Sri Lanka’s opposition parties on Tuesday accused President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s government of trying to postpone the March 9 local elections for the fear of losing them after the postal voting scheduled for next week was indefinitely postponed.
Sri Lanka’s opposition parties on Tuesday accused President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s government of trying to postpone the March 9 local elections for the fear of losing them after the postal voting scheduled for next week was indefinitely postponed.
The postal voting for the local elections was scheduled for February 22 and 23.
“It is certain that the government does not want to hold the elections. They know they are facing defeat. President Ranil Wickremesinghe knows that he will have to step down from presidency when they lose the election,” opposition leader Ranjith Madduma Bandara from the Samagi Jana Balawegaya party said.
“From today our battle would be to win the holding of the elections leaving aside our campaigning,” Mano Ganesan of an opposition Tamil party said.
It was said that the government printer refused to print the ballot papers without payment. The Treasury has not released the money required for printing due to the ongoing economic crisis.
Sagara Kariyawasam, the ruling coalition general secretary, said the Election Commission was unable to send the ballot papers for postal voting due to the hurdle in printing ballot papers.
The opposition parties were demanding the holding of the elections to give people the chance to show displeasure over the government’s handling of the unprecedented economic crisis that led to the ouster of the country’s powerful Rajapaksa family from politics, including the stepping down of the former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa as well as his elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa from the post of prime minister.
Ranil Wickremesinghe, who earlier replaced Mahinda in April, was appointed the president of the country after Gotabaya fled the island nation following the storming of the president’s house on July 9.
The government had several times indicated the time was not suitable for holding the election given the economic crisis owing to the shortage of foreign reserves.
The government said the scarcity of money to hold the election costing 10 billion rupees would bring additional pressure on the already lean state finances.
Bandula Gunawardena, the cabinet spokesman, said that in the ongoing economic crisis, the government was hard-pressed to find the money as it was not possible anymore to borrow or print the money.
The ruling Sri Lanka People’s Front (SLPP) controls the majority of councils having won the last election held in 2018.
The election to appoint members for a four-year term for 340 local councils should have been held by March 2022.
The election was, however, postponed by six months.
A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court against the conduct of the election in the backdrop of the economic crisis.
The petition is slated to be taken up on February 23.
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source : republicworld.com