Sri Lankans have become used to the idea of elections every year, so the polls for the Eastern Provincial Council should have been just another routine exercise. Yet this was not the case in early May. These elections were being held for a provincial council that had not been constituted for more than a decade, in a province that had experienced large-scale fighting, destruction of neighbourhoods and public buildings, mass displacement and human-rights violations.
Provincial Councils were first established as a part of the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord, and the north and east were merged in deference to the demand by Tamil nationalists. During the last two years, there have been dramatic changes on the ground. The north and east was de-merged following a 2006 Supreme Court order. The 'shadow war' between the security forces, the LTTE and other Tamil militant groups became a full-scale war, in breach of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement. In the two years since the de-merger, the government's military takeover of the east was almost complete, paving the way for political consolidation.
On 10 May, elections were held in the three constituent districts of the Eastern Province – Ampara, Batticaloa and Trincomalee – amidst tight security, and observed by a number of election-monitoring groups. Some 982,751 registered voters had to choose from more than 18 political parties in order to elect 37 council members, one of whom would assume the post of chief minister. The governing alliance – the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA), which included the breakaway group from the LTTE, the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikhal (TMVP) – won in seven of the ten polling divisions, with an overall majority of 52 percent and ultimately 20 of the seats. The opposition coalition, of the United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), won some 42 percent of the vote and 15 seats. This left just two seats for other parties.
Before getting lost in the political implications of the victory, it could be useful to look at the popular response to the election. Altogether 65.8 percent of registered voters cast their ballot; in Sri Lanka, this turnout is not impressive. The question that civil-society leaders of Batticaloa asked when confronted by the local-government elections that were held in that district this March still stands: "For whom are these elections?"