Will President Gazette A Fresh Date For Convening A ‘New' Parliament If Elections Are Postponed Again?

Will the president be more flexible and relent or remain rigidly intransigent? ‘responsible cooperation’ pledge was to ensure the governance of the country properly sri lanka would be without a legislature for more than three months at a stretch

- D.B.S.Jeyaraj

The Elections Commission has scheduled June 20 as the new date for the postponed election of April 25. Eight Fundamental Rights petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court regarding the holding of elections on June 20.

Three separate benches comprising three judges each are expected to begin hearing them next week from May 11th onwards. However, there is every chance that after preliminary hearings, the Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya may list most of these FR petitions together to be heard at a later date.

The Chief Justice may even appoint a full bench of five or seven Judges to hear and rule on the crucially important case or cases.

Ground realities, however, indicate that the situation is not yet conducive for conducting elections in a free and fair manner on June 20.

Most senior staff in the Elections Department as well as from the District Secretariats opine that it would be logistically impossible to hold successful elections on that date.

Meanwhile, the number of Coronavirus affected cases in Sri Lanka has rapidly escalated to 824 (At the time of writing this). Matters are further complicated due to the spread of the virus in large numbers within the Sri Lankan Navy.

When the Elections Commission comprising Mahinda Deshapriya, Nalin Abeyesekera and Ratnajeevan Hoole fixed the new election date for June 20, there was some expectation that lockdown conditions would be gradually relaxed to provide at least five weeks of unfettered campaigning by political parties. This does not seem possible now.

The Chairman of the Elections Commission Mahinda Deshapriya has scheduled a conference with all political parties on May 12.