Sri Lankan local elections, 10 February 2018

fixweekly

fixweekly

Local elections are expected to be held in Sri Lanka on 10 February 2018. 15.8 million Sri Lankans will be eligible to elect 8,293 members to 341 local authorities (24 municipal councils, 41 urban councils and 276 divisional councils) in the country. It is expected to be the largest election in Sri Lankan hi tstory and will be the fist time elections to all local authorities are held onhe same day. These will also be the first elections under the mixed electoral system whereby 60% of members will be elected using first-past-the-post voting and the remaining 40% through closed list proportional representation.

Background

The last major round of local government elections was held in 2011 when elections were held in 322 of the then 335 local authorities. Elections to two other local authorities in Mullaitivu District were due but were repeatedly postponed due to alleged delays in resettling internally displaced persons following the end of the civil war in 2009. Elections to the remaining 11 local authorities were not due as they had their last election in 2008 or 2009.Since 2011 six new local authorities have been created (1 MC, 5 DC) taking the total number of local authorities to 341 (24 MC, 41 UC, 276 DC).

The normal term of a local authority is four years but the law allows the central government to extend this by a further year. The term of the 234 local authorities (3 MC, 30 UC, 201 DC) that had their election on 17 March 2011 was due to expire on 31 March 2015 but on 27 March 2015 their term was extended to 15 May 2015.^[These 234 local authorities were then dissolved and their administration placed under special commissioners appointed by the government.The term of the 65 local authorities (1 MC, 9 UC, 55 DC) that had their election on 23 July 2011 expired on 31 July 2015 after which their administration was placed under special commissioners. The term of the 23 local authorities (16 MC, 1 UC, 6 DC) that had their election on 8 October 2011 was due to expire on 15/31 October 2015 but in October 2015 their term was extended to 31 December 2015. This was subsequently extended to 30 June 2016. These 23 local authorities were then dissolved and their administration placed under special commissioners.

On 10 October 2012 Parliament passed the Local Authorities (Special Provisions) Act, No. 21 of 2012 and Local Authorities Elections (Amendment) Act, No. 22 of 2012, changing the electoral system for electing local authority members from open list proportional representation (PR) to a mixed electoral system whereby 70% of members wo The number of local authority members was increased significantly from around 4,500 to 8,000.

A five member National Delimitation Committee headed by Jayalath Dissanayake was appointed by Minister of Local Government and Provincial Councils A. L. M. Athaullah on 12 December 2012 to demarcate the new local authority wards. After much delay the committee's final report was handed over to Minister of Provincial Councils and Local Government Faiszer Musthapha on 19 June 2015. The committee recommended that the number of members elected using FPTP be increased by 595 to 5,081. On 21 August 2015 a gazette was published detailing the wards. The new wards received more than 1,000 complaints and as a result the government appointed the Delimitation Appeals Investigation Committee headed by Ashoka Peiris to review the complaints. The appeals committee's report was handed over to Musthapha on 17 January 2017.  The revised ward details were gazetted on 17 February 2017.

In February 2016 Parliament passed Local Authorities Elections (Amendment) Act, No. 1 of 2016 requiring 25% of candidates at local elections to be female. Small parties and those representing ethnic minorities complained that the new mixed electoral system put them at a disadvantage and as a result the government agreed to change the ratio between FPTP and PR. On 25 August 2017 Parliament passed Local Authorities Elections (Amendment) Act, No. 16 of 2017 which, amongst things, changed the ratio between FPTP and PR from 70:30 to 60:40.

On 15 November 2017 six voters filed a petition with the Court of Appeal challenging the legality of the gazette on demarcation of wards issued in February 2017, affecting 208 local authorities.On 22 November 2017 the Court of Appeal suspended the implementation of the gazette until 4 December 2017, preventing elections from being called to the 208 local authorities. Nominations to 93 local authorities not affected by the petition were called by the Election Commission on 27 November 2017. Nominations to 40 other local authorities not affected by the petition could not be called due to errors in the gazette.

The legal petition was withdrawn on 30 November 2017 following which the Court of Appeal rescinded the suspension of the gazette. The gazette correcting the errors in respect of 40 local authorities was published on 2 December 2017. Nominations to the remaining 248 local authorities were called by the Election Commission on 4 December 2017.