Sri Lanka Muslim Congress General Secretary M. T. Hassen Ali, MP yesterday opposed the Government’s move to hand over the duties of a Delimitation Commission to an individual Minister or Politician to demarcate the boundaries of new Wards under the pretext of bringing reforms to the present Local Government Elections system.

"We understand that the Government has brought pressure on minority political parties within the Government to somehow pass a Bill to reintroduce the 12.5% cut off points for minority communities and parties during Local Government Elections when the matter is taken up for debate by the Eastern Provincial Council," He said.

SLMC Chairman and Opposition Leader of the Eastern Provincial Council Basheer Cegu Dawood has been briefing the representatives of minority political parties that the proposed reforms to re-introduce the 12.5% cut off point, which was done away by President Ranasinghe Premadasa acceding to a condition put forward by the late SLMC Leader M. H. M. Ashraff and minority parties in 1989 to support his Presidency. He said "We are not totally opposed to the idea for reforms. We are prepared to support certain reforms which would not deprive the minority communities and parties of their rights to representation. That was why we sought the intervention of the Supreme Court when the Government took steps to introduce the reforms hurriedly through Parliament in December of 2008, despite the Local Government elections Act being a devolved subject while actually what the Government should have done was appoint a Delimitation Commission and receive representations of the general public before it decided to demarcate boundaries."

He said the Constitution granted equal rights to all citizens under the beautiful words of democratic socialist but the Government was saying clearly that the right to take decisions should be with the majority.

Another dangerous matter was that the minority communities and parties are opposed to the proposal calling for 70% representation in bodies under the old first past the post system and 30% representation for minority communities and parties under the PR system. Thereby the Government is trying to deprive or reduce minority representation at the Local level.

As Local Government is a devolved subject any reforms should be debated by the Provincial Council and passed if the Reforms Bill was to be implemented through Parliament, he said.