In Sri Lanka’s quest to bring about the ‘system change’ that the people have been demanding for many years, especially following the 2022 ‘aragalaya’ movement, holding elections take center stage. As the country has dealt with the much-demanded Presidential Election, attention has been paid to holding the General/Parliamentary Election and also the Local Government (LG) Elections.

Elections play an extremely crucial role in the democratic process, and in Sri Lanka’s case, where the LG Elections have been significantly delayed, these elections are seen as the need of the hour. However, holding these elections is not an easy task, because, despite their importance to the country, especially economic management, Sri Lanka is struggling to allocate the monetary resources needed to hold elections. According to rough estimations, the General Election alone will cost around more than Rs. 10 billion and it is beyond what Sri Lanka spent to hold the recently concluded Presidential Election. Needleless to say, the LG Elections that will soon follow will cost more, making the cost of elections almost unbearable to the struggling economy and the tax-paying citizens.

Elections are a necessity to uphold democracy and this cost is inevitable. The big question is how the country plans to face the economic shock likely to be caused by allocating such massive amounts of funds for elections, despite the fact that the elections are ones which have been long postponed. We have to ask that question because the country is behind its overall revenue targets, and the people and businesses are no longer in a position to pay more taxes. At the same time, the State has cut down on most non-essential expenses. In this context, the Government has to have a strategy to manage the impacts of these upcoming elections. It is important that this plan does not involve simply placing the burden of election-related expenses on the people, but instead also cleverly managing the existing monetary resources.

The monetary cost of elections has been growing, but since recently has a lot to do with mushrooming political parties and candidates. Be it the Presidential, General or Local Government Elections, every election sees more political parties and candidates than the previous election, which has a direct impact on the cost of holding elections, especially when it comes to printing ballot papers. Even though every party eligible to contest should have the opportunity to contest and more candidates coming forward may be a positive sign as far as democracy and the people’s representation is concerned, however, as was observed during the Presidential Election, not all candidates have a genuine need to contest and some have other motives. Therefore, as the country looks forward to holding these decisive elections, it is necessary to pay attention to mitigating these challenges as well.

The cost of these expensive yet necessary elections is not limited to inadequate monetary resources. The General and LG Elections have a more direct impact on the country’s grassroots-level administrative activities than the Presidential Election, and therefore, the country will also need some time between elections to recover from the changes that follow the General and LG Elections. This is particularly important because Sri Lanka is going through an era of governing party changes, which has an inevitable impact on the overall governing system and the public service. The Government has to be mindful of such as well.

There is no debate that Sri Lanka should hold these elections as has been specified by the applicable election laws as well as recent court directives concerning delayed elections. However, both the country’s economy and day-to-day affairs should not be affected by the conduct of these elections, and the Government and the relevant authorities have a duty to ensure that election-related changes take place as smoothly as possible. That is the least that they can do for the economic crisis-hit people.