Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Sri Lankan parliamentary election, 2001

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5 December 2001
  
2004 →

1994
  
1994

109
  
77

Start date
  
December 5, 2001

Turnout
  
76.03%

89 Seats, 40.22%
  
107 Seats, 45.11%

4,086,026
  
3,330,815

Sri Lankan parliamentary election, 2001 httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediacommonsthu

Winner
  
Ranil Wickremesinghe

Parliamentary elections were held in Sri Lanka on December 5, 2001, just a little over a year after the last elections in October 2000.

Contents

Background

The People's Alliance (PA) government faced a blow when most of the SLMC MPs left the coalition. President Chandrika Kumaratunga tried to recruit the JVP to replace it, but this angered several PA MPs, thirteen of which defected to the opposition. A no-confidence motion was prepared; to forestall this, Kumaratunga called the election.

More than 1,300 incidents of election violence were reported during the campaign. [1]. Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake was nearly killed by a suicide bomber. Overall, 60 people were killed in election-related violence, including 14 on polling day. [2]

Parties

  • Democratic People's Liberation Front (DFLP)
  • Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP)
  • People's Alliance (Bahejana Nidasa Pakhsaya, BNP), which consisted of:
  • Communist Party of Sri Lanka
  • Democratic United National Front
  • Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Sri Lanka Equal Society Party, LSSP)
  • Sri Lanka Freedom Party (Sri Lanka Nidahas Pakshaya, SLNP)
  • Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya (Sri Lanka People's Party, SLMP)
  • Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People's Liberation Front, JVP)
  • Sri Lanka Muslim Congress
  • Tamil United Liberation Front (Tamil Vimuktasi Peramuna, TVP)
  • United National Front, which consisted of:
  • United National Party (Eksath Jathika Pakshaya, UNP)
  • Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC)

    • Results

    Kumaratunga's People's Alliance lost the resulting general election, which saw the United National Front win the legislative power. The UNP's leader, Ranil Wickremasinghe, became the new prime minister.

    Having a President and Prime Minister from different parties proved to be unstable, and Parliament was dissolved again in 2004, leading to yet another general election.

    Province

    Results of the 2001 Sri Lankan general election by province

    Electoral District

    Results of the 2001 Sri Lankan general election by electoral district

    References

    Sri Lankan parliamentary election, 2001 Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA