Two Provincial Councils in North Central and Sabaragamuwa provinces have been dissolved with effect from 12.00 mid night of 9th June 2008. The government has not given a specific reason as to why the two Provincial Councils which could have functioned officially till the August of 2009, were dissolved in advance of more than one year. According to the some sources of information, as a result of loosing the majority of the ruling party of the said Provincial Councils, in order to avoid the administrative problems this decision of ending the term has been taken.

Whatever, it may be the reason, the grave matters that emerge by this pre-mature dissolvement of people's institutions are set forth herewith for the attention of relevant authorities and the general public.

1. Various groups including the minority communities raise a major allegation saying that the power devolution efforts of Sri Lankan government are not honest and transparent. Instead of expanding the opportunities of allowing the minority groups to participate in the governance by granting more powers in order to strengthen the Provincial Councils that were initially formed as a solution to the ethnic problem, if the official terms can be terminated that easily to the whims of the rulers, the message that projected through such an action is not at all a positive one. Most probably, this kind of decisions may serve as the mental "evidences", seeking by the armed groups fighting against the state. No doubt that they will make use of these circumstances to rationalize their struggle.

2. Secondly, this will be a bad precedency for the future governments that may come to the power in the country. Accumulated sum of the additional human resources, cost of vehicles, cost fuel, cost of the air time and the inches of state

medial, VIP security expenses that should be bourn for an election after election of one or two Provincial Councils may be equal to conducting an island-wide one-day election. Accordingly, to conduct several numbers of elections for Provincial Councils, a vast quantity of national wealth may have to be unnecessarily spent.

3. Thirdly, the people's opinions that represent through this kind of solitary election seem to be "artificial" rather than "natural". Therefore the people's opinion, that was obtained through the stupefaction formed due to the unlimited power of wealth, official power and propaganda power (including the misappropriation of state media by the main political parties including the ruling party) released aiming one or two provinces, is not a natural opinion. By doing this the government loses the opportunity of testing the real public opinion. The government also bypasses a good chance of rectifying their weaknesses in the path taken by the government.

4. Fourthly, in the bitter and merciless struggle to remain in the power and to grab the power, ultimately the human lives will be at the stake. As all the political parties fight with their maximum strength, the passages will be opened for election violence as a result of the unnecessary political stress confined in a narrow area. We have witnessed the unpleasant experience of such nature in the Eastern Provincial Council Election.

We, the PAFFREL Organization, from the very moment we heard of another pre-mature election agitated for and demanded relevant authorities for an island-wide election, because we have foreseen aforesaid negative characteristics.

However, despite of our requests and warnings, the North-Central Provincial Council and the Sabaragamuwa Provincial Council were already dissolved. Nevertheless, we remain in the same position. Given the ground reality of our country as explained in the previous paragraphs, PAFFREL wishes to express it's displeasure and the protest to the all parties concerned of termination of the official term of two Provincial Councils pre-maturely.