Amended Local Govt. Ordinance bill passed

[TamilNet, Thursday, 21 February 2002, 17:40 GMT]
The amended Local Government Ordinance bill was passed by a majority of fifty-four votes in the parliament Thursday night after two days' debate. One hundred and twenty two parliamentarians voted for the bill. Sixty-eight parliamentarians belonged to the main opposition People's Alliance and the Marxist Janata Vimukthi Peramuna voted against the amendment.

The amended Local Government Ordinance empowers the Commissioner of Elections to postpone elections to local government institutions in certain parts of the country under special circumstances based on reports by the respective district Returning Officers.

The main opposition People’s Alliance and the JVP opposed the amended bill that the United National Front government had brought the amendment to appease the Liberation Tigers

Meanwhile the proposed Constitutional Council to be established under the 17th amendment to the present Constitution would start functioning from next week, parliamentary sources said.

The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition Thursday jointly nominated two members to the eleven-member Constitutional Council.

At a conference held Thursday at the parliamentary complex and attended by the leaders of political parties, a consensus was reached between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to nominate two former Supreme Court Judges Dr.Ranjit Amarasinghe and Mr.Lakshman Weerasekara. Mr.Ramalingam Chakravarthy would be the nominee of the upcountry Tamils, parliamentary sources said.