Sri Lanka's First Election Commission: Strengthening Electoral Management or Advancing Electoral Integrity?

TLDR: In this paper, the authors argue that the Election Commission has been unable to or failed to advance electoral integrity that is urgently required for the health of Sri Lanka's constitutional democracy, and that it is the Court, the traditional institutional check on the Executive and the Legislature that prevented its further erosion.

Abstract: The undisputed success of Sri Lanka’s first Election Commission (2015 – 2020) was the conduct of free and fair elections, that is to say, electoral management. I argue in this article that, by design and in practice, it was unable to or failed to advance electoral integrity that is urgently required for the health of Sri Lanka’s constitutional democracy. At critical points when electoral integrity and constitutional democracy were threatened, it is the Court, the traditional institutional check on the Executive and the Legislature, that prevented its further erosion. In this regard, the Commission made a modest contribution, but that contribution was contingent on personal disposition of the Commissioners. The Commission, therefore, was an institutional innovation that addressed symptoms of Sri Lanka’s ailing constitutional democracy but not its root-causes. The Commission has been a necessary but insufficient fix for the electoral pathologies of Sri Lanka’s constitutional democracy. Its ‘guarantor’ function, as I illustrate in this article, is narrowly conceived, perceived and lived out.