Share responsibility in provincial governance

by Jehan Perera

The government is reported to be preparing legal amendments to ensure the conduct of long postponed provincial elections. Elections to the nine provincial councils have been postponed since 2017 when the government at that time decided to amend the law pertaining to the conduct of provincial elections.  But they never completed the process, which gave them the excuse not to hold the elections.  Thereafter no government had sufficient interest in holding elections to the provincial councils by completing the process of changing the provincial council election law.   The result is that today the devolved provincial council system is run by appointees of the central government. Little do they recognize or accept that they are violating the constitution by technical excuses.

According to the media, Minister of Public Administration, Provincial Councils, (Professor) Chandana Abeyratne stated that Parliament had approved the mixed proportional representation system for provincial elections under the Provincial Councils Act No. 17 of 2016. However, the implementation of this system requires the approval of the Delimitation Commission’s report, which was defeated in parliament effectively blocking those elections.  Consequently, there have been calls to revert to the previous electoral system for conducting the Provincial Council elections.  Under the previous system, elections would be held according to the provisions of the Provincial Councils Elections Act of 1988. In these circumstances, instead of further delaying the election can be held under the existing law and be modified subsequently.

Minister Abeyratne has indicated that a proposal regarding this matter would soon be presented to the Cabinet. Following Cabinet approval, necessary steps will be taken to conduct the Provincial Council elections by August 2025. Hopefully, the NPP government will not follow the path taken by previous governments which upon winning national elections fought shy of contesting at the local and provincial levels.  Those governments feared testing their popularity at the local level polls as they realized that they were not bringing to fruition the many promises they had given.  The present government also is finding it difficult to keep its promises regarding charting a new path of economic development, reducing the cost of living and increasing production in the immediate term.

MAIN PROMISE

The strength of the present government, however, is that it is keeping true to its central promise during the election campaign.   The government is widely seen as implementing its promise to bring corruption and wastage of resources to a speedy end.  Corruption and wastage were seen by a large section of the population, presumably the big majority if the election results are gone by, as the key reason for the country’s economic collapse in 2022.  The current debate on the privileges and benefits accruing to the former presidents and prime ministers of the county is due to the government’s efforts to deliver on its election-time promises in the immediate term.  Unlike previous governments which lost popularity soon after winning the elections, the present government continues to be popular due to keeping to its main promise.

The government has promised to hold the local government elections as soon as possible in the first half of the year. This would also be in deference to the decision of the Supreme Court that these elections should be held as early as possible. The local government elections have been postponed for over two years due to the unwillingness of the previous government to test its popularity with the people.  The local government elections fell due at the time of the economic collapse of 2022 so it is not surprising they were postponed.  The government feared a landslide defeat.  On this occasion, however, the government is likely to do well at the elections as the opposition political parties, including those in the north and east, have become weak due to in-fighting.

If the provincial council elections are held in the aftermath of the local elections, the government will once again have the advantage due to the momentum of its victories.  The question with regard to the holding of provincial elections   is whether the government is committed enough to the cause of devolution of power to actually want to hold those elections.  There continues to be a widespread opinion among people of all strata that the provincial councils are unnecessary white elephants at best and potential threats to national security at worst.  However, the government has been categorical in stating that they will hold those elections because this is part of the constitution which they are pledged to uphold.

FULL IMPLEMENTATION

The basic rationale for the devolution of power is that in a multi-ethnic and plural society, such as what Sri Lanka and Switzerland are, it enables each community to enjoy decision-making power in the areas in which they are a majority.  In a situation in which one community is much larger than the others put together, it also prevents the larger community from imposing its views on the others to their disadvantage.  Unfortunately, there are many examples from Sri Lanka’s post-independence history of this phenomenon.  These include the denial of citizenship to the Malaiyaha (upcountry Indian) Tamil community at the very dawn of Independence in 1948.  More recently, it was seen again during the Covid outbreak in 2020 when the bodies of those who died of Covid were compulsorily cremated even though this went against the deeply held religious sentiments of the Muslim community.

There is a possibility that the government will not see the devolution of power as an aspect of improving governance in the country.  The government has taken the position that it is committed to the equality of all citizens and that it is a non-racist government that will oppose racism and extremism in all its manifestations.  As a result, the government has not given any emphasis to ensuring ethnic or plural representation in its decision-making bodies.  This was seen in the composition of the cabinet of ministers, in the choice of deputy ministers and more recently in the appointments it made to the Presidential Task Force for a clean Sri Lanka.  The representation of ethnic and religious minorities and of women was either zero or disproportionately low. The issue of ethnic, religious and gender representation in decision-making authorities at the central level needs to be reconsidered.

In this context, the holding of provincial council elections will ensure the missing ethnic and religious representation in decision-making, albeit at the provincial level.  The provincial council system was designed to accommodate the long felt need of the ethnic and religious minorities for a share of power in governance in the areas in which they predominate.  The 13th Amendment calls for the establishment of the provincial councils as elected democratic mechanisms.  The provincial councils are not mere decentralized bodies that ought to be run by the central authorities. The 13th Amendment also calls for the implementation of land and police powers.  By implementing the provincial council system according to the constitution, the government will do much to strengthen the trust of the ethnic and religious minorities in the constitution and rule of law, and strengthen the national reconciliation process which is the surest guarantee of national unity.