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PC elections in April The first council to be dissolved will be the Wayamba Provincial council which ends its term on February 9. Following nominations, the election date will be announced within six weeks. Accordingly, the date for the elections is likely to fall in the first week of April. Members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Electoral Reforms at a meeting with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapakse on Friday expressed the need to hold the elections on one day. Both the UNF and the PA agreed in principle to the proposals, a draft of which will be presented to both parties tomorrow. Committee Chairman Dinesh Gunewardene told The Sunday Times yesterday that if the Government and the Opposition accepted the proposals, elections to the seven councils would be held before the New Year. He said that if there were legal hurdles, the alternative would be for the Chief Ministers to ask the governors to dissolve the councils on February 9 so that the elections to the councils could be held on the same day the Wayamba elections were held. Mr. Gunewardene said Opposition Leader Rajapakse had promised to look into this option as well. "As both parties are in agreement to hold the polls on one day, they will have to settle for either of these moves. “If they agree to the first method, amendments to the Provincial Council Elections Act will have to be made when Parliament sits on January 20," he said adding that the Prime Minister had given his consent for the necessary changes to the election laws. Meanwhile, The Sunday Times learns that the Prime Minister also wants to bring amendments to the Provincial Council Elections Act to keep the number of members in each provincial council at the present level. Last week The Sunday Times reported that an additional 76 Provincial Council members would be elected in keeping with the increase in the population in these provinces, costing the country an additional Rs. 200 million or more. Meanwhile JVP Parliamentarian Nandana Gunethilake told The Sunday Times that the JVP was also for holding the elections to the seven councils on the same day. "We are not particularly keen on holding elections on a Saturday, but we did not protest. After all we have always been against provincial councils, so we are not very interested in the amendments," he said. |
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