Towards ‘No-Election Commission’?

Tuesday 6th December, 2022

NPP MP and JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake has fulminated against the Election Commission (EC), and with reason. Speaking in Parliament, he has demanded to know why the EC ever asked for an opinion from the Attorney General anent the Local Government (LG) elections instead of exercising its powers to initiate the process of conducting the much-delayed polls. He sought to cast a doubt on the impartiality of the EC, and took a swipe at its Chairman Nimal Punchihewa.

Some independent legal experts maintain that the EC is now constitutionally empowered to hold the LG elections. The PAFFREL (People’s Action for Free and Fair elections) has reportedly written to EC Chairman, urging him to announce the date of the LG elections without further delay as there is no legal barrier for him and his outfit to do so. The EC has chosen to remain silent, but its silence will not do.

There is a misconception that all it takes to ensure the independence of key public institutions is to put in place constitutional mechanisms to depoliticise them. Hence, the creation of the Constitutional Council (CC) and the Independent Commissions (ICs) has been acclaimed as a surefire way of strengthening the state institutions. The 21st Amendment has restored the CC, which is believed to have strengthened the ICs, scilicet (a) the Election Commission (b) The Public Service Commission (c) the National Police Commission (d) the Audit Service Commission (e) the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (f) the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (g) the Finance Commission (h) the Delimitation Commission, and (i) the National Procurement Commission.

Essential as such legal mechanisms may be, the CC and the ICs will become ineffective again if their heads and members stoop so low as to pander to the whims and fancies of the political authority, the way some of their predecessors did during the Yahapalana government. Under that regime, the CC became a mere rubber stamp for the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had most of its members on a string. Constitutional provisions cannot make the spineless stand upright.

National Police Commission (NPC) Chairman Chandra Fernando’s presence at a recent ceremony at the BIA, where former Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa was given a rousing welcome by his hangers-on, has called the independence of the NPC into question. Fernando has claimed that he happened to be at the BIA over some other matter and his meeting with Basil was not preplanned. But he should have known better than to be present at a political event.

It is unfortunate that the EC has got embroiled in a controversy, especially at this juncture. There has been a severe erosion of public trust in the electoral system, and anti-politics is manifestly on the rise, eating into the vitals of all public institutions. The task before the CC and the ICs is to restore public faith in the democratic process and arrest what is widely thought to be the country’s slide into anarchy.

Who guards the guards, or quis custodiet ipsos custodes? This is the question the denunciation by the Opposition of the EC has prompted us to ask.

If the EC baulks at exercising its powers to safeguard the people’s franchise, it will forfeit its raison d’etre and be dubbed ‘No-Election Commission’. One can only hope that the EC will try to prove its critics wrong by plucking up the courage to grasp the nettle so that the people will have the pleasure of letting the government have a mega electoral shock, which it richly deserves.