Sri Lanka Eastern Provincial Council elections, 2008
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All 37 seats to the Eastern Provincial Council |
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post vacant
Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan
United People's Freedom Alliance
The Sri Lanka Eastern Provincial Council elections, 2008 was held on May 10, 2008 to elect members to Sri Lanka’s Eastern Provincial Council. Following the successful completion of local government elections in the Batticaloa District, Sri Lanka’s Elections Department announced on March 14 that the elections for the Eastern Provincial Council were to be held in May, after a lapse of 20 years. It was only the second time direct elections are held to select members for the council, and first time for the Eastern Provincial Council alone, after it was separated from the North-Eastern Provincial Council in 2006.
Nominations for contesting in the elections were accepted from March 27 to April 3, and a total of 1342 candidates from 18 political parties and 56 independent groups contested the elections where over 980,000 people were eligible to vote. Both of Sri Lanka’s major political parties, the opposition United National Party and the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance took part in the election in coalitions with a number of other parties, but under their own names.
According to the official results released by the Elections Department, the ruling UPFA were victorious in the election, winning 20 seats, while the opposition UNP won 15 seats. Two smaller parties, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Tamizh Democratic National Alliance also won 1 seat each.
The Provincial Council system was first set up in Sri Lanka following the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord in 1987. Although Sri Lanka has 9 provinces, as part of the agreement the Northern and Eastern provinces were merged into a single North Eastern Province, and a joint North-Eastern Provincial Council formed. This was done following demands of Tamil political parties, who consider the north and east of Sri Lanka as their "traditional homeland", and wanted to administer the area as a single entity, against the protests of some members of the Sinhalese and Muslim communities.
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