\u201cWe demand the government to stop the anti-democratic postponement of elections immediately. The people are demanding the dissolution of the corrupt parliament and immediate general elections,\u201d says the Information Secretary of the JVP, Comrade Vijitha Herath.
\nSpeaking at a media briefing held at the head office of the JVP on the 10th, Comrade Vijitha Herath said, \u201cWe draw the focus of the media to Ranil Rajapaksa’s statement regarding the local government election. The government has postponed the local government elections that were to be held in February this year. Due to the government’s inability to hold an election when the public opinion has completely changed, the minister’s power was used to postpone the election by a year.
\nThe Election Commission has received the authority to hold local government elections from September 20 to the middle of March. The Chairman of the Election Commission stated that the local government election would be held immediately after the registration of youth voters. Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena stated in Parliament that the vote would be held on time. But the vote has already been postponed for a year. Another tactic the government uses to postpone it is to declare that the number of 8000 members of these institutions should be reduced. It was increased to this size during the Ranil-Maithri regime. They are trying to use it as a subterfuge to postpone the vote by pretending that Ranilma should be reduced to 4,000. To reduce it to 4000, we have to go for a new delimitation that changes the existing divisions. They are trying to use that delimitation and a tactic undemocratic way.
\nThe election has already been postponed for a year using the legal obstacle of the delimitation amendment proposal not being approved by the Parliament. It is clear from the situation that the provincial council elections have been postponed without a date to indicate to the people that the number of MPs should be reduced before holding an election.
\nWe demand the government stop the anti-democratic postponement of elections immediately. The people are demanding the dissolution of the corrupt parliament and immediate general elections. Here too, an attempt is being made to avoid the situation stating that the existing wrong proportional system would be changed and a report would be obtained before June. It has been said that if the report does not come before the end of that month, a referendum will be held. The intention is to postpone the provincial council, local government, and parliamentary elections and not listen to the people\u2019s opinion.
\nRanil learned the method of vote postponement from his uncle JR Jayawardene. Ranil Wickramasinghe was a chief minister in the government where JR and Ranasinghe Premadasa were. Now they are preparing to postpone the elections because the government does not have the backing of the people of this country.
\nAccording to the constitution, the executive president is elected by the people’s direct vote. But because Ranil Wickramasinghe was not a president elected directly by the people, he has no right to exercise executive power. Also, by making a big show of bringing the 22nd amendment, the minimal or widespread democracy that would have come from that amendment has been shrunk. We hoped to bring some essential proposals to the 22nd Amendment, including the proposal to ban party switching, which has become a plague for this country. The people’s representatives do not represent that popular opinion today.
\nIn the 2019 and 2020 elections, a group of MPs from Pohottuwa told the public that they would defeat Ranil, who broke the Central Bank and did not prevent the Easter attack. They asked the people to defeat Ranil, who sold the country’s national resources and prepared to sign the MCC agreement with the USA. Therefore, the people defeated Ranil so that even a single candidate from Ranil’s party could not come from any district. Ministers who told the people not to vote for Ranil voted for Ranil in Parliament. Therefore, this parliament is a distorted parliament, and the president is not a president elected by popular vote. Both of these should be dissolved. We should allow the people to form a government that can build the country.
\nFor this, we hoped to submit three proposals for the 22nd amendment. We hoped to submit amendments that if a member elected by people’s sovereignty changes his or her position, his or her position as a member of parliament would be abolished, the appointment of ministers would be limited to 25, and the deputy minister positions would be limited to 25 and the subjects related to those ministerial positions would be included in the constitution.
\nBut 22 was withdrawn. We were also going to propose limiting the term of office of the President who Parliament would appoint to six months if the President resigns or dies. If democracy is to be implemented, more steps should be taken. But on the day UN Human Rights Commission had its vote, a vile attempt was made to undermine democracy by withdrawing the debate on the 22nd Amendment.
\nThe reduction of local government councillor posts can be done the next time when this election is held as scheduled. Otherwise, the term of office of councillors who have already expired should be abolished, and local government bodies should be dissolved. But without doing so, these institutions should be disbanded to stop giving all the privileges to MPs and paying them with public money. After that, the relevant amendments can be made, and the election can be held.
\nWe emphasize that the vote that expresses the people’s sovereign power should not be tampered with and that the commission should be allowed to conduct the election as scheduled. We emphasize that we will not allow Ranil Wickramasinghe\u2019s statements to suppress the democratic rights of the people. It was Ranil who increased the number of local government MPs. We emphasize to the public not to be fooled by Ranil’s falsehood that the number of MPs is a heavy burden. We emphasize that we will work with the civil and mass organizations of this country against the postponement of elections.
\nIn addition, we insist that a proper investigation be conducted into the woman named Thilini Priyamali’s unlimited earning of money, and it should be revealed who did transactions with her. Names of four members of our party are being mentioned on social media and WhatsApp groups, and fake messages are being exchanged. We have complained about this to the CID on the 11th and have asked to conduct an investigation immediately. A list of fake names is being circulated to hide the real thieves who exchanged millions of money with this woman. As such, we demand that the politicians and others who have dealt with her must be revealed and prevent slander against us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWe demand the government to stop the anti-democratic postponement of elections immediately. The people are demanding the dissolution of the corrupt parliament and immediate general elections,\u201d says the Information Secretary of the JVP, Comrade Vijitha Herath. Speaking at a media briefing held at the head office of the JVP on the 10th, Comrade Vijitha Herath […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7912,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"entry","9":"gs-1","10":"gs-odd","11":"gs-even","12":"gs-featured-content-entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jvpsrilanka.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7911"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jvpsrilanka.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jvpsrilanka.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jvpsrilanka.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jvpsrilanka.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jvpsrilanka.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7913,"href":"https:\/\/www.jvpsrilanka.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7911\/revisions\/7913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jvpsrilanka.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jvpsrilanka.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jvpsrilanka.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jvpsrilanka.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}