Sri Lanka to bring electoral reform through constitutional amendment

Apr 23, 2015 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Cabinet Spokesman, Rajitha Senarathne said today that the government has presented a draft proposal to the cabinet and is planning to replace the existing proportional system with a mixed electoral one.



Senarathne said that the new system includes provisions to elect a Parliamentarian directly to each electorate and a proportion of councilors to be elected through a proportional system based on the amount of votes obtained by each party.

“Today we discussed about this at the national executive council,” Senarathne said.

“We are planning to bring the 20th amendment as soon as possible and our plan is to implement both the 19th and 20th together,” Senarathne said this while addressing the weekly cabinet briefing held at the Government Information Department, Colombo. “We want to give a voice to minorities in all the electorates district through electorate division,” Senarathne said.



He said, Venerable Rathne Thero also counter proposed an interesting electoral reform system.





“So we are planning to have one minister for every electorate,” “Jaffna has 8 electorates but has only four parliamentarians. Kandy also faces the same situation.







" However Senarathne said, with the new system the parliamentarians will be increased to 238 from the current 225. He said, the idea is yet to be discussed with all the parties and yet to finalized.