Both Leaders Should Not Fail The People & The Country
Veluppillai Thangavelu
Sri Lanka’s politics is in a state of turmoil following the Local government Authorities (LGA) elections held island-wide on February 10, 2018. The last election to Local Authorities was held in 2011 on a staggered basis. Nominations were called for 93 local authorities (7 MC, 18 UC, 68 DC) 11 and 14 December 2017. A total of 523 nominations (466 form registered political parties, 57 from independent groups) were received of which 500 were accepted (447 form registered political parties, 53 from independent groups) and 23 rejected (19 form registered political parties, 4 from independent groups).
The total number of members in local government has been increased from 4,486 to around 8,356 members. According to Section 27F of the Amendment, 25 percent of the total number of members in each local authority has to be women. This does not mean that 25 percent of the elected members of every party must be women. This is an overall percentage for the LG body. Elections have to be held for Local Government Authorities (LGA) on same day.
Nominations to the remaining 248 local authorities (17 MC, 23 UC, and 208 DC) took place between 18 and 21 December 2017. A total of 1,582 nominations (1,399 form registered political parties, 183 from independent groups) were received of which 1,553 were accepted (1,379 form registered political parties, 174 from independent groups) and 29 rejected (20 form registered political parties, 9 from independent groups).
On 18 December 2017 the Election Commission announced that elections to all 341 local authorities would be held on 10 February 2018. Around 13,000 polling stations were used. The election will cost around Rs. 4 billion and needed 300,000 staff, including 65.000 Police personnel. On 30 January 2018 the Supreme Court issued an injunction preventing election in Elpitiya DC following a petition by the Democratic United National Front against the rejection of their nomination list.
The elections held for 340 Local Authorities have resulted in over 180 LGAs having hung councils with no party winning a clear majority. This is largely due to the change in electing members under Proportional Representation (PR) to the new Mixed Electoral System (MES).
The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) was able to secure victory in 239 Local Governments, followed by the United National Party (UNP) with 41, Tamil National Alliance with 34 and the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) jointly securing 10.
Election to LGAs is based on a 60% FPTP plus 40% on PR system, For example the Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) has 45 seats out of which 27 seats (60%) will be elected on FPTP and 18 seats (40%) on PR. The elections resulted in ITAK winning 14 out of 27 seats ward-wise. The percentage of votes polled by ITAK is 35.76% and, therefore, it is entitled to 16 seats. Under the FPTP the ITAK/TNA won in 14 wards out of 27 wards. Therefore, it will be allocated 2 more seats (16-14) taking the total to 16.What if ITAK won 17 wards out of 27 wards. It will be allowed to keep the 17 seats, but no seats from the PR list. This system favours small parties at the expense of bigger parties. For example, ACTC won 9 wards out of 27 and polled 29.8% of the total votes and, therefore. entitled to 13 seats. Since it won only 9 wards on FPTP it is entitled to another 4 on the PR making the total 13 members. So under the present system a party that wins more seats on the FPTP will get lesser or no seats at all under the PR list! For example, a Party that comes fourth with 10% of the total vote but no elected seats may get as many as 3, 4 or even 5 seats under the new system! Here is the Table 1 showing results of the JMC at the 2018 election.
It will be observed that under MES the party with more seats under FPTP is penalised, the ITAK getting only 2 seats while the ACTC bags 4 seats under PR. The SLFP with just 1,479 votes gets 2 seats under the PR. Under the old PR system ITAK would have got two more bonus seats. This weighted representation to smaller parties will encourage many to contest elections as independents. It is, therefore, necessary to have a second look at the present system before elections are held for Provincial Elections to avoid hung councils.
