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by Rajan Philips

It will not be an exaggeration to say that over the last two decades Sri Lanka's political institutions have become the victims of too many elections and too little governance. Of the three levels of government, the worst sufferers are the local bodies. There are over 300 of them - Municipalities, Urban Councils and Pradeshiya Sabhas - and the majority of them held their elections on March 30.

In the hierarchy of elections, the local and provincial elections have become the rehearsals for the main events: the parliamentary and presidential elections. The local government elections are also based on the system of 'proportional representation', which ensures proportion among political parties but takes away representation of the people.

For nearly a century, people had been electing 'ward members' in their municipalities, urban councils, town councils and village councils. But after 1988, the town councils and village councils that people have become so used to, were abolished and replaced by the invisible Pradeshiya Sabhas.

The simple right to elect the 'ward member' was taken way and the complicated nonsense of 'list voting' was put in place. The elections became not a celebration of people's democracy, but the enthronement of party bureaucracy. There is a simple way out of this mess, at least at the local level.

Bring back the town councils and village councils, and reintroduce ward-based elections for all local bodies. The pundits can go on waxing eloquent about modifying the proportional representation system for parliamentary and provincial elections, but a simple Act of Parliament will do to restore the town councils and village councils and ward-based elections.

The President must exercise leadership, coax the legislature to act, and set up a delimitation commission to redraw the map of local government. The two should also act to create a new Colombo Metropolitan Authority to deal with the mounting problems that Colombo is facing on a daily basis.

The 1999 Report on Local Government reforms

Before some reader assumes that I am making presumptuous demands on the President and Parliament, I must point out that these demands are among the main recommendations of the 1999 Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Local Government Reforms. The five-member Commission headed by Dr. H.A.P. Abhayewardhana produced a comprehensive report with wide-ranging recommendations, but there has been no follow-up action on them.

Writing a ministerial note, in 1947, entitled "The Development of Local Government in Ceylon" (included as Appendix 3, in the Report), S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, then Minister of Local Government, advocated the development of local government as a necessary measure to reverse the process of centralization that was characteristic of colonial government and its purpose of imperial exploitation. He acknowledged, however, that the British colonial government has created a system of local government in Ceylon modeled on the local government system in England.

The need for local government development after independence should have been further accentuated by the rapid growth of population, from about five million at independence to 20 million now. Instead, the centralization of power became the dominant feature of governance after independence. In the Presidential system, power has also become personalized.

LG: Powers, functions and resources

The decline and deterioration of local government primarily came about by the taking over of many local government functions by central government agencies and departments. The local bodies lost their powers, functions and resources.

In simple terms, the purpose of local government is to provide land or property related services to the people within its jurisdiction and pay for them through property taxes and user-pay revenues. These services include providing access to property, roads drainage, water supply and sewerage, electricity distribution, and garbage.

For reasons of effective and efficient delivery, local bodies, rather than central government departments, are also better suited for providing public transport, education, health, and social and cultural amenities. For these latter services, local bodies will have to rely on grants from senior levels of government to supplement their own revenues.

As populations increase and life gets complicated in terms of increasing economic activities and the imbalances between supply and demand, local bodies will have to undertake extensive physical or land use planning, as well as regulation and coordination of different land-based activities. The role of local government in the stewardship of the environment is now universally recognized.

I do not have to dwell on how bad things are in regard to everyone of the activities that I have listed here, in every Sri Lankan locality. Many of the candidates running for local office in the 30 March election have highlighted these problems and assured to address them.

Despite their best hopes, these problems cannot be addressed by the local bodies but constrained to work under the existing centralized structure. Nor can they be addressed by government departments and their local branches who report to Colombo, which has been the practice for many decades now.

The Commission Report outlines how local government functions and responsibilities were taken away by the central government agencies and departments, both new and old.

Some of them, like the Urban Development Authority, were created to usurp powers and functions that should properly be left with local bodies. Others, like the National Water Supply and Drainage Board and the Ceylon Electricity Board took over some of the distribution functions that could have been left with local bodies.

These agencies have a role to play in setting broad policies and objectives, laying down national standards, and providing technical assistance and oversight. But the tasks of decision-making and service delivery should be left at the local level.

Local Government and devolution

Over centralization is not the only villain in the deterioration of local government. Recent attempts to achieve political devolution have also undermined the system of local government. For example, the creation of District Development Councils in 1980 involved the abolition of the town councils and village councils.

Although the 13th Amendment gave local government its first and only constitutional reference, the status of local government has only diminished and not enhanced during the last twenty years of devolution debate and experiments.

This is not only unfortunate but also unnecessary for political devolution and municipal empowerment are not mutually exclusive. They are mutually reinforcing.

As Mr. Bandaranaike argued in 1947, the development of local government is necessary to reverse the process of centralization that began under colonial rule and continued after independence. Twenty years earlier, he had envisioned the need for political devolution to make the island's political structure congruent with its ethnic 'co-existences'.

Today we can add a third argument in favour of decentralization and devolution - the argument of poverty: both decentralization and devolution are necessary to stem the growing socioeconomic disparity between the Western Province and the rest of the country.

The Donoughmore Commission recognized all three arguments even though its recommendation stopped well short of 'purna swaraj'. The Soulbury Commission jettisoned all three considerations while granting dominion status under a 'unitary constitution'. Where do we go from here? That is the question.

The reform of local government has to be an integral part of the devolution, discussion and process. But unlike implementing devolutionary changes, local government reform need not wait for peace talks and constitutional amendments. Much of it can be accomplished now, under this President, and in this current Parliament. What is needed is the political will to act, and if it is lacking, the public pressure to create that will.

If I may end on a note of advocacy, the members of the Abhayewardhana Commission of Inquiry and the many interested individuals and organizations who made representations to the Commission, as well as the local bodies who were newly elected should lobby the President and parliamentarians to start implementing the Commission's recommendations.

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