Supreme Court or People’s Court?

The country at large had few doubts that all the machinations clearly visible in recent weeks to ensure that no local elections countrywide will be held on March 9 was the work of President Ranil Wickremesinghe. Although various public service cat’s paws ranging from Neil Hapuhinna, the Secretary to the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Government, Mahinda Siriwardene, Secretary to the Treasury/Ministry of Finance and the Government Printer were the public face of the effort to scuttle these elections, the president’s speech in Parliament on Thursday made abundantly clear that he was the puppeteer pulling all the strings.

The Elections Commission and its Chairman, Nimal Punchihewa, admitted partial defeat when the postal voting scheduled to begin on Feb. 22 and continue for two more days thereafter was indefinitely postponed. The ostensible reason adduced for this was non-receipt of ballot papers. Although March 9 was announced as Election Day, deposits were received from candidates and nominations closed, there was no definitive statement from the powers that be that there will be no election next month. On the contrary, the ruling Wickremesinghe – Rajapaksa regime arranged for the UNP and SLPP to run together and submitted nominations on that basis. The SLPP’s general secretary, Sagara Kariyawasam in fact went public on many occasions expressing confidence of victory. That nobody took him seriously given the present country conditions is another matter. But the president’s parliamentary speech made very clear which way the papadam was crumbling.

Whether those who loudly proclaimed that they will bring the people to the streets if they are deprived of exercising their franchise will do so, or if the people will rally to their call, remain uncertain. The SJB’s recent attempt to march on Colombo was by no means spectacular. Wickremesinghe has made no secret of the fact that he long knew there will be no elections when he started his speech in Parliament on Thursday. He said he had sent word to SJB MP Mujibur Rahman, his party’s choice for Mayor of Colombo, not to resign his parliamentary seat anticipating the mayoralty. But Rahman (“I brought him to politics,” Ranil said) had not listened and paid the price of losing his parliamentary seat already filled by veteran AHM Fowzie who was next on the SJB’s preference list.

Wickremesinghe of course says that the election have not been postponed because no election has been called. He claims that what he previously called a “divided” Election Commission, had been inquorate when an election date had been fixed by its chairman and one other member. He has offered to provide evidence in support of this contention. As always he declared that he was a democrat but setting the economy right was his first priority. Nobody will disagree that given the current state of the economy and the government’s cash strapped situation, spending billions on an election will do little good for the country in a material sense. But the people also want to show the ruling establishment what they think of it. What better way of doing so but by an election? That is what the government funks and that, in the view of the electorate, is why, the government does not want to have any election at this point of time.

Remember it was at the last local election in 2018 when the Yahapalana government was in office that the electorate sent the first signal that the days of that administration were numbered. Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s election as president in November 2019 and the SLPP’s comfortable romp home to Parliament the next August followed. The majority of their electors today have little faith in local bodies that are well known to be both corrupt and inefficient. They will loudly applaud the promised measures to reduce the number of local councilors from about 8,000 countrywide at present to half that figure. But the electors are also too well aware that it is the very legislators who increased the number of councilors, be they members of Municipal/Urban Councils or Pradeshiya Sabhas to the present obscene level, who are now piously promising to halve the number. They will by no means willingly permit the incumbents in government to buy time for themselves by postponing elections.

We run a letter to the editor today by a reader who quit the public service at a senior level decades ago and lived in Geneva and the UK doing consultancy work for various UN agencies. Back now in Sri Lanka for good, he has suggested that we return to the pre-1977 old order and spread out local elections rather than have them in a single day. This is what is done in the UK and many other developed countries. He says that local bodies are elected by their constituencies to provide key services to local people. These elections were held in the past at different times, and not all together; he urges a return to that system so they are spread over several months. This would greatly reduce costs and may or may not be seen as the test of a central government’s popularity. Diffused local elections, of course, be less of a signal. Remember the UNP won the Colombo Municipal Council months after its 1956 rout.

Given that the president has now played the government’s hand, the response must be awaited. Will the opposition resort to the Supreme Court or the People’s Court. Are aragalayas past tense today with middle class support waning. Only time will tell.