by Vishvanath
The majority of local councils are still in an unholymess, without any party being able to muster working majorities in them, and political battles are raging as a result. The government and the Opposition are accusing each other of bribing councilors in a bid to gain control of the hung councils.
In an interesting turn of events, a group of independent councilors, who hold the balance of power in the Matugama Pradeshiya Sabha (PS), has not only pledged its support for the SJB, but also accused the ruling NPP of having sought to bribe its members.
The NPP won 13 seats and the SJB 10 in the Matugama PS in the May 06 local government (LG) elections. The Independent group has 4 seats and theSLPP 3 seats. The UNP, the NFF and the People’s Struggle Alliance have one seat each. The SLPP, the UNP, the NFF have reportedly decided to allow the SJB to control the PS, as they consider the NPP their common enemy.
The NPP has denied the allegation that it ever tried to bribe the members of the Independent group, whose leader however told a media briefing on Friday (May 30) that he had video footage of a minister visiting him. No names have been named. Whether the NPP, which vilifies its political opponents as crooks, will go to the extent of daring the Independent group to substantiate the allegation in question remains to be seen. The allegation has already become grist to the Opposition’s mill.
There have been no confirmed cases of politicians being bribed into defecting, but it is public knowledge that over the years some members of parliament, provincial councils and local government institutions have been induced, financially or otherwise, to help sway the balance of power or muster special majorities in those institutions. Several solutions have been proposed for this problem which distorts the outcomes of elections, and they include anti-crossover laws, but they have not been implemented, and their practicability is also in doubt. The existing electoral system also does not provide for introducing legal mechanisms like the ‘recall’ system, which allows constituents to trigger by-elections and potentially remove members of Parliament from office prematurely under specific circumstances. It is not possible to hold by-elections under the Proportional Representation (PR) or Mixed representation (MR) systems.
The need for crossovers arises mainly in situations where the winning party is left without an absolute majority. Time was when this problem was attributed to flaws in the electoral system. It was argued that the PR system brought about weak governments and led to political instability. But it is possible that under the first-past-the-post system as well as well the winner can be left without a working majority. The UNP government elected under this system in 1960 fell soon afterwards for want of a working majority in the House, and the SLFP won a snap election that was held a few months later. Some political parties have fared extremely well under the PR system; the NPP obtained a two-thirds majority with ease in last year’s general election.
Systems are devised to help bring order out of chaos, and they, in fact, do serve the intended purpose in most cases. However, there can be exceptions, especially in power politics. Some systems contrived haphazardly, can end up being more problematic than the issues they are expected to resolve. The MR system, introduced in 2017, as an alternative to the PR system, which political leaders became averse to, is a case in point.
Under MR, members of a local authority are elected from wards and from a list. The Local Authorities Election (Amendment) Act No 22 of 2017 dated 12.10.2017 gives the percentages of above representation as follows:
On the ward basis – 60%
On the proportional basis – 40%
One of the arguments advanced in favor of MR, which is a cross between PR and the first-past-the-post system, was that PR led to unstable councils. The new electoral system was expected to help infuse those grassroots institutions with stability. But this goal has not been achieved so far, as evident from the results of both local government elections, held in 2018 and 2025, under it. The winner could not gain outright control of most of the councils where it beat others as it could only come out ahead with a plurality in them.
Attempts have been made to revise the MR system, which had led to a massive increase in the number of local council members from about 4,000 to more than 8,000. It has apparently made the situation more chaotic than it was before.
However, it is not merely the lack of majorities that renders political institutions unstable and dysfunctional; there have been instances where even the parliament, the Provincial Councils and local government bodies became unstable although the ruling parties had secured comfortable majorities in them. Such situations came about due to internal factors like leadership battles, group dynamics, that resulted in breakaways, or external factors such as political maneuverings which caused defections, with defectors being rewarded either in cash or in kind, or due to a combination of both internal and external factors. The SLFP-led United Front government became unstable in the mid-1970s due to a breakaway of its socialist allies. The People’s Alliance administration collapsed in 2001 owing to mass crossovers caused by dissension and external influence. Internal disputes made the SLPP government weak, paving the way for the rise of the JVP-led NPP to power last year. It is being claimed in some quarters that the NPP government is also experiencing dialectical tensions between the JVP members and their non-JVP counterparts.
The unwelcome situation in which most local government institutions find themselves is mainly attributable to the unwholesome political culture in this country. The winner of an election goes all out to weaken its political opponents further instead of being magnanimous and conciliatory, and the latter prioritizes the task of devising ways and means of bringing about the former’s downfall over respecting the people’s verdict and cooperating with the ruling party to serve the public while playing the role traditionally assigned to the Opposition in advanced democracies. The much-flaunted ethical and moral concerns of the winner and the loser fall by the wayside. No wonder money talks.
