By Lionel Bopage –

Who really governs Sri Lanka’s provinces? The answer should trouble us.

Every province in Sri Lanka has a Governor. Most citizens know the title. Yet only a few know what the office entails. Fewer still ask whether it works. The question matters more today than at any time since 1987. For years now, the Governor has not been a ceremonial figure. Essentially, the Governor is the provincial government.

An office born of compromise

The office came from the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. That amendment followed the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987. Its purpose was devolution: power shared with the regions, and decision-making brought closer to people.

The design was a compromise. Provinces would elect councils. Councils would produce a Chief Minister and a Board of Ministers. The Governor would sit above them as the President’s representative.

The President appoints a Governor for a five-year term. The Governor serves at the President’s pleasure and can be removed at any time. That single fact shapes and says everything.

Recent history shows what that means. When Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa became President in November 2019, the sitting Governors resigned with effect from 20 November. Suren Raghavan, appointed to the North only that January, was among them. When comrade Anura Kumara Dissanayake took office in September 2024, the pattern was repeated, and nine new Governors were sworn in on 25 September. The Constitution speaks of a five-year tenure. In practice, a Governor’s term ends when the President’s does.

In theory, the Governor acts on the advice of the elected Board of Ministers. However, in practice, the office holds the real levers of power at the local level. The Governor can summon, prorogue, and dissolve the council, oversees the provincial public service, and controls the release of provincial funds.

The first North-Eastern Provincial Council showed how sharp those levers can be. Elected in 1988, it collapsed in 1990 after its Chief Minister, Varadaraja Perumal, moved a unilateral declaration of independence. The council was dissolved, and the governing of the merged province was left to the Governor. After the Supreme Court separated North and East in 2006, the Eastern Province elected a council in 2008. The North had to wait till 2013. For more than two decades, the Governor was the only provincial authority the North had known.

So the office was always two things at once. It was a constitutional head and Colombo’s eye on the province.

The empty chamber

Then the councils disappeared.

They did not vanish by law. They simply expired. Their terms ran out between 2017 and 2019. Elections were never held. The Constitution expects elections within weeks of a council’s term ending. Years have elapsed and yet no council elections have been held.

The expiry was staggered. The Sabaragamuwa, North Central and Eastern councils lapsed first, in 2017. The Central, Northwestern, and Northern councils followed in 2018. The Western, Southern and Uva councils were gone by the end of 2019.

The legal knot was tied in 2017. The Provincial Councils Elections (Amendment) Act No. 17 of 2017 replaced the old system with a mixed one and required a fresh delimitation of electorates before any poll. When the delimitation report came before Parliament on 24 August 2018, it was rejected by 139 votes to none. Even the minister who had presented it voted against it. No party wished to be seen blocking elections, yet none voted to make them possible. Every government since has inherited the knot. None has cut it.

The delay has outlived several governments. In May 2026, the Centre for Policy Alternatives voiced deep concern that successive governments, including the present one, had failed to hold the polls despite clear public promises and manifesto pledges. In August, India formally urged Sri Lanka to hold the long-postponed elections as soon as possible. In September, Parliament extended the term of a special committee studying the provincial electoral system until December 17. The Opposition objected, warning that the extension could be used to delay the polls further.

There is an irony in the budget papers. The Election Commission returned Rs. 9 billion allocated for the 2025 Provincial Council elections to the National Budget Department, because the elections were never held.

The result is plain. No elected council. No Chief Minister. No Board of Ministers. Only the Governor and the Chief Secretary remain omnipotent and omnipresent.

An office designed as a check now runs the show. A role meant to be one part of a system has become the system itself.

The opportunity in the vacuum

This is not only a problem. It is also an opportunity for the central government.

A Governor free of council politics can move quickly. There are no factions to bargain with. There are no party patrons to satisfy in every electorate. A Governor can set priorities and pursue them.

A Governor can be a neutral administrator. Recent appointments have often gone to academics and career officials rather than party loyalists. That is a welcome shift. It allows a Governor to stand above the quarrels that once paralysed councils.

The September 2024 appointments illustrate the shift. Two former university Vice Chancellors were named: Professor Sarath Abeykoon to the Central Province and Professor Jayantha Lal Ratnasekera to the East. Mr Tissa Warnasuriya, a former ministry secretary, went to the North-Western Province. In the North, the President chose Mr Nagalingam Vethanayagam, a retired administrator who had headed the district administrations of Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu. The Western Province went to Mr Hanif Yusoof, a co-founder of Expolanka. These are people with records in administration, scholarship, or business, not just in partisan politics.

A Governor can coordinate. During COVID-19 and the economic collapse of 2022, provinces needed one hand on the wheel. Health, schools, relief, and transport all had to move together. A capable Governor could bring district officials into one room and make decisions stick.

A Governor can build trust. In the North and East, this matters most. A Governor who listens to Tamil and Muslim communities can earn trust that distant politicians cannot. A Governor can attend the village meeting, hear the fishing family and the families of the missing, and carry their concerns to the President directly.

The North has seen both approaches. Major General G.A. Chandrasiri, a retired army officer, was appointed Northern Governor in July 2009 and reappointed in 2014. In January 2015, President Maithripala Sirisena replaced him with Mr H.M.G.S. Palihakkara, a career diplomat and former Permanent Representative to the United Nations. The change was meant as a signal that the North would be governed as a civilian province, not as a security zone. Who sits in the chair sends a message before a single file is signed.

What drive looks like

When a Governor chooses to lead, the difference shows. The Northern Province offers a recent illustration. Its official portal reports that the Governor launched six health projects worth Rs. 2,103 million over four days.

One announcement does not prove a record. Projects must be finished, not merely launched. But the example shows what the chair permits. A Governor can set the agenda and the pace of its implementation, officials and contractors notice it too.

When the office is misused

The office has also been used badly.

Before the Northern Provincial Council election of 2013, the government withdrew more than Rs. 560 million earmarked for development work by TNA-controlled local councils in the North. Sources said the money would instead go to the Northern Governor, to be spent on projects the Governor selected. Rural roads, markets, and council buildings were caught in a political contest.

When the council was finally elected, expectations were low. An election monitoring report captured voters’ fears. Many expected the council to have no real autonomy, with the Chief Minister reduced to carrying the Governor’s messages, and the Governor in turn carrying the President’s.

The years that followed proved the fear partly right. Governor, Chief Minister, and Chief Secretary clashed repeatedly. Disputes over officials and authority consumed energy that development needed. The people of the North, who had suffered most in the war, paid the price.

The friction was specific. Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran complained that no appointment in the province, from secretaries down to minor employees, could be made without the Governor’s approval. The council accused the Chief Secretary, Vijayalakshmi Ramesh, of answering to Governor Chandrasiri rather than to the elected Board of Ministers. The dispute reached the Supreme Court, which held that only the President could appoint, transfer, or remove a Chief Secretary, and urged both sides to work in harmony. In early 2015, the Governor was replaced and the Chief Secretary transferred. By then, more than a year of the council’s term had been spent on the quarrel.

In 2019, after the Easter Sunday attacks, two Governors resigned amid public protests. Their departure showed how exposed the office is to political storms. The chair can be emptied overnight, not by performance but by pressure.

The two were Mr M.L.A.M. Hizbullah of the Eastern Province and Mr Azath Salley of the Western Province. They stepped down in early June 2019 after a hunger strike by Ven Athuraliye Rathana Thera demanding their removal. Mr Hizbullah had held office for five months.

Part One therefore ends on a simple point. The Governor’s office is powerful and has become more so. It can serve the province or serve politics. It can lead or merely occupy.

What happens when it merely occupies? That is the subject of Part Two of this paper.

*To be continued..