The farce of local government elections

| by Nimal Bhareti

(October 07, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The farce of local government elections is coming to an end with the last round this week. The farce has come to our doorstep with the Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia elections. The mugs of all the candidates are pasted on the walls, one on top of the other. Even recently painted walls of residents have not been spared. Candidates have been going round handing over their manifestos with some fantastic and hilarious promises, many of them quite outside the purview of local government. Some of them are on nice glossy paper – from where the money has come, no one knows. Very few have emphasised the real functions of the MC and their commitment to them, namely providing and improving the basic services to the public at local level which is the essence of local government.

Had the old ward system been in operation we wouldn’t have been forced with all these posters and all the hilarious manifestos. Under the old ward system there was a clearly identified ward member who was answerable and accountable to the voters. At election time only the posters of those contesting the ward were seen. The voters quite clearly had their options among the candidates spelt out when voting. The manifestos were strictly confined to the needs of that ward. All this disappeared with one of the worst blunders created by the JR Jayewardene government, namely doing away with the ward system at local level and electoral representation at national level and introducing the much maligned and cursed PR system. The PR system has made money and thuggery the determiners of elections in place of qualities like education and integrity. Hence the thuggery that continues unchecked where meetings and demonstrations are broken up, media institutions are attacked, public servants are publicly reprimanded and even tied to trees; just a few of the many acts of unchecked thuggery.

Successive governments have been talking a lot and appointing committees to do away with the present vicious election systems both at the national and local level. The replacement of the ward system has been discussed for several years but without any results. Meanwhile it is the voter who has to bear the brunt for these systems. When will this farce and pernicious systems end and we can boast of both clean elections and a return to a genuine local government system which ensures proper accountability to the public? Will this remain just a dream?