Local Govt polls in North

Irangika Range

President Mahinda Rajapaksa in a special message to the first meeting of SAARC Ministers of Parliamentary Affairs said yesterday that the Local Government election will be held at the earliest opportunity to elect representatives to local bodies, once the North is liberated from the LTTE.

Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga read the President’s message at the meeting.

The theme was ‘Good Governance through Parliamentary Democracy’.

Sri Lanka has shown its total commitment to the democratic process overcoming two armed insurrections that sought to overthrow democracy in the South while finally defeating a much larger threat to the democracy from a brutal separatist terrorist movement in the north, the President said.

The people are relieved as the Eastern Province has been liberated from terrorists and a democracy established through the election of people’s representatives to local Government and provincial governance structures, he said.

Sri Lanka has made many advances in areas of social security that standout as examples of the success of the democratic process.

These include universal free education from kindergarten to university, free healthcare, a steep reduction in unemployment and a sharp decline in maternal and infant mortality. In some of these areas, Sri Lanka has already passed the millennium goals, he said. It is significant that today, all countries of the SAARC region are democracies that believe in the principles of representative governments.

The growth of democracy in our region has had its many ups and downs, and some of us have more experiences than others in its practice and performance.

Some of our countries have seen democracy stifled, and won again through the determination of the people. Others have seen it expand with much benefit to the people, and still more to be achieved, the President said.

President Rajapaksa said: “However, it is a matter for pride that within this region of nearly 1.5 billion people, that most populous region in the world, we have the world’s largest and smallest democracies, committed to strengthen the wish of the people.

Sri Lanka has a long tradition of democracy, especially universal franchise which goes back to the colonial period, and has the history of having the oldest elective democracy in Asia which was established in 1031, with elections to the then state council.

Since independence, we have had bi-cameral parliamentary democracy that followed the British tradition, a Republican system with an uni-cameral legislature and today an executive Presidency with both the President and Parliament elected by the people.

This gives us considerable experience of many systems of parliamentary democracy.

Sri Lanka is now looking at strengthening provincial administration through elected provincial councils, as well as better local government through elected bodies.

We believe that the parliamentary system with its many shortcomings, especially in a post colonial era and the advance of globalisation, has many obstacles to overcome in fulfilling the aspirations of the people. Yet, we see in democracy the best means of achieving these goals.”