A political party backed by Sri Lanka’s former president Mahinda Rajapaksa looks set for a landslide victory in local polls, early results showed on Sunday.
The results are potentially undermining the country’s unity government and its reform agenda.
The unexpectedly strong showing could lead to defections away from the centre-left party led by President Maithripala Sirisena, a partner in the country’s coalition government, analysts said, creating instability in the legislature.
Local polls were the first elections since the unity government of Sirisena’s centre-left Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s centre-right United National Party (UNP) took office in August 2015, reports Reuters news agency.
Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), a party formed by breakaway members of Sirisena’ party, has secured 97 local bodies out of results for 139 councils so far released as at 0650 GMT.
The UNP took control of 18 councils and SLFP six.
Results for another 201 local bodies are yet to be released. The long-delayed election comes after the councils were dissolved over two years ago after their tenure ended.
Dinesh Gunawardena, an opposition legislator and member of SLPP, told reporters in Colombo that the Sirisena “government has lost the people’s mandate and should resign now”.
Rajapaksa, a legislator in the opposition benches, commands the backing of 54 legislators who have defected from Sirisena’s party.
He campaigned against the government’s failure to curb the cost of living and to take action against corruption, as well as higher taxes, the privatisation of state assets, and less welfare for the poor and retired soldiers.
The government has promised a new constitution that devolves power, the facilitation of an international probe into alleged war crimes during the final phase of a 26-year civil war, IMF-backed fiscal discipline and post-war reconciliation.
However, it has yet to deliver on these reforms or on promised anti-corruption measures.
The unexpected defeat comes after a bitter fight between the parties led by the president and prime minister, which blamed each other for the failures in the run-up to the local polls.
