THE government has been dogged by negative public opinion on its failure to tackle what it promised during its election campaigns of two years ago. In the public perception it has yet to satisfactorily tackle corruption, bring about visible economic development or ensure the correction of war-related injustices. It has been losing popularity due to its inability to defend its performance on these issues. Marriages of convenience tend to get weakened in times of prolonged stress. There has been open bickering between the two main constituent parties of the government alliance. It is no surprise in this context that the government has been balking at facing local government elections. These have been postponed on various grounds for the past two years. The government\u2019s justification with regard to not holding the local government elections has been wearing thin. The government\u2019s apprehension about holding the local government elections is that it may not do too well at them on account of having to compete both within itself and with other political opponents. This in on account of facing down a tussle between the UNP and the SLFP as to what they want to do and what they should get. At the general elections of 2015 the UNP and the SLFP contested separately. The larger number of parliamentarians from the SLFP is now with the joint opposition. The fear of the SLFP is that if there is an electoral contest they could be beaten into third place by the joint opposition. This would harm the credibility of president Maitripala Sirisena and his hold over the SLFP. In the absence of strong leadership, the continuing failure of the government parties to tackle corruption, bring about visible economic development or ensure the correction of war-related injustices will only weaken their position further.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE government has been dogged by negative public opinion on its failure to tackle what it promised during its election campaigns of two years ago. In the public perception it has yet to satisfactorily tackle corruption, bring about visible economic development or ensure the correction of war-related injustices. It has been losing popularity due to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1"],"yoast_head":"\n