- Big crowds, bigger speeches, achievements, failures and promises
While the SLPP held a largely attended rally at the ancient capital of Anuradhapura on 12 September, the ruling JVP-led NPP held a similar one on the same day in another ancient capital, Polonnaruwa. Not to be outdone, the main Opposition Party, the SJB, is also planning a massive rally this week.
Sri Lanka’s political landscape is once again filling with stages, loudspeakers, party flags, buses and large gatherings. The Ruling Party holds rallies to demonstrate public confidence on the promises fulfilled and successes achieved in the last two years. Opposition parties organise their own gatherings to demonstrate they remain relevant and capable of mobilising people, accusing the Government of their failure to fulfil promises and tap the galloping cost of living. Each side has a different story to tell.
The Government says that its rallies demonstrate continuing public support for its programme. The Opposition points to its own crowds as evidence that dissatisfaction is growing. Between them, competing political narratives are presented to thousands of people, while television (TV) and social media transform the rallies into national political spectacles.
But the question that deserves much greater attention is what about the millions of voters who are not at the rallies? That may be the most important constituency in Sri Lankan politics.
For decades, Sri Lankan political parties have treated the size of a rally as a measure of political strength. A packed ground produces spectacular photographs. A long procession creates TV headlines. The larger the crowd, the stronger the political message appears.
The JVP, since the inception as a revolutionary Marxist Party, could muster vast crowds at its rallies. Even after entering mainstream democratic politics, it could fill a given stadium or a ground with masses, but they could get only three per cent of the votes.
Similarly, the SLPP received less than 3% of votes at the last Election, but the Party could fill the Anuradhapura Municipal Grounds on 12 September. That proves that a crowd is not an opinion poll — and certainly not an Election result.
A person attending a rally may be a committed party supporter, a trade-union member, a local organiser, a curious citizen or simply someone who has come because transportation was arranged. Attendance can demonstrate organisational capacity, enthusiasm or political mobilisation. It cannot, by itself, establish how the wider electorate intends to vote.
The experience of recent Sri Lankan campaigns illustrates this distinction. During the 2024 Presidential campaign, news media reported relatively limited voter interest in attending the rallies of major candidates and noted that social media had increasingly become a virtual platform for political campaigning.
Similarly, during the 2024 Parliamentary campaign, the media reported that many voters felt that the normal political heat was notably absent, despite political parties conducting meetings around the country. This suggests that political engagement and rally attendance are not synonymous.
The current political environment presents an interesting contrast. The ruling JVP/NPP has demonstrated substantial organisational capacity through large-scale public events. On May Day of this year (2026), for example, the NPP organised rallies in 21 cities, while Opposition parties also organised major gatherings and presented sharply different interpretations of the country's political direction.
The Opposition, meanwhile, has every democratic right to occupy the political space and challenge the Government. Its rallies provide platforms to criticise Government policy, highlight economic difficulties and offer alternative political programmes.
This is healthy in a democracy. A Government should not have a monopoly over political communication. Opposition parties should be able to tell the public why they disagree with the Government. Equally, the Government should be able to explain what it believes it has accomplished and why its policies deserve public support.
The problem begins when both sides mistake their own audiences for the entire country. A Government rally represents those who attend it. An opposition rally represents those who attend it. Neither necessarily represents the millions who stay at home.
The silent majority may be politically active, but they shun political rallies. A 2024 survey on factors guiding voter preference found that 90% of respondents said that they always voted, while only less than 10% said that they always attended political meetings and rallies. That distinction is extremely important. It suggests that voting can be a much broader form of political participation than rally attendance.
The citizen who watches a political debate at home, reads several newspapers, discusses the economy with colleagues, follows Parliament on social media and finally goes quietly to the polling booth may be politically more consequential than the enthusiastic participant standing in the front row of a rally.
The silent voter does not make dramatic TV pictures. But, the quiet voter has a ballot. This is not an argument for abandoning political rallies as rallies have their legitimate democratic purpose. Public meetings remain an important democratic institution. They allow political leaders to communicate directly with citizens. They give supporters a sense of collective identity. They provide opposition movements with visibility and Governments with opportunities to explain their policies.
Sri Lanka's 2024 Presidential election campaign, for example, involved rallies, door-to-door campaigning, billboards, the media and other forms of political communication. The Commonwealth Observer Group documented the use of these different platforms by the leading candidates. The question is therefore not whether rallies are useful. It is whether rally attendance should be treated as the principal measurement of political legitimacy.
Political rallies can create echo chambers. A politician standing before thousands of enthusiastic supporters can easily conclude that the whole country shares the enthusiasm. The opposition leader standing before another large crowd can reach the opposite conclusion.
Both impressions can be misleading. The audience applauds the speaker because it broadly agrees with the speaker. The speaker then interprets the applause as evidence that the broader population agrees. JVP Leader and President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, SJB and Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa and SLPP candidate Namal Rajapaksa address large crowds at Presidential Election rallies, while some other candidates like attorney and entrepreneur Dilith Jayaweera, Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka and monk Ven. Battaramulle Seelaratana Thera got similar coverage in the media while addressing a handful of people at meetings in small halls.
This is how political parties can become detached from voters who do not attend meetings, do not carry flags and do not shout slogans. The silent citizen can therefore become the most important corrective to political overconfidence.
Ultimately, Sri Lankan democracy has a much more reliable mechanism for measuring political support: the ballot box. Crowds can measure mobilisation. Rallies can measure enthusiasm among participants. Social-media views can measure attention. Media coverage can measure visibility. But, elections measure votes.
Even election results, however, should be interpreted carefully. A party's share of the vote reflects those who actually cast ballots, not necessarily the entire population. This is why politicians should be cautious about declaring political victory merely because thousands attended a rally. The person who stayed home may not have been indifferent. He or she may simply have been unconvinced.
Sri Lanka needs a political culture in which rallies become opportunities for substantive democratic debate rather than competitions over the crowd size. The public deserves to hear concrete answers about generating employment, how to find funds for the implementation of promised development projects, what will happen to tax money, how will corruption be tackled and last but not the least, what Constitutional reforms are actually proposed.
And perhaps most importantly: what measurable outcomes should voters expect if a particular programme is implemented? These questions matter far more than whether one party assembled 50,000 people and another assembled 30,000.
Sri Lanka's political parties would do well to look beyond their own crowds. The Government should listen not only to those applauding its achievements but also to citizens who remain unconvinced. The Opposition should listen not only to those demanding change but also to citizens who may have reservations about its alternatives.
Both sides should recognise that millions of citizens may not attend a single political rally during an entire political cycle. They are not necessarily politically apathetic. They are simply silent participants in democracy.
The next Election will not be decided by the loudest microphone, the biggest stage or the most spectacular aerial photograph. It will ultimately be decided by ordinary citizens entering polling booths, often quietly and without fanfare, and making their own choices. In Sri Lankan politics, the crowd may make the noise. The silent voter makes the decision.
The great Polonnaruwa farmers’ rally featuring everything except the Agriculture Minister
Polonnaruwa, the ancient capital that produced not only kings, but also a President, produced a political harvest on 12 September.
There was a farmers’ rally. There were farmers. There was the President and Ministers. There were speeches about farmers and promises for farmers. There was just one small problem. The Agriculture Minister and his Deputy were missing.
Perhaps this was a new NPP agricultural policy: “Keep the Ministers away from the farmers so the farmers cannot ask too many agricultural questions.”
And Polonnaruwa is not exactly an accidental location. It is one of the country’s great rice-growing areas. Imagine a hospital opening ceremony without the Health Minister or a cricket match without cricketers.
The Government can certainly argue that the President himself attended and addressed the farmers. But political symbolism has its own fertiliser.
Opposition politicians have interpreted the absence as evidence of the Government’s difficulties with the farming community, particularly over paddy prices and market arrangements. Those are political claims, not established explanations for the Ministers’ absence.
“Two years of Government — and the Agriculture Ministers are still in transit.”
The writer is a journalist, diplomat, and media professional with experience in public communication and international media relations
---------------------
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication