Sri Lanka set for parliamentary election on Thursday, all arrangements in place

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka is set to hold on Thursday its snap parliamentary election – first after the 2022 economic crisis – amid deployment of nearly 90,000 security personnel across the country.

Voting will take place at over 13,314 polling stations across the country, from 7 am to 4 pm local time with over 17 million voters from the island’s 21 million population eligible to vote for the 225 member parliament for a five-year term.

Nearly 90,000 security personnel from the police and the military would be deployed to provide security at the election venues. There will also be mobile police patrols, police spokesman Nihal Thalduwa said.

Director General of the Elections Commission Saman Sri Ratnayaka on Tuesday said that all ballot boxes and other equipment needed at the polling stations would be dispatched on Wednesday.

“The polling station officials will carry out rehearsals from 7 am on Wednesday,” Ratnayaka said.

Thursday's vote would be the first major test of the popularity of the ruling party, National People's Power, led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

Having failed to secure 50 per cent of the vote at the September 21 presidential election, Dissanayake is pleading for a stronger parliament with well over a simple majority of 113 seats in order to implement his anti-corruption accountability reformist programme.

This will be the first parliamentary election since Sri Lanka plunged into an economic crisis when the island nation declared sovereign default in mid-April of 2022, its first since gaining independence from Britain in 1948. Almost civil-war-like conditions and months of public protests led to the fleeing of the then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Since assuming office, Dissanayake has stayed on course with his predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe’s International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout programme.

The country is still in the process of recovering from its worst economic crisis in history as the Dissanayake government faces the challenge of meeting the IMF targets on revenue in the third review of the USD 2.9 billion programme.

On Thursday, the western province district of Gampaha would elect the highest number of Members of Parliament – 19 with the capital district of Colombo from the same province electing 18 MPs.

The eastern province district of Trincomalee will elect the lowest number – just 4 MPs.

As many as 196 members are to be elected from the 22 districts based on the proportional representation system while 29 would be elected from the cumulative votes polled national list to provide a 225-member Parliament for a five-year term.

Political parties and independent groups file lists of candidates for each district. Seats are allocated proportionately according to the votes polled.

Individual MPs get elected based on the preferential votes cast in their favour. Each voter is entitled to mark three individual preferences.

Wickremesinghe, who lost to Dissanayake in last month’s presidential election, is not contesting the parliamentary election for the first time since 1977.

The Rajapaksa brothers - Mahinda, Gotabaya, Chamal and Basil – too are not contesting this election after decades-long representation.

Scores of ministers and deputies from the past regime have opted out of the race.

Meanwhile, the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) said it deployed short-term observers on November 11 across Sri Lanka while 13 long-term observers were deployed earlier to observe election-related activities in the island nation.

A statement from the ANFREL said a total of 30 observers, including two electoral analysts, and a mission management team are in the country to observe campaign activities, election preparations as well as voting and counting processes on Election Day.

Local media quoted the International Election Observers (IEO) -- representing 10 countries -- noted that a peaceful election process throughout the island would pave the way for a free and fair election.

The IEOs told a press conference here on Tuesday that all aspects of the election process, including election campaigning, conducting the election, transportation and return of ballot boxes, counting of votes, and the post-election period, are under their observation.