Looking back 70 years

By D.C. Ranatunga

This time 70 years ago – August 1947 – was an exciting one for the Sri Lankans. Campaigning to elect 95 Members of Parliament (MPs) to the first House of Representatives was in full swing. 

Although Sri Lankans over 21 had enjoyed voting rights since 1931, the 1947 general election was being held on the party system for the first time. Until then candidates who contested seats in the State Council came forward as individuals although in the 1930s political parties were being formed by different groups. The earliest such organisations were the Sinhala Maha Sabha (1934), the Tamil Congress (1934) and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (1935). 

The Soulbury Constitution introduced a parliamentary system based on the Westminster model with a bicameral legislature comprising the Senate – Upper House – and the House of Representatives – Lower House. The 30-member Senate comprised of 15 members elected by the Lower House and the other 15 appointed by the Governor on the advice of the governing party.

The people elected 95 members (Members of Parliament – MPs) from 89 constituencies for the 101-member House of Representatives with the other six being nominated by the Governor to represent the minorities or unrepresented interests. 

Apart from being the first election contest on party basis, there were several other significant features in the 1947 election. 

Symbols were used for the first time in place of colours to identify candidates. Earlier, coloured boxes were placed at each polling booth and the voter only had to put the ballot paper to the coloured box of the candidate of his choice. 

The symbols were given to individual candidates and not to each party until 1956. With the recognition of political parties by the Department of Elections each party was allocated a symbol. The 1956 general election saw this change. 

In 1947 the elephant was a popular symbol, particularly with most UNP candidates including the leader D.S. Senanayake and seniors like J.R. Jayewardene and J.L. Kotelawela, but not S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who used the hand as his symbol and chose it as his party symbol when he set up the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) after breaking away from the UNP in 1951. 

Among elephant users was LSSP stalwart Robert Gunawardena (Kotte). LSSP’s Dr. N.M. Perera (Ruwanwella) used the house as his symbol and Phlip Gunawardena (Avissawella), the hand. BLP leader Dr. Colvin R. de Silva’s was the key, the LSSP symbol at later elections. 

Tamil Congress leader G.G. Ponnambalam preferred the bicycle while party member S.J.V. Chelvanayagam (later leader of the Federal Party) chose the key. Labour leader A.E. Goonesinghe’s was the bicycle and Peter Keuneman’s the umbrella. Thus there was no uniformity among each party. The candidates were free to select on their own. 

Colours too did play a prominent part. These were used at election campaign meetings. By then voters had got used to certain colours. At least two colours were well known – green for the right and red for the left.

In demarcating the electorates, the Delimitation Commission had recommended that there be four multi-member constituencies electing more than one member. Accordingly Colombo Central electorate elected three members) while Ambalangoda-Balapitiya, Balangoda and Kadugannawa elected two each. Fifteen contested Colombo Central with A.E. Goonesinghe Labour), T.B. Jayah (UNP) and Peter Keuneman (CP) winning the three seats in that order.

Although the general election is now held in one day, in 1947 it was held over a period of 19 days – from 23 August to 20 September. The single day election was held from the 1960 March election onwards.

While 361 candidates contested the 1947 election, almost half (182) contested as Independents. This was possible since there was no restriction that all contestants should represent a political party. One candidate – H.S. Ismail – was elected uncontested from the Puttalam seat.

Nine parties put forward candidates with the United National Party (UNP) leading the list with 98.  The LSSP with 28 was second. The other parties were Ceylon Communist Party (CCP – 13), Bolshevik Leninist Party (10), All-Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC – 9), Ceylon Labour Party (CLP – 9), Ceylon Indian Congress (CIC – 7), Lanka Swaraj Party (3) and United Ceylon Congress (2). The last two parties did not get a single seat.

There was confusion in in several electorates when several candidates from the same party contested. Obviously the parties did not have restrictions. Imagine five out of six candidates contesting the Polonnaruwa seat were from the UNP! The winner was from the UNP.

In 1947 although 3,048,146 were eligible to vote, the total votes polled were 1,887,364 while valid votes amounted to 1,710,150.

Polling 751,432 votes, the UNP had 42 MPs with LSSP with 204,020 votes had 10. Others were below 10 – ACTC 7, CIC 6, BLP 5, CCP 3 and CLP 1; 21 Independents won.

Leaders of all the parties won their seats. They were D.S. Senanayake (UNP), Dr. N.M. Perera (LSSP), G.G. Ponnambalam (ACTC), S. Thondaman (CIC), Dr. Colvin R. de Silva (BLP), Pieter Keuneman and A.E. Goonesinghe (CLP).  

The largest number of votes polled in a single constituency was at Attanagalla (36,489) where S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike (UNP) got 31,463 votes obtaining the largest majority (26,854).

One of three female candidates – Florence Senanayake (LSSP – Kiriella) – was elected. The other two – Sita Molamure (Ruwanwella) and Naysum Saravanamuttu (Colombo North) – who had sat in the State Council, lost.

Meanwhile, 8% minimum votes 131 candidates forfeited their deposits. They included all three candidates of the Swaraj Party.

Governor Sir Henry Monk Mason Moore invited D.S. Senanayake, the leader of the party with the largest number of seats (41) to form the government. Although the UNP did not have a clear majority, the government was formed with the support of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress and a few other MPs. 

The LSSP leader, Dr. N.M. Perera, was elected Leader of the Opposition and Senior Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike was appointed the Leader of the House.

The Speaker in the first State Council, A.F. Molamure (UNP – Balangoda) was elected Speaker in a contest where he obtained 58 votes as against 41 by H. Sri Nissanka (Ind – Kurunegala).