The Election Commission (EC) is expected to announce the Local Government (LG) Elections within this year and aims to hold it in January 2025, it is learnt.
Originally scheduled to be held early last year (2023), the LG Elections had to be postponed due to the lack of funds or the non-provision of funds.
Speaking to The Daily Morning yesterday (7), EC Chairperson R.M.A.L. Rathnayake said that the plan is to hold the LG Elections soon after the Parliamentary (General) Election, though a brief period will be required for preparations. “There is some work to be done and the officers are exhausted. So, a brief period will be needed. However, our plan is to declare the LG Elections this year and to hold it in early January 2025.”
The LG Elections were initially scheduled to be held on 9 March 2023, but the Finance, Economic Stabilisation and National Policies Ministry and the general Treasury had not released the required funds to the EC, which then rescheduled the Elections to 25 April 2023. Since the funds were not released by that time too, the EC once again postponed the Elections, this time, indefinitely.
Calling the non-holding of the LG Elections ‘a continuing violation’ of the citizens’ fundamental rights (FR), the Supreme Court (SC) directed the EC to schedule the LG Elections 2023 at the earliest possible. The SC held that it was the duty of the EC to seek the cooperation of all the relevant Government institutions to conduct the Elections in terms of the constitutional and statutory provisions, and to consult the relevant Government institutions in a timely manner. The SC made a finding in this context that “the impugned acts and omissions” of the EC that were in effect at the time when the Election process was put on hold, “had resulted in the infringement of the FRs guaranteed under the Constitution.”