Although the Election Commission (EC) has decided to discuss the crisis in the Sri Lanka Freedom Party in the future, a Commission spokesperson said that the Commission has no legal authority to solve internal problems of the party. The spokesperson also said that the members of the Commission discussed the documents submitted by two groups of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party separately to the Election Commission, but no final decision was taken.
The party’s political council met under the chairmanship of Nimal Siripala de Silva, the party’s Senior Vice President and he was appointed as the new Party Chairman and Duminda Dissanayake was appointed as the General Secretary.
Dissanayake handed over the documents and information regarding these appointments to the Election Commission and later the party’s Acting General Secretary Sarathi Dushmantha Mithrapala had filed objections to the Commission regarding the new appointments.
Accordingly, the Election Commission had discussed this at length when it met day before yesterday (18).
As the Election Commission has no legal authority to resolve the internal problems that have arisen inside the SLFP, within the normal legal scope and procedure, the Commission is of the opinion that the existing problems should be resolved by the activists of the party through the courts.
Even now, the crisis regarding the positions and parties of the Freedom Party is being examined before court, so the Election Commission is only able to accept the orders or recommendations given by it. However, the Election Commission has stated further that if the internal crises of the Freedom Party continue even after the announcement of an election in the future, a decision will have to be made only under the election process considering as to whether party members will receive nominations or not.
Subhashini Senanayake