Local Government Elections

The Ven. Maha Nayakes, His Eminence the Archbishop of Colombo and the opposition parties have urged the Elections Commission to hold the local government elections to send a message to the government. This may be with good intentions. But judging from what happens at meetings of some local bodies, people will begin to wonder whether it is worth having members of this sort elected as they would be no better than those sent to parliament.

We have seen meetings in several local government bodies ending in fisticuffs and some councilors even throwing furniture at each other trying to emulate MPs. Fortunately, they still have not resorted to throwing chillie powder at their opponents!We have had the Provincial Councils in operation for some time. What benefit have the voters got from the members after election? They will resort to purchasing unnecessary furniture at exorbitant prices, may be to help some henchmen, and spend large sums of money on refreshments. Other than that, there is absolutely no service to the public. They only have been looking after themselves.

So it is worth pondering whether we actually need the services of people who are only interested in lining their own pockets and helping kith and kin with absolutely no service to the public. Take one example of dereliction of duty by these local government representatives, I would cite the case of the unfortunate schoolboy in the Kurunegala area, where he fell into an uncovered drain and succumbed after drowning in the murky water. The Municipal Council should take the rap for this untimely death of a schoolboy.

The amount of money spent on maintaining these local government representatives is exorbitant. But the outcome of this expenditure is almost nil. It would be better to use the Government officials to run these local government bodies and spend the money thus saved on education so that the children could be given a conducive environment to engage in their studies and extracurricular activities.

I remember in the good old days they used to have Gamsabhawas where the elders of the village form int a Village Committee and attend to the needs of the village. This was done without any payment and the villagers were very happy the way these Gamsabhawas did a service to the people. Taking all these into consideration I wonder whether it is worthwhile having elections to the local government authorities.

HM NISSANKA WARAKAULLE