Hardly had the dust settled on the two Provincial Council elections last week, the two warring parties, viz., the Government and the Opposition, began shadow-boxing on another front -- whether to hold a General Election or not. The Opposition fired the first salvo, probably more in embarrassment over its defeat, than with any firm conviction.

The President, no less, responded with a definitive "No", saying Parliament has been mandated to run for six years, and so it shall run its full term till 2010.

But the speculation will not subside. There is always the buzz that a President can dissolve a Parliament at his will.
It was not long ago that former President Chandrika Kumaratunga in 2004 dissolved a Parliament elected by the will of the people in 2001. It was one person's will against the people's will. So much for mandates. The options are whether a) there will be more Provincial Council elections, b) General Elections (due in 2010) before a Presidential election (due in 2011), or c) a Presidential election before a General Election.

All these options are in the hands of one person - the President. In the British parliamentary system, the ruling party is entitled to fix the date of an election within the specified term of each Parliament, usually five years as in the UK and India.

The gerrymandering of this specified term came with the introduction of the 1972 Republican Constitution. The then Government engaged in arithmetical trickery to buy itself an additional two years in office. The then Leader of the Opposition, J.R. Jayewardene, called it an "illegitimate" Parliament, even if it was not illegal. In power and place soon thereafter, as President Jayewardene, that exercise in 1972 almost paled into insignificance when a Referendum was held to extend the life of a Parliament elected in 1977 by an entire term, up to 1989.

All the major political parties lost their credibility to protest on both these counts, and paid dearly, not much later, for these extensions.

In the U.S, elections to the higher elected posts are held every two years on the first Tuesday of November. These include the election of the President every four years, and Senate (in rotation) and House of Representative members every two years. Insofar as the President's term goes, his term (four years), term limits (maximum two terms), election date (first Tuesday of November), and date of swearing-in (January 20, the year after the election) are all fixed. Not even the so-called 'most powerful man in the world', the US President can change them.

There are no guessing games and time consuming debates in the interim.

And, no one can say that the United States lacks "representative government", and that democracy in America is the poorer by this exercise.

Though we have moved away from the British parliamentary system and embraced the French presidential system, and those who once opposed it have done an about-turn, there is a need surely, to consider these fixed term, fixed election dates like in the US.

Unfortunately, the Dinesh Gunawardene Select Committee report on Electoral Reforms does not seem to have gone into this aspect, except to give the Commissioner of Elections the right to fix the date of polling on a Saturday. Holding the poll on a holiday is intended to eliminate the wastage of work-hours.

That apart, there is no mention of a permanently fixed election date, and one can only suppose, that the political leaders of today are quite happy with the way things are.

This Committee has, however, gone into the need for a hybrid of the old first-past-the-post system that existed before the 1989 elections, together with the proportional representation (PR) system that came with the election of that year.

That being the main recommendation, it also has others -- including an electronic voting system, amendments to the laws relating to recognition of political parties, the deposits candidates must place, the need for more women in politics and for the Ward system to be re-introduced for local government elections. The latter is almost an urgent need now because of the thoroughly impersonal representation of municipal and urban councillors of today.
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In the run-up to last week's PC polls, we had cause to complain about the role money plays in these campaigns, and the evil influence it wields especially on those in public office. The Dinesh Gunawardene Committee report does refer to "the pernicious role of money power in elections", and calls for measures to check it, calling for audited accounts of political parties, and accounts from candidates at elections.

Can one see the Power Elite, both in the Government and the Opposition sniggering at such recommendations and carrying on regardless?