Sri Lanka has dodged the proverbial bullet with the party of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe winning enough votes in parliamentary elections to hold onto power. The outcome is a defeat for former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had hoped to avenge his defeat in a presidential vote in January and use the prime minister's position to return to power.
Rajapaska governed Sri Lanka for a decade as a Sinhalese nationalist strongman, defeating the Tamil Tiger insurgency, yet he failed to build national reconciliation after that victory. He was stunned when voters denied him a third five-year term as president at the beginning of this year, opting instead for Maithripala Sirisena, a former ally who broke with him over his hard-line policies.
In the Aug. 17 parliamentary election, Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP) won 45.7 percent of the votes, doubling its representation to 106 seats, seven short of a majority in the 225-seat legislature. It is anticipated that the UNP will claim an outright majority when disaffected members of Rajapaska's Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) cross the aisle to join a national unity government. The SLFP won 95 seats in the vote, a substantial fall from 144 before the ballot. It is not clear if the UNP will gain enough partners to have the two-thirds majority needed for constitutional reforms.