Sri Lankan Tamil Parties Seek India’s Intervention To Conduct Provincial Elections

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A group of Tamil minority political parties in Sri Lanka have urged India to intervene and pressure President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to hold long-pending elections in nine provinces. Provincial elections have been postponed since 2018 due to legal hurdles in the electoral reform effort. All nine councils are currently inactive. Tamil political leaders met Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Gopal Baglay on Tuesday and sought Indian pressure on the Sri Lankan President to hold elections for nine provinces.

International community has no faith in Rajapaksa: Ganesan

The president has lost his mandate. Tamil Progressives Front leader Mano Ganesan told reporters on Wednesday that it was, therefore, the best time to hold the postponed provincial council elections to test public opinion. He said the international community has no faith in Rajapaksa as he has lost his credibility among the public. The President is not going to hold any elections, nor can the Parliament do anything to hold elections. We have urged the Indian High Commissioner to bring any possible pressure (on Rajapaksa) to hold the postponed provincial council elections. Ganesan is also an MP of Sri Lanka’s main opposition Samagi Jana Balvegaya (SJB) party.

He said that due to the ongoing severe economic crisis in the island nation, the Election Commission will not be able to get the funds to conduct the elections and therefore we have requested the support of the Indian and international community to conduct the elections. India proposed a province-based devolution in the context of the 1987 Indo-Lanka peace agreement under the then Indian Prime Minister Late Rajiv Gandhi. India has been advocating for early elections for all nine provinces, which have been stalled since 2018. In March last year at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, India insisted that there was a need to hold provincial elections in Sri Lanka.