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This year or next? Polls chief won’t talk
President Chandrika Kumaratunga has ruled out snap parliamentary elections and declared for the first time publicly that the next presidential election would be held not this year but next year.

In a nationally telecast address to an SLFP rally in Kandy, the President said the next presidential election would be held in a year and four months from now. It was the first public response to demands by the opposition UNP that presidential elections be held by December this year as Ms. Kumaratunga had taken oaths for a second term in December 1999. Later, however, the President took a secret oath in November 2000 in terms of which she now claims that the next presidential election is due only in November 2006.
The UNP, however, is to launch a “Janabala Mehayuma” next month demanding that presidential elections be held this year.

Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake declined to comment on when the presidential elections would be held. “I will not speak about the presidential elections at this moment,” he told The Sunday Times. Constitutional lawyer S.L. Gunasekara told The Sunday Times that the decision on the date of the Presidential elections should be taken by the Commissioner of Elections.

“It is quite clear that the swearing-in ceremony was soon after the December 1999 Presidential elections and therefore, the Presidential term ends later this year,” he said. Mr. Gunasekera said the Commissioner of Elections was an independent officer and therefore should be able to take a decision on holding the elections in time.

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