US embassy cable - 04COLOMBO702

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 COLOMBO 000702 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR SA, SA/INS, INR/NESA 
 
NSC FOR E. MILLARD 
 
PLEASE ALSO PASS TOPEC 
 
E.O. 12958:     DECL: 04-27-14 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, PINR, CE, Elections, Political Parties 
SUBJECT:  UPFA government wins Provincial Council 
election; Tensions spike between UPFA and monk party 
 
Refs:  (A) FBIS Reston VA DTG 262308Z Apr 04 
 
-      (B) Colombo 694, and previous 
 
(U) Classified by Ambassador Jeffrey J. Lunstead. 
Reasons 1.5 (b,d). 
 
1.  (C) SUMMARY:  The UPFA government easily won the 
April 24 Provincial Council election in Wayamba, an area 
north of Colombo.  In other political news, the JVP's 
ministerial nominees are scheduled to take their oath of 
office on April 28 after a compromise was reached in the 
JVP's dispute with President Kumaratunga's SLFP.  In the 
meantime, tensions between the UPFA and the JHU, an all 
Buddhist monk party, continue to grow.  Despite the win 
in Wayamba and the SLFP's modus vivendi with the JVP, 
the UPFA remains a minority government and full control 
of Parliament appears out of its grasp for the moment. 
END SUMMARY. 
 
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Government wins provincial election 
----------------------------------- 
 
2.  (U) On April 24, President Kumaratunga's United 
People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government won a 
decisive victory over the opposition United National 
Party (UNP) in the election for the Provincial Council 
of Wayamba ("Northwest") Province.  (Wayamba consists of 
Kurunegala  and Puttalam Districts, which are located 
north of Colombo.)  The UPFA won 31 of the 52 seats on 
the Council, taking 59 percent of the vote.  The Janatha 
Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) party, a major UPFA coalition 
partner, also did extremely well in the election winning 
all nine of the seats it contested.  The UNP won 19 
seats, taking only 38 percent of the vote.  (The 
balloting in Wayamba was Sri Lanka's first election 
since the April 2 Parliamentary election, which was won 
by the UPFA.  Sri Lanka has seven other provinces and 
six of these -- all save the north/east -- are slated to 
have provincial council elections later this year.) 
 
3.  (U) Turnout in the election was low.  Only about 56 
percent of voters turned out versus the roughly 75 
percent that did so in the April 2 parliamentary 
election.  The Colombo-based Center for Monitoring 
Election Violence, a local NGO, said the election was 
basically peaceful and "largely incident free." 
 
--------------------------------------- 
Breakthrough in SLFP talks with the JVP 
--------------------------------------- 
 
4.  (SBU)  In more good news for the UPFA, a compromise 
has reportedly been reached between the Sri Lanka 
Freedom Party (SLFP), the major constituent element in 
the UPFA, and the JVP which ends their rift over 
ministerial portfolios.  The major sticking point 
dividing the two parties had been the allocation of the 
Mahaweli Development (river basin) sector to a ministry 
headed by a SFLP MP, instead of a JVP-managed ministry. 
The JVP had claimed that Mahaweli issues should fall 
under its control, as its nominee was slated to take 
over the Agriculture Ministry (which in the past 
controlled such issues).  Under the terms of the 
compromise, which was reached late April 26 after long 
days and nights of bargaining, the JVP will take 
responsibility for agricultural development in the 
Mahaweli region (the north-central area of Sri Lanka), 
while the Mahaweli river basin development program will 
remain within the SLFP-managed River Basin Development 
ministry. 
 
5.  (SBU) The compromise will allow four JVP ministers 
to be sworn in right before the regular "Wednesday" 
Cabinet meeting on April 28.  (Due to the disagreement 
over the ministerial portfolios, the JVP's ministerial 
nominees had boycotted the main April 10 swearing in 
ceremony -- see Ref B.)  The following JVP MPs are 
slated to serve as ministers (pending the April 28 
swearing in ceremony): 
 
-- Anura Dissanayake, Ministry of Agriculture, Lands and 
Irrigation 
-- Vijitha Herath, Ministry of Cultural Affairs and 
National Heritage 
-- K.D. Lal Kantha, Ministry of Rural Economy and Rural 
Industries 
-- Chandradasa Wijesinghe, Ministry of Fisheries and 
Aquatic Resources 
 
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Tensions spike between UPFA and JHU 
----------------------------------- 
 
6.  (SBU) In other political news, two Buddhist monk MPs 
from the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) party have been 
harassed for their April 22 parliamentary votes in 
support of the UNP's candidate for parliamentary 
speaker.  (In an all-day session marked by bickering, 
the UNP's candidate, W.J.M. Lokubandara, won the Speaker 
post by a one-vote margin over the UPFA's candidate -- 
see Reftels.)  In two April 24 incidents, supporters of 
the UPFA have been implicated in threatening the two 
monks and attacking their temples.  Police have arrested 
one suspect who was said to have been involved in one of 
the incidents.  During a Buddhist convention sponsored 
by the JHU held in a town south of Colombo on April 26, 
JHU monks again complained that their supporters were 
harassed, reportedly by JVP members.  Separately, a 
televised April 26 interview with a UPFA deputy minister 
turned contentious when a JHU monk called in, warning 
that the JHU MPs would withdraw even conditional support 
for the government if the harassment continued. 
(FYI.  Basically, seven of the JHU MPs are taking an 
anti-UPFA stand at this point.  The other two JHU monks 
are considered to be pro-UPFA.) 
 
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COMMENT 
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7.  (C) Despite the win in Wayamba and the SLFP's modus 
vivendi with the JVP, the UPFA remains a minority 
government and full control of Parliament appears out of 
its grasp for the moment.  The bitter tenor of the 
UPFA's dispute with the JHU monks certainly will 
compound its effort to gain the 113 seats or more needed 
to form a majority in Parliament (the UPFA can currently 
rely only on about 106 seats).  The fact that two JHU 
MPs voted with the UNP in the race for Speaker, allowing 
the UNP candidate to win and thus giving the government 
a black eye, has deeply angered the UPFA, and they seem 
unable to let it drop.  At the same time, there is 
little doubt that any recrudescence of the SLFP-JVP 
infighting down the line will further hamper the UPFA's 
ability to govern.  The good news for the UPFA is that 
some of the small parties that currently support the 
UNP, such as the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the Tamil 
tea estate party, the Ceylon Worker's Congress, may 
still be willing to link up with the government if they 
are given the right assurances (ministerial positions, 
etc.).  If that happens, the UPFA would be close to 
attaining majority status.  That said, it appears more 
than likely that Sri Lanka will have an unstable 
situation in Parliament for some time to come.  END 
COMMENT. 
 
8.  (U) Minimize considered. 
LUNSTEAD