then after the second count (tallying of second preferences) neither will poll hardly one vote more or one vote less if voters strictly adhere to PCV. Win the first count (round) and you are president, home and dry! PCV underpins this essay but it has other significant consequences as you will see as you read on.

Then the crucial point is how valid is the PCV assumption? In general, and in other countries it may not hold, but violation of PCV is hardly thinkable in present day Lanka and at the upcoming presidential election. Imagine an Anura voter casting his second preference for candidate-B (a Sajith-UNP-SLPP etc offering) or a voter who gives first choice to candidate-B giving second choice to Anura. Unthinkable! Voters may spew out second choices anywhere they wish to and to anyone they like, but not to the principal opponent candidate says the PCV behavioural model’s assumption.

This has crucial implications for Lanka’s political dullards with bursting waistlines in white national-dress costumes protruding at the waist and jutting at the posterior. But they will soon wake up as nomination-day approaches and implications for future scams and graft dawn on these dullards. The most important point is that though the SLFP is in shambles right now and the goings-on are a fool’s carnival, it could emerge as a king-maker. To do so, it must join the candidate-B camp and line up behind this candidate formally. Then we may have candidate-B, including the SLFP, polling say just over 40% while Anura polls say just less than 40%. Anura is then edged out of the presidency if PCV strictly holds. (It may not hold, because some SLFP voters in camp-B may not play strictly by PCV and may be tempted to cast their second preference for Anura, in violation of PCV behaviour. This is possible if you recall that the SLFP once upon a time thought of itself as a left force).

Counting second preferences

I carefully discussed the way second preferences are counted with a lawyer and Oxonian who says he is an expert on the matter. He assured me that second preference votes cast for all candidates except the first and second are discarded. Furthermore, only second preferences among (within) the first two candidates themselves are taken into account he said.

Second preferences cast by supporters of all other candidates, even for the first two, are discarded he says. (This is the reason for my previous 5.55 and 5.50 million vote examples). This is an absurd system and defeats the whole purpose of giving voters a second preference vote. I must check this expert lawyer’s opinion with other informed people.

DBS Jeyaraj joins the fun and frolic

I will not question DBS’s personal integrity at this point but his prominent recent column “RW’s Caravan Moves on Despite Barking Dogs” is some panegyric! If it had been crafted in consultation with Ranil himself it could not have been more laudatory. DBS argues that Ranil has managed to hold diverse political forces together within the government, that he has retained the support of Ministers and State Ministers that he inherited from Gotabaya, and most important, DBS claims that only Ranil can pull the country out of the deep morass it has sunk into in the last two years and that he is capable of leading Lanka to economic recovery. Phew! The scribes at Dinamina are surely burning the midnight oil rendering this encomium into Sinhala. DBS’s views also reflect the thinking of educated Tamils and to a degree of pro-capitalist business classes, so they are worth reflecting over.

A previous draft of this article appeared in Colombo Telegraph. This version however takes precedence.