Establishment of the National People’s Council Secretariat for the formation of the People’s Council to strengthen participatory democracy.
It has been revealed that due to the gap between the center of governance and the people of the periphery, the representative democratic structures that have been operating in Sri Lanka do not pay due attention to the public opinion sufficiently in the policy and decision-making process and since the people’s real issues are not adequately addressed, social criticism is arising in this regard.
Based on this, it has also been seen that opinions and objections against representative democracy are emerging in the society. Under that situation, the need for a strong mechanism where public officials and the public can discuss rural issues together, determine development priorities and rural people can participate in the decision-making process in an organizational structure where participatory democracy is practiced at the rural level has emerged.
It will be possible to effectively and efficiently prevent public oppression that may occur due to bureaucracy and arbitrary politicization through an organized mechanism that actively find public opinions for public policy formulation and implement those policies with community participation.
The National Movement for a Just Society has accordingly presented a concept paper on ” People’s Council System” with an independent institutional structure where public participation can be ensured for the formulation of public policies and the successful implementation of those policies. The concept paper also proposed the establishment of the “National People’ Council and “Village People’s Councils ” to cover every Grama Niladhari Division in the Island.
Accordingly the Cabinet of Ministers approved the proposal presented by the Hon. President to accept the proposed People’s Council system as an fundamental policy and to establish the “National People’s Council Secretariat” as the national level independent central institution for establishing the People’s Councils system
