Franchise on deathbed

Wednesday 12th April, 2023

The Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government has made a mockery of the electoral process and the Election Commission (EC), which has had to keep postponing elections instead of conducting them. The 21st Amendment to the Constitution was hailed as a progressive law that would help reduce the powers of the Executive President and strengthen the so-called Independent Commissions, including the EC. But nothing of the sort has happened. The EC is only a shadow of its former self. The Executive President has enervated it to all intents and purposes.

The EC has had to postpone the Local Government (LG) polls twice so far this year. It met yesterday to announce that the LG elections scheduled for 25 April would not be held. It cannot be blamed for this sorry state of affairs. The government has deprived it of funds in the most despicable manner in violation of a Supreme Court interim order. Instead, it has claimed that the apex court has violated the MPs’ privileges and threatened to have the judges who issued the aforesaid interim order summoned before the parliamentary Committee on Ethics and Privileges!

Having ruined the economy, the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe regime now uses the country’s bankruptcy as an excuse for causing elections to be postponed indefinitely by depriving the EC of funds. At this rate, it may be able to postpone the parliamentary and presidential polls as well by claiming that the Treasury cannot afford to allocate funds for elections. In other countries, governments that bankrupt economies are chased from power, but, in this land like no other, a corrupt, incompetent regime has been allowed to use its failure as a licence to deprive the people of their franchise and consolidate its hold on power!

What we are witnessing is antithetical to democracy. The postponement of the Provincial Council (PC) and LG polls has created a situation where the Executive President now keeps all three tiers of government—Parliament, the PCs and the LG institutions—under his thumb.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe is technically the Head of government. Besides, he can now dissolve Parliament at a time of his choosing, and therefore all government MPs are at his mercy though his party, the UNP, has only a single MP in the current Parliament. He is not likely to dissolve Parliament because such action will be tantamount to a political Kamikaze attack, for he is bound to be left without a parliamentary majority in such an eventuality, given the unpopularity of the SLPP-UNP combine, which cannot even face the LG polls. But he can leverage his power to dissolve Parliament to make the ruling party MPs do his bidding. The PCs are without elected members. They are currently controlled by the provincial Governors, who are appointed by the President. The officials in charge of the LG bodies, which are without elected councillors, are under the Governors. None of the popularly-elected Presidents wielded so much power although the late President Ranasinghe Premadasa was accused of running a one-man show.

When elections are cancelled or postponed or marred by rigging and violence, public faith therein erodes severely much to the detriment of democracy, as has been our experience. The second JVP uprising would not have occurred if the J. R. Jayewardene government had held a general election instead of a referendum, in 1982, and allowed the people to vent their pent-up anger. That regime also banned the JVP, which challenged the outcome of the heavily-rigged referendum. Similarly, if the LG polls had been held early last year, the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration would have been able to defuse pressure in the polity; it would have suffered an electoral setback, but it would have been able to make a course correction and prevent popular uprisings, which led to its ouster. The incumbent administration is making the same mistake. It seems to think that the public will simmer down with the passage of time and it will be able to recover lost ground by postponing elections. It is hoping against hope and inviting trouble. Its grandees had better train themselves to run fast, for the day may not be far off when they have to outrun the irate masses or perish.