The motion itself reads, in the first instance, like a compromise of the hard won kind. Accordingly, it reads that "This Parliament resolves that a new combined electoral system be introduced with priority being given to the first past the post system while ensuring proportional representation on an islandwide basis for political parties and groups."

Meanwhile, it was also announced on behalf of the Government that six points of discussion will be put forward for consideration in this process. These relate to whether the new system should apply across the board to all electoral levels, what the proportion of directly elected members should take to those elected on a proportionate basis and questions relating to by elections, reintroduction of multi member constituencies and the cut off point.

The process will be expedited with the Prime Minister meeting party leaders late this month for specific discussions on the electoral reform process followed by an issues paper on which the new legislation will be based.

One hopes that these initially optimistic signs of a determinedly democratic process in changing laws that are fundamental to the manner in which Sri Lankans chose themselves to be governed, will not falter as time goes on. There are reasons for issuing this caution. Those of us who prefer to be non amnesiac will remember very well what took place in a façade of representative democracy in August 2000. This was when a Bill titled "The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution", amending fundamental provisions of the Constitution relating to the electoral process, was referred by the then Cabinet of Ministers to the Supreme Court as an urgent Bill. The reference of the Electoral Bill had meanwhile, been immediately preceded by the presenting of the Constitution Bill to the Supreme Court in a similarly secretive manner, provoking a storm of protest. News of the reference of both Bills leaked out to the public only the night before it came up before the Supreme Court.

The Electoral Bill proposed a replacement of the prevalent electoral system of proportional representation with a Parliament consisting of 298 members of which 168 members were to be elected on the first past the post system, hundred were to be elected on district wise proportional representation and 30 on the national list.
Certain features of this reference, the context within which it was presented and what preceded it, deserves a refreshing of our memory if only for the reason that it illustrates the level to which our publicly deliberative process had degenerated, one would pray to the extent that would never be repeated again. Thus, the reference had followed a series of meetings held within the past six months between the PA, the UNP and several parties to review the constitutional reform proposals. These deliberations were however kept secret from the people with no opportunity for civil society interventions in the review process.

Like in the case of the Constitution Bill, the Electoral Bill was challenged before the Court by groups as diverse as the Maha Sangha, the Sihala Urumaya, the JVP, the National Peoples Party, pro devolution academics, activists and others including the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA). It was maintained by them that the manner in which the Bill had been put before the Court violated basic principles of sovereignty of the people and fundamental norms of constitution making. The argument was simple. A Bill fundamentally altering electoral systems in the country could not be certified as an urgent Bill and rushed through the judicial process just two weeks prior to the date on which Parliament is mandated to be dissolved in terms of the Constitution.

It was also argued that the amendments resulted in a basic alteration of the composition of Parliament and was contrary to the right of franchise guaranteed in Articles 3 and 4(e) read together with Article 14(1) (a) of the Constitution. It would therefore have to be approved at a Referendum as mandated by Article 83(a) of the Constitution.

What happened thereafter, is of course, not particularly palatable history. While the then government succeeded, fairly predictably, in their legal steam rolling through the Supreme Court, the failure of the law and the Constitution was supplanted by massive public protests which aborted both the Electoral Bill and the Constitution Bill, some of which did contain praiseworthy provisions that would have improved the present constitutional structures.

What took place in August 2000 was accordingly a very pungent lesson of the ill toward consequences that would arise in the wake of ill planned legislative reform. The suggestion therefore, this time around, that there would be an issues paper that would be presented for public discussion before proceeding to the legislative stage, is of crucial importance.

Meanwhile, the two contending points of interest focused upon by the government in the reforms process are to ensure a more direct link between the member of parliament and the constituency while ensuring that a new system should have an inclusive strategy as far as the various ethnic groups are concerned.

A corollary concern has been identified as the need to minimise the high levels of electoral violence. While one can have no quarrel with the Government on these concerns, one wonders, not for the umpteenth time, as to where is the publicly announced commitment by the Government to incorporating provisions that would enable women to access the political process, in greater force, than the pitiful numbers that exist today? Sri Lanka is, in fact, becoming unhealthily unique in South Asia in this respect. The country's political process needs desperately to open itself up to women in general and not merely women coming from rural or national political dynasties and petty kingships.

The system should galvanise itself not merely with one single woman at its head, but rather with the representation of women throughout the many levels of government in proportion to their presence as fifty percent of the country's population with consequent results in national development.

We wait to see the United National Front Government and the Opposition parties acknowledging the fact that the electoral reform process should be inclusive of this concern as well.

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