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Viewing cable 06COLOMBO809, MAIN PARTIES TROT OUT THE OLD GUARD FOR COLOMBO

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
06COLOMBO809 2006-05-17 12:11 2011-08-25 00:00 UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Embassy Colombo
VZCZCXRO7814
OO RUEHBI
DE RUEHLM #0809/01 1371211
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 171211Z MAY 06
FM AMEMBASSY COLOMBO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 3397
INFO RUEHNE/AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI PRIORITY 9637
RUEHKA/AMEMBASSY DHAKA PRIORITY 9198
RUEHKT/AMEMBASSY KATHMANDU PRIORITY 4124
RUEHIL/AMEMBASSY ISLAMABAD PRIORITY 6089
RUEHBI/AMCONSUL MUMBAI PRIORITY 4534
RUEHCG/AMCONSUL CHENNAI PRIORITY 6642
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEKDIA/DIA WASHDC PRIORITY
RHHMUNA/HQ USPACOM HONOLULU HI PRIORITY
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 COLOMBO 000809 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV CE
SUBJECT: MAIN PARTIES TROT OUT THE OLD GUARD FOR COLOMBO 
LOCAL COUNCIL POLLS 
 
REF: COLOMBO 400 
 
1.  (SBU) Local government elections for the Colombo 
Municipal Council (CMC) and 21 other local government 
authorities will be held on May 20.  Elections in these 
localities were postponed from March 30 because of assorted 
court challenges to electoral lists submitted by various 
parties (Reftel).  Besides the race for leadership of the 
CMC, other significant electoral contests that will take 
place on May 20 include the Municipal Council in Galle, the 
second largest city on the island, and the Municipal Council 
in Gampaha in former President Chandrika Kumaratunga's home 
district.  Local elections in the eastern district of 
Batticaloa and all the districts in the north have been 
postponed for security reasons until September 30. 
 
2.  (SBU)  Because of court cases filed by the Janatha 
Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) challenging the validity of their 
electoral slates, the two largest parties, President Mahinda 
Rajapaksa's Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the opposition 
United National Party (UNP), have been barred from 
campaigning in their respective traditional strongholds of 
Gampaha and Colombo under their national party symbols. 
(Note:  Despite the comparatively high literacy rate in Sri 
Lanka, party symbols, which function as branding devices on 
ballot papers, are considered essential to electoral 
success.)  Although both parties are still expected to win 
overall control of the councils in their traditional 
stomping-grounds, popular confusion over the party 
symbols--as well as general voter fatigue after parliamentary 
elections in 2004 and presidential elections in 2005--may 
give them less than resounding victories.  In general, the 
Colombo campaign mounted by all contestants, including the 
usually irrepressible JVP, has ranged from low-key to 
well-nigh inaudible, especially in comparison to the 
pull-out-all-the-stops campaigning that preceded local 
elections held in most of the rest of the country March 30 
(Reftel). 
 
3.  (SBU)  Given that the CMC race is the most important 
local election in the country, the two main parties have made 
some surprising choices to lead their campaigns as mayoral 
candidates in Colombo.  Both have tipped hardened 
veterans--but not necessarily victors--of many political 
battles, whose long years in the rough-and-tumble game of Sri 
Lankan politics have done little to burnish their 
reputations.  The UNP selection--former Colombo mayor and 
party stalwart Sirisena Cooray--has disappointed many of the 
UNP faithful, who were hoping for a fresh face (with a 
somewhat cleaner reputation) as their standard-bearer.  A 
close associate of the late President Premadasa, Cooray was 
appointed for a brief term as the High Commissioner to 
Malaysia during 1978-79. He served as Mayor of Colombo from 
1978-1989 (a term which included the horrific anti-Tamil 
pogroms of 1983).  He was elected as a UNP MP for Colombo in 
1989, serving as Housing and Construction Minister in 
Premadasa's Cabinet and as General Secretary of the UNP from 
1991-1993.  After losing in parliamentary elections in 1994 
(and the death of his patron and protector Premadasa the year 
before), Cooray, who was suspected of complicity in several 
high-profile scandals, was asked to step down as General 
Secretary and resign from the party's Working Committee. 
 
SIPDIS 
Cooray spent most of the next decade living abroad, although 
he returned to Sri Lanka now and then.  In 2004, at the 
behest of UNP MP Milinda Moragoda, UNP Leader Ranil 
Wickremesinghe brought Cooray back into the party fold. 
 
4.  (SBU) The SLFP-led United People's Freedom Alliance 
(UPFA) has selected die-hard socialist and long-time 
rabble-rouser Vasudeva Nanayakkara to lead its Colombo 
campaign.  Nanayakkara's checkered political career has 
included membership in assorted minuscule and often 
short-lived political parties (including the Lanka People's 
Socialist Party, the New People's Socialist Party, the United 
Socialist Alliance and, most recently, the Democratic Left 
Front) as well as periodic stints in jail (including a 
three-year term from 1971-1974 in connection with the first 
JVP uprising and again in 1987 for burning a bus in front of 
the U.S. Embassy to protest the Indo-Lanka Accord).  By the 
1980s, he had broken with the JVP and ran against Rohan 
Wijeweera (among many others) in the 1982 presidential 
election, winning just a quarter of a percent of the popular 
 
COLOMBO 00000809  002 OF 002 
 
 
vote.  Although he has been in and out of Parliament from 
1970-2000, Nanayakkara has never served as a Minister or 
Deputy Minister.  He has a reputation in some quarters as a 
Sinhalese hardliner and anti-Tamil communalist. 
ENTWISTLE