Friday 20th October, 2023

Sri Lanka is never short of committees and commissions, and they are widely considered political instruments that governments in dire straits use to deflect adverse criticism and buy time. Their reports do not see the light of day in some cases. The Presidents only have to wave their executive wands and, hey presto, committee/commission reports disappear!

President Ranil Wickremesinghe has appointed a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) to examine and recommend amendments to the laws governing the electoral system. The nine-member CoI is headed by former Chief Justice Priyasath Dep, PC.

The CoI’s terms of reference are of interest. The President has directed the CoI to consider, inter alia, “enabling a person to contest two elections for the selection of people’s representatives and have the opportunity to represent both councils at the same time if elected (e. g. to give an opportunity for a person elected to Parliament to also contest a provincial council election, and if elected, have the opportunity to represent both councils at the same time).

” If laws are introduced to that effect, the MPs will be able to leverage their vote banks, popularity and political clout to win the Provincial Council elections easily, and resign, if they so desire, enabling their kith and kin to become Provincial Councillors. If the MPs are allowed to act as Provincial Councillors as well, a conflict of interest will arise in situations where the Bills before Parliament in respect of matters in the Concurrent List are referred to the Provincial Councils for their views.

The CoI has been directed to make recommendations ‘for the strengthening of laws and regulations related to registration of political parties and their operations in a manner that elicits trust and public accountability’. True, most political parties are mere nameboards, and they unashamedly engage in what may be called political prostitution. But they alone cannot be blamed for the erosion of public trust in the party system.

The main political parties are worse. They are notorious for acting out of expediency rather than principle and betraying the people’s trust. The SLPP won the last three elections by vilifying the UNP and promising to undo what the latter had done, and vice versa; the UNP returned to power in 2015, vowing to throw the Rajapaksas behind bars, and contested the last general election on an anti-SLPP platform, but the two parties are currently savouring power together.

President Wickremesinghe has observed, in the gazette notification announcing the setting up of the CoI, that “there is a tendency on certain occasions for political parties, independent groups and their membership to engage in unbecoming behaviour in their political and public affairs and in inappropriate media use, a need has arisen to introduce a code of conduct and media standards.

” He has asked the CoI to ‘make recommendations for the introduction of a code of conduct for political parties, independent groups and their membership in performing political and public affairs’. In a country where politicians even do not abide by the Penal Code, it is doubtful whether discipline could be instilled in them with the help of a mere code of conduct. The best way to cleanse politics, in our book, is to make politicians respect the rule of law. The problem that the President has sought to deal with, we believe, has less to do with the electoral system, etc., than the kind of candidates political parties nominate to contest elections.

The CoI has been tasked with recommending ways and means of increasing female and youth representation. This could be considered a progressive step. Women are under-represented in all political institutions. A 25% quota for female councillors has been introduced in respect of the local government institutions. This is not enough. Women, who account for more than one half of Sri Lanka’s population, deserve at least 50% of the seats in political institutions. They must not settle for less. Similarly, more seats therein must be reserved for the youth (who are not members of the parasitic political families).

It may not be fair to view the CoI with suspicion even before its inaugural sitting, but one cannot be faulted for doing so, given one’s bitter experience with the past commissions and committees on electoral reforms; the Provincial Council polls have been made to fall through a crack in the electoral system.

In Sept. 2019, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court informed the then President Maithripala Sirisena, in response to his request for the apex court’s opinion on the PC polls, that without a new delimitation report laying out the boundaries of the electorates, elections could not be held under the Provincial Council Elections Act as amended in 2017. It was also pointed out that the PC elections could not be conducted under the Proportional Representation system.

The SLPP berated the UNP-led Yahapalana government for having contrived a legal mess to postpone the PC polls, which the latter was afraid of facing. Today, it has not only chosen to remain silent on the much-delayed PC polls but also put off the local government elections with the help of the UNP! It is only natural that everything that the SLPP-UNP combine does arouses suspicion.