Ajit Karn
Colombo, Sri Lanka: Thursday, Sri Lankan government printer Gangani Liyanage requested in writing to the Treasury Secretary and police chief that the much-delayed local council elections be held on April 25 as scheduled.
In her letter to the Secretary of the Treasury, K M Mahinda Siriwardana, the printer requested funds, which led to the postponement of the originally scheduled March 9 election due to a lack of funds.
The Elections Commission had previously postponed the elections due to her inability to print the ballots necessary to conduct postal voting from February 21 to 24.
By the time the elections were postponed, Liyanage had only received 40 million out of an estimated 500 million total cost.
In her letter to police chief C.D. Wickramaratne, she requested the deployment of over sixty police officers to protect the premises of the government printer.
Due to the inability of the government printer to print the ballot papers, the main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) party filed a petition for intervention with the Supreme Court, accusing the government of running scared of the election and subverting democracy for political gain.
The highest court instructed the treasury not to interfere with the conduct of the election.
As a result of the court order, the election date was set for April 25, with mail-in balloting to occur between March 18 and March 21.
There will be as many as 340 local councils appointed for a four-year term.
Since March of last year, when the country plunged into a severe economic crisis that led to the ouster of the powerful Rajapaksa family, the election has been postponed.
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In an earlier attempt to halt the elections, the Wickremesinghe-led government blocked allocated funds, thereby preventing the printing of ballot papers.
The Wickremesinghe-Sri Lankan Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) government fears that electoral defeat in the local government elections will deepen political instability and undermine its negotiations for a USD 2.9 billion emergency bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
