Srilanka postpones local elections due to financial crisis

Srilanka has announced the postponement of the scheduled local government elections in the second phase due to the lack of necessary funds due to the severe economic crisis. On Tuesday, the Election Commission of the country officially announced the postponement of this election.

The organization said that the March 25 election of 340 local councils across the country has been postponed indefinitely. Election Commission of the country said that it is not possible to organize this election due to severe shortage of funds.

The Election Commission made the announcement a day after a meeting with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardene and leaders of the country's major political parties. Sri Lankan Election Commission Director General Saman Sri Ratnayake said that the next date for the election will be announced only after securing funds from the state treasury.

This local election of the country was supposed to be held on March 9, but due to the ongoing economic crisis, it was postponed until April 25. Last month, the country's National Election Commission canceled the postal voting system for local elections due to lack of funds.

Later, Gangani Lienage, the official of the country's government's print department, said that the Election Commission was informed that they did not have the money to print ballot papers for conducting postal voting from February 21 to 24. Due to which the Election Commission is forced to postpone the election.

He received only 40 million Lankan rupees from the state coffers till the election was postponed. Although 500 million rupees are needed to organize this election, he said.

The election of the country's 340 local councils was scheduled to be held in March last year. But the election was postponed due to the same reason of the service i.e. economic crisis.

Due to the corona pandemic and the financial irregularities of the previous Rajapaksa government, the dollar reserves in the country's central bank are almost zero. As a result, this South Asian island nation of 22 million people is going through an unprecedented financial crisis since last year. Sri Lanka has not seen such a deep economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1948.

Sri Lanka's then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed parliament member Ranil Wickremesinghe as finance minister after the protests reached their peak in May last year. Then Wickramasinghe became the country's president after Gotabaya fled the country in July of the same year to escape the protests. Along with that, the Ministry of Finance is also in charge.

Gotabaya secretly left the country on July 13 last year. A week before that, on July 6, Finance Minister Ranil announced that Sri Lanka was bankrupt.

Sri Lanka has borrowed the most from China and India. The question arises as to how those foreign debts will be repaid after the declaration of bankruptcy. The Wickramasinghe-led government also introduced a new program to pay installments of outstanding loans.

After nearly a year of negotiations and negotiations, Sri Lanka succeeded in getting the IMF loan late last month. Which was very necessary for the country. The IMF will immediately give $333 million to Sri Lanka out of $3 billion. The rest will be given in a phased manner, the agency said.

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