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In Sri Lanka’s far from glorious post-independence electoral history, have we ever seen such a verita-ble song and dance over a local government election or various groups of council aspirants quarrelling over their seats so nonsensically?

Actual focus of local councils lost in the din

Breathless excitement grips the nation’s newsreaders as the time that should be spent on construc-tive reporting regarding matters of national importance impacting on the lives of ordinary Sri Lankans is frittered away on power-politics. Suspenseful relating of the ‘victory’ of the governing National Peo-ple’s Party (NPP) in this council or that council while we are told that the ‘combined Opposition’ has captured the other council, dominates.

This is all seemingly on a wafer thin majority one way or the other which may, at the turn of the dice (or bags of lucrative cash), go the other way. This is a debate, the silliness of which increases hour by hour. The actual focus of local government is to properly run the affairs of municipalities, urban councils and ‘pradeshiya sabhas.’ But we can safely assume that this focus will effectively be lost in the current excitable din.

That will be much in the same way as the vaunted ‘Clean Sri Lanka’ hysteria has not cleansed the pervading stench of entrenched corruption that is perennially prevalent in regard to the handling of garbage by these councils, from Kotte to Matara. For this less than satisfactory state of affairs, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his Government must be held solely responsible. That is so from the moment that the President personally took over the electoral campaign of the local government polls.

An absolutist demand for power

This was by putting his mark on NPP local government hopefuls (somewhat like the Pope’s blessing, perchance) and proclaiming absurdly that the Government ‘needed’ a resounding win at the polls. The President said that this was to ‘complete’ the triumph of the recent presidential and parliamentary polls. His Ministers parroted that absurdity with glee, not bothering to explain as to why a sweep at the local government poll was so essential to carry out the NPP’s 2024 electoral compact.  Why in-deed?

Essential parts of that mandate remain largely unfulfilled where the task of governance is concerned – other than nabbing political crooks of the previous administration which is being carried out by state agencies with gusto. But for that, we cannot blame the absence of power. Rather, the NPP achieved an ‘unprecedented’ mandate as the media likes to parrot. That said, we are yet to witness public accountability when the finger is pointed inwards into the NPP, including on transparency regarding memoranda of understanding reached with other countries impacting on sensitive national issues, particularly defence.

That said, it is not difficult to understand why the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) led NPP was hard put to rationalize its ‘logic’ as to why it needed to capture absolute power across all levels of governing Sri Lanka. Unsurprisingly its front liners argued their briefs less than convincingly. For the simple expla-nation that the new kid on the political block needed complete political dominance in the country is not a case that can robustly be made in a democracy, however flawed that may be.

Messianic presidential umbrage

Single party dominance in the classic ‘hammer and sickle’ style will invariably be resented by large swathes of the Sri Lankan people however much we may be inclined to call down the wrath of the heavens on a power hungry, corrupt and greedy political class to which the NPP now firmly belongs. In any event, the President’s cajoling, his persuasion and his insistence to elect party candidates was rejected by the electorate, taking the glossy shine off last year’s wins at the national polls.

Post polls, that rejection may have been dealt with in a way that was conducive to democratic governance. Instead, the President took messianic umbrage and declared (contrary to law as we must remind), that funds will not be released to local councils run by the ‘Opposition.’ Along with that threat not really clothed in a velvet glove as it were, frantic jockeying took place by the NPP to ‘win over’ what they said were ‘independent candidates’ voted into the councils.

This was despite the fact that just weeks earlier, these very same candidates were flayed by the NPP as being ‘proxies for discarded mainstream parties.’ What is more than a little hilarious is the NPP dis-carding its high moral rectitude to ‘grapple’ councilors in other political parties whom they earlier de-rided, to itself ‘with hoops of steel’ as the Bard would have deigned to say. Minority parties are accusing the NPP of ‘unethical tactics’ as they complain that their elected local government councilors have been ‘bought over’ by the Government.

Desperate publicity stunts

This is so despite the swearing up and down NPP corridors that ‘filthy lucre’ will not be used to ‘win over’ votes. It seems that these pontifications have been swallowed up in despairing attempts to consolidate power. As a result of all these missteps, we are now on a roller-coaster ride to local govern-ment insanity. That has reached a tipping point as a deathly hush creeps over Colombo in the hours to a decisive vote which will determine if the capital city is governed by NPP hopefuls or an Opposition that has been galvanised by the smell of desperation in Government ranks.

This desperation resulted in the NPP’s mayoral candidate ‘inspecting’ a canal cleaning project in the city, accompanied by party hangers-on. The Opposition immediately protested that this was an illegal assumption of mayoral duties before the inaugural meeting of the newly fledged Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) on June 16th 2025 (the coming Monday) where a new Mayor would be elected through a secret ballot. That complaint had merit. One wonders firstly why a ‘canal cleaning’ was thought as the first revolutionary priority of the NPP Mayoral candidate.

Secondly a more pointed question arises as to why such publicity gimmicks are resorted to in the first instance. All of this does not inspire confidence in ‘collaborative governance’ which had apparently been the theme of rousing speeches by NPP leaders when the CMC’s elected NPP councilors were assembled at the JVP headquarters this Friday. In sum, this passion for CMC leadership where a twen-ty two year old three-wheeler driver (not to disparage that tribe) was precipitated into the lofty Mayor’s seat and occupied it from 2006-2011, is a trifle ironic.

Mayoral rags-to-riches

This was as a result of an independent group coming into power after a legally unsound nomination list of the United National Party (UNP) was tossed out by Court. A rags-to-riches story, a three wheeler was transformed at a stroke of a wand as it were, not to Cinderella’s carriage but to a chauffeur driven Mayor’s limousine. No doubt, the two CMC mayoral hopefuls will be eying such a rich prize with similar enthusiasm.

Elsewhere opposition local government councilors muttered in farcical barbs that the decision to resort to a secret ballot or not in conducting a crucial vote to decide the council’s leadership, was also through a secret ballot. This was though the procedure stipulates an open ballot.  Far from lessening the parti-san-political coloring of state institutions that should serve the people, the governing NPP has, in fact, aggravated that ugly tint.

In doing so, it has irrevocably and comprehensively descended into the cesspit of entrenched wheeler-dealing in Sri Lanka, notwithstanding boasts that it remains ‘above all that.’ This is not some-thing to be gleeful about. On the contrary, it is a testament as to how ‘system change’ happens. Sys-tems do not actually change but the toxic rot therein infects and seeps into the bloodstream of eager change-makers.

That poisonous political transformation is clearly evident.