Thank you for describing your personal reality, Indi.

It made me look up the governmental structure of Sri Lanka on the CIA World Factbook.

On the surface, it looks all okay (ish), voting-wise. but when I look at the result, I got a shock that one party, the SLFPA, has almost 60 percent of the votes.

In a well-functioning democracy, coalitions deliver the best results. Not coalitions of six parties collaborating, of course, that is quite difficult, but two large(ish) parties needing each other to form a coalition.

Not the parties, but the voters end up winning, because each party has to pour water to their wine. Plus, while negotiating, they need to be smart how to deliver what both can agree on.

So, even when you agree with the SLFPA, never vote for it if that means supporting a single party in full control. It’s called strategic voting, to get the best-possible outcome for society.

A well-functioning democracy never has a single party in full control (maybe in the first few years they deliver well, but the party ends up incorporating power as if it is naturally theirs. Power should always be naturally the people's. It is good when no party has full control.

If I can point to problems with the Sri Lankan voting formats, then I would say that there are too many multi-seat districts that do not have a lot of seats in them. Ten seats in a district is okay. Twenty-five seats in a district with multi-seat elections is better.

If there are just three, four or five seats in a multi-seat district, then the voters cannot express themselves in a refined manner, and votes will go more to a centrist party (centrist for that particular area). Some political diversity is actually good for a democracy (20 different parties is not good, however).

Then, if the president is too powerful? That is not good. Look at this graph I made in 2006:

Clearly, the single empowered president has the potential to jerk society in one direction, and that will always hurt the bottom of society and benefit the top of society (or creates a beneficial top in society). This graph shows how much the top 10 percent in a society gets from that society.

To the left: pure winner-take-all democracy.

Then: dictatorships.

Then: proportional-voting democracies with a president.

Then: mix of winner-take-all and proportional

To the right: pure proportional.

Winner-take-all is not the best form of democracy. A president is always winner-take-all.

Let me know if this helped a tiny bit.

I hope your situation improves, and it sounds like the government will lose its majority next time around, right? That would be good for everyone.