Multiple whammies for democracy

Friday 17th May, 2024

A government move to set up ad hoc community level advisory committees to handle election-oriented development work, etc., has run into stiff resistance. Its plan to appoint former SLPP and UNP local councillors to the outfits to be established has gone awry due to a legal snag.

There is hardly anything that a sinking regime does not do to retain its hold on power and avoid disastrous electoral defeats. The incumbent SLPP-UNP dispensation may have thought that it had been able to safeguard its interests by postponing the Local Government (LG) polls, which it did not want to face for fear of suffering a crippling electoral setback, but now it now finds itself in a bind.

Political parties are dependent on their local councillors to mobilise grassroots support for them. Most LG members elected in 2018 were from the SLPP and the UNP, and they cannot take part in election campaigns at present as they are still candidates although the LG polls have been put off. This is not a situation the government bargained for.

Hence its efforts to cancel the nominations for the LG polls in limbo and clear the way for the participation of their former local councillors in political work and their appointment to the so-called advisory committees in the works. Its trial balloon in the form of a ministerial statement that it is contemplating the cancellation of the LG nominations has provoked a howl of protests and given rise to a legal issue.

Nominations for an election cannot be cancelled simply at the stroke of a pen although the government seems convinced otherwise. President Ranil Wickremesinghe cut the Gordian knot when it became legally difficult for the government to postpone the LG polls; the government claimed that it could not allocate funds for an election at the height of an economic crisis because it had to prioritise the task of making essential goods and services available to the public over everything else. The SLPP and the UNP seem to think they can surmount the legal hurdle pertaining to the LG polls nominations in a similar manner.

Former Chairman of the Election Commission Mahinda Deshapriya has recently told the media that the LG nominations at issue can be cancelled only by Parliament, and a bill seeking their cancellation can be challenged before the Supreme Court. The government can muster a parliamentary majority for such a bill, but that will be politically counterproductive. The Opposition has pointed out that one billion rupees spent on the nomination process will go down the gurgler in such an eventuality. Thus, it will not be a walk in the park for the government to cancel the LG nominations.

Meanwhile, some government politicians have questioned the eligibility of Mujibur Rahman, who handed in his nomination for Colombo mayoral candidate, to be a member of Parliament. He resigned from Parliament to run for Colombo Mayor and submitted his nomination, but the LG polls were postponed. Government politicians are of the view that there is no legal provision for the resignation of candidates after the submission of nominations, and therefore Rahman’s appointment to Parliament via the National List can be challenged legally. It will be interesting to see whether this argument is valid.

Sri Lanka is facing an unprecedented situation, which is the antithesis of democracy. An unelected President is controlling all three tiers of government—something that even elected Presidents failed to do. President Wickremesinghe has Parliament under his thumb; the Provincial Councils and the Local Government authorities stand dissolved and are therefore under the Governors appointed by the President.

It is against this backdrop that the government’s efforts to establish a parallel local administration in the form of community level advisory committees should be viewed. If the government succeeds in its endeavour with its former local councillors serving in the outfits to be set up to compass its ends, democracy will suffer another whammy.