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All 225 Seats in the Parliament of Sri Lanka 113 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Politics of Sri Lanka |
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Parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka no later than 21 February 2030. They will determine the composition of the Parliament of Sri Lanka, which determines the government.
The 2024 parliamentary elections resulted in a landslide victory for President Anura Kumara Dissanayake's National People's Power alliance, which won 159 of the 225 seats, securing a two-thirds majority in Parliament. [1] [2] The surge in the NPP's seat count from three in the 16th parliament marked a shift in Sri Lankan politics. Reports suggest that Dissanayake's campaign focused on anti-corruption, social welfare and economic revival amidst the country's economic crisis resonated with voters. [3] Harini Amarasuriya, who was appointed prime minister after Dissanayake won the 2024 presidential elections, was re-appointed prime minister on 18 November 2024. [4] [5]
In the north and east, a decrease in support amongst Tamil and Muslim voters for traditional ethnic parties were given as reasons for the NPP's success. [6]
The main opposition alliance, Sajith Premadasa's Samagi Jana Balawegaya, won 40 seats, a decrease from the 2020 elections. Former president Ranil Wickremesinghe's New Democratic Front secured five seats, while former president Mahinda Rajapaksa's Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna collapsed from 145 seats in the 2020 election, winning only three seats.
Under Article 70 of the constitution and section 10 of the Parliamentary Elections Act, No. 1 of 1981, the president has the authority to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections after two years and six months from its first sitting or upon receiving a resolution from parliament during its five-year term. The president will be able to dissolve parliament by decree, effective from 21 May 2027. [7]
If the president chooses not to do this, parliament is automatically dissolved five years after the day it first met and a parliamentary election is held within three months of the date of the dissolution. The 17th Parliament opened on 21 November 2024, meaning that if an election is not called, parliament will be automatically dissolved on 21 November 2029, and the latest an election could be held is 21 February 2030. [8]
The Parliament has 225 members elected for a five-year term. 196 members are elected from 22 multi-seat constituencies through an open list proportional representation system with a 5% electoral threshold; voters can rank up to three candidates on the party list they vote for. The other 29 seats are elected from a national list, with list members appointed by party secretaries and seats allocated according to the island-wide proportional vote the party obtains. [9]
Every proclamation dissolving parliament must be published in The Sri Lanka Gazette and must specify the nomination period and the date of the election. The first meeting of the new parliament must occur within four months of the previous parliament's dissolution. [9]
Sri Lanka is a unitary multi-party semi-presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Sri Lanka is both head of state and head of government. Executive power is exercised by the President on the advice of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet of Ministers. Legislative power is vested in the Parliament. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
The Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) is a Semi-presidential republic determined by the Sri Lankan Constitution. It administers the island from both its commercial capital of Colombo and the administrative capital of Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte.
The United National Party is a centre-right political party in Sri Lanka. The UNP has served as the country's ruling party, or as part of its governing coalition, for 38 of the country's 74 years of independence, including the periods 1947–1956, 1965–1970, 1977–1994, 2001–2004 and 2015–2019. The party also controlled the executive presidency from its formation in 1978 until 1994 and again from 2022 to 2024.
Parliamentary elections were held in Sri Lanka on 2 April 2004. The ruling United National Party of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was defeated, winning only eighty two seats in the 225-member Sri Lankan parliament. The opposition United People's Freedom Alliance won 105 seats. While this was eight seats short of an absolute majority, the Alliance was able to form a government.
Sri Lanka elects on the national level a head of state – the president – and a legislature. Sri Lanka has a multi-party system, with two dominant political parties. All elections are administered by the Election Commission of Sri Lanka.
The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna is a leftist political party in Sri Lanka. The party was formerly a revolutionary movement and was involved in two armed uprisings against the government of Sri Lanka: once in 1971 (SLFP), and another in 1987–1989 (UNP). The motive for both uprisings was to establish a socialist state. Since then the JVP has entered mainstream democratic politics and has updated its ideology, abandoning some of its original Marxist policies such as the abolition of private property, and moderating its rhetoric. The JVP has been led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake since 2014.
Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam was a Ceylonese lawyer, politician and Member of Parliament. He was the founder and leader of the Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) and Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and a political leader of the Ceylon Tamil community for more than two decades. Chelvanayakam has been described as a father figure to Ceylon's Tamils, to whom he was known as "Thanthai Chelva".
Dinesh Chandra Rupasinghe Gunawardena is a Sri Lankan politician who served as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka from 2022 to 2024. He also held the positions of Minister of Public Administration, Home Affairs, Provincial Councils and Local Government. Gunawardena has been leader of the left-wing Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP) party since 1983, was briefly the de facto leader of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna from 2022 to 2023, and has taken cabinet positions under several previous governments, including Leader of the House from 2020 until 2022.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake, commonly referred to by his initials AKD, is a Sri Lankan politician who has been the tenth and current president of Sri Lanka since 2024. Dissanayake is the first Sri Lankan president to be elected in a second round of vote counting, and the first elected president not from Sri Lanka's traditional political parties.
A national list member of parliament is a nominated member of parliament who is appointed by a political party or an independent group to the Parliament of Sri Lanka. The number of national list MPs allocated to a contesting party or an independent group depends on the proportion to their share of the national vote. A total of 29 national list MPs are appointed alongside 196 elected MPs making a total of 225 members in the parliament.
Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi is a Sri Lankan political party which represents the Sri Lankan Tamil minority in the country. It was originally founded in 1949 as a breakaway faction of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC). In 1972, ITAK merged with the ACTC and Ceylon Workers' Congress (CWC) to form the Tamil United Front, which later changed its name to the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF). ITAK remained dormant until 2004 when a split in the TULF resulted in ITAK being re-established as an active political party. ITAK was the main constituent party of the Tamil National Alliance from 2004 until its dissolution in 2024. As of 2024, the party is the largest Tamil party in Parliament and the third-largest party after the National People's Power and the Samagi Jana Balawegaya.
Konara Mudiyanselage Podiappuhamy Rajaratne was a Ceylonese lawyer, politician and parliamentary secretary.
Parliamentary elections were held in Sri Lanka on 5 August 2020 to elect 225 members to Sri Lanka's 16th Parliament. 16,263,885 people were eligible to vote in the election, 31.95% of whom were young voters.
The National People's Power (NPP) or Jathika Jana Balawegaya (JJB) is a centre-left to left-wing political party in Sri Lanka. It was formed as a coalition of left-wing and progressive parties that aimed to present an alternative to the existing political establishment. The NPP emerged as a response to the perceived failures of traditional parties in the Sri Lankan political system. It is the current ruling party of Sri Lanka, having won the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections, and is currently the largest party in the Parliament of Sri Lanka. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is the current leader of the party and Nihal Abeysinghe is the general secretary.
The 16th Parliament of Sri Lanka was the meeting of the Parliament of Sri Lanka with its membership determined by the results of the 2020 parliamentary election held on 5 August 2020. The parliament met for the first time on 20 August 2020 and was dissolved on 24 September 2024.
Harini Nireka Amarasuriya is a Sri Lankan sociologist, academic, activist, and politician serving as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka since 2024.
An indirect presidential election was held in Sri Lanka on 20 July 2022 following the resignation of president Gotabaya Rajapaksa on 14 July. The president of Sri Lanka was elected by the Parliament in a secret ballot to decide who would complete the remainder of Gotabaya Rajapaksa's term. Candidates were nominated in the Parliament on 19 July in advance of the election the following day.
Parliamentary elections were held in Sri Lanka on 14 November 2024 to elect 225 members to the new parliament. The 16th Parliament of Sri Lanka was dissolved on 24 September 2024. The submission of nominations for the election commenced on 4 October and concluded on 11 October 2024 at 12:00 SLST.
The first Dissanayake cabinet was a central government of Sri Lanka led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. It was a 3-member interim cabinet formed in September 2024 after the presidential election and ended in November 2024 following the parliamentary election.
The 17th Parliament of Sri Lanka is the current Parliament of Sri Lanka, with its membership determined by the results of the 2024 parliamentary election held on 14 November 2024. The parliament met for the first time on 21 November 2024.
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