By Veeragathy  Thanabalasingham

Colombo, October 13 – Recent pronouncements  by Sri Lankan government leaders regarding  provincial council (PC)  elections raise more doubts than hope that the elections will be held any time next year.

The latest announcement came from Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath who told  parliament on October 9, in response to the questions raised by opposition members Chankiyan Rasamanickam and Jeevan Thondaman,  that the government intended  to hold the long-delayed PC elections  by next year and that the elections will be decided once the current delimitation process is completed.

“We will decide later whether to hold the provincial council elections under the proportional representation (PR)  system or the mixed electoral  system. This can only be decided by Parliament. Talks will be held to decide on the electoral system”, he added.

It may be recalled that Heath had conveyed the same position on the  PC elections while addressing the recently concluded 60th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and earlier in response to the report submitted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation in Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile, Tilvin  Silva, the powerful general secretary of the  flagship party of the ruling National People’s Power (NPP) Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), and key leaders of the government, such as the Leader of the House Minister Bimal Rathnayake and cabinet spokesman  Nalinda Jayadissa also said PC elections would be held next year once the delimitation process was complete.

The PC elections will have to wait until the delimitation process is complete only if they are to be held on a mixed electoral system, which includes PR and  the old  First Past the Post (FPP) method.

The Chairman of the Election Commission, R.M.A.L. Ratnayake told the media few days back that they have not received any instructions regarding the formation of a new delimitation committee for the PC  elections and that the wait for the  elections continues as there is no clear decision on when the process will be carried out.

Earlier in August, the cabinet had approved the appointment of a new delimitation committee to review the reports of the previous committees and provide guidelines regarding the provincial council elections. However, despite earlier assurances that steps would be taken to hold the elections once the delimitation process was completed, no information has been provided by the government on the progress of the process, the Chaiman said.

Under the new law passed in 2017 during the ‘ Yahapalanaya ‘ government under Maithripala Sirisenaand Ranil Wickremasinghe  to conduct PC elections under a mixed system like local government elections, a delimitation committe chaired by  Dr. K.  Thavalingam was  appointed to demarcate  the 2022 electoral wards and 222 list-based allocations  in the provincial councils.

The  committee’s report, however, was submitted past its deadline in  the committee’s 2018 and subsequently  rejected by the cabinet.

There are provisions in the law that if the report of the delimitation committee  is rejected, a committee headed by the Prime Minister will review it and submit a fresh report within two months. It was said that the committee headed by then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe submitted a report to Parliament stating that it would not be possible to fully review the delimitation committee’s  report in a short period of two months.

Since then, more than 11 years have passed without new provincial council elections being held. The last  Provincial council election under the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution.

During last year’s national elections, the NPP promised that PC elections would be held within a year of the new government taking office. It is a well -known secret that the government is reluctant to hold PC  elections after a significant drop in the votes of the ruling party in the local elections. While some leaders of the government had already said that the elections would be held in the first half of next year, the Foreign Minister’s statement that the elections would be held within the next year has naturally given rise to doubts on government’s intentions.

If a new delimitation committee is appointed as per the approval given by the cabinet in August, there is no possibility of holding provincial council elections next year if it starts its process afresh.

The elections are likely to be delayed again for a couple of years. However, it is learnt from some political sources that the government intends to set up a committee under the chairmanship of the present Prime Minister to review the report of the Thavalingam committee which was already rejected by the Parliament seven years ago.

If the PC elections are to be held expeditiously without further delay, the only practicable method is to hold them under the existing PR system.

In order to facilitate the conduct of elections under the PR  system, during the previous Government, the then  Member of Parliament of the Ilankai Thamizharasu  Karchi (ITAK )  M.A. Sumanthiran brought a bill in the form of a private member motion.  However, it could not be passed in Parliament. At present, a similar private member motion has been brought by ITAK’s  Batticaloa district member Chanakiyan Rasamanickam.

If the government is really interested in holding the PC elections at the earliest, the government should cooperate in passing Chanakiyan’s motion in the House. This can easily be done by using a majority of more than two-thirds of the seats the government has in parliament. But the government has no such inclination.

It is entirely the responsibility of the government to find a solution to the problems that stand in the way of holding the PC elections expeditiously. The NPP which promised to hold the elections in a fair manner without allowing any delay, cannot be justified on any grounds in this issue.

If it had won a spectacular victory in the local elections like the parliamentary elections, the government would have definitely held the PC elections immediately thereafter.

No government can avoid the decline of the votes by postponing the elections. Delaying the elections will only lead to a further drop in votes and will not increase popular support in any way. Today’s government leaders must understand that all governments that postponed elections out of fear of defeat have failed miserably.

Be that as it may,  a strange turn in the course of political events in southern Sri Lanka can be observed. The current opposition parties, which have had no interest in PC elections for more than a decade, have recently begun urging the government to hold those elections as soon as possible. No one can have difficulty in understanding that the concern for devolution of powers to the provinces is not the reason for it.

Emboldened by the reverses suffered by the government in the local elections, the opposition parties expect a major setback in any future elections as the government has not been able to fulfil most of the promises made to the people by the NPP  during the national elections.

On the other hand, since there is no possibility of coming to power at the Centre in the near future, these opposition parties are keen to capture power in the PCs, the second tier of the governance system.

If these already badly weakened parties are not able to hold positions of power at some level for a long time, it will be difficult to prevent further deterioration of their support and party network.  This is the reason why these parties dared to challenge the government regarding the  PC elections.

At a meeting convened a few days ago by the National Movement for Social Justice (NMSJ), led by former Speaker Karu Jayasuriya to coincide with his 85th birthday, opposition parties and some civil society organizations discussed in detail ways to press the government to hold early PC elections without delay. They also demanded that the elections should be held within this year without waiting for next year.

It is unfortunate that the Tamil political parties in the North and East have not shown much interest in exploring ways to pressurise the Government in this regard when the Opposition parties are making similar demands to the Government on the elections  in South Lanka.

On the completion of one year of the NPP government, the ITAK sent a letter to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake asking for time to have discussions with him,  pointing out that it is now one year since the President Dissanayake took office and the resolution of the pressing Tamil  issues has been promised in the NPP’s election manifesto  and the several announcements made by him, no related action has been taken in the last year.

But, only the Minister Ramalingam Chandrasekaran told the media  that the President would soon call representatives of the ITAK  but it is not known whether the party has received any response from the President himself.

END