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Voting for the 2024 Parliamentary Election commenced at 7 am on Thursday in Sri Lanka in snap elections called by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who won the polls this September, local media reported.
Dissanayake, aims to secure a majority in parliament to put forward his policies to revive the island nation from its financial crisis. The independent body, Election Commission of Sri Lanka (ECSL) is overseeing the 10th general polls and the inaugural session of the newly elected Parliament is scheduled for November 21, Daily News reported. A total of 8,361 candidates, with 5,015 from 408 recognised political parties and 3,346 from 282 independent groups are vying for selection as representatives of the new Parliament, the Daily News reported. All 225 seats in the unicameral parliament are being contested. All members are elected for a five-year term. But 29 out of 225 seats are decided indirectly through a national list. The 29 candidates from the national list will be selected out of 516 candidates from 27 recognized political parties and 11 candidates from two independent groups. Commissioner General of Election S Saman Sri Rathnayake on November 13 said that the general election could attract much more voters than the presidential election, The Island News outlet reported. Of 17,140,354 registered voters, 13,619,916 (79.46 per cent ) exercised their franchise at the presidential election held on September 21, Rathnayake was cited by the organisation. During the parliamentary election campaign, President Dissanayake, 55, declared that none of those in the fray, except the National People's Power (NPP), would be able to poll more votes than they had received in the last presidential election. Addressing a campaign rally of the NPP on November 11, President Dissanayake said that Sri Lanka will be transformed into a country free of poverty by his government. He said that he and his government "will make every effort to turn around the country from its current state into a developed nation by transforming the victory given by the citizens." He further said that once the NPP government is formed after the Parliamentary Election, a Cabinet will be set up with less than 25 ministers and a smaller group to assist them in order to begin the work to build and develop the country, the Daily News reported. According to a report by Al Jazeera, Dissanayake has pledged to abolish the country's executive presidency, a system under which power is largely centralised under the president. The executive presidency, which first came into existence under President JR Jayawardene in 1978, has been widely criticised in the country for years, but no political party, once in power, has scrapped it until now. The system has in recent years been blamed by critics for the country's economic and political crises. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was ousted in 2022 with the country facing high inflation as well as shortages of food and fuel. After him, Ranil Wickremesinghe as President managed to negotiate a bailout package worth SUD 2.9 billion with the International Monetary Fund. Meanwhile in this elections, apart from NPP, contestants include the main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and Ranil Wickremesinghe-backed New Democratic Front (NDF). The counting of votes is expected to start soon after the closing of polls at 4 pm today. (ANI)
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