Sri Lanka's political parties have agreed to effect changes to the country's system of elections, parliamentary officials said here Thursday.

The change would see the country's system of election shifting to a mixture of proportional representation and first-past-the- post system from the present proportional representation system.

The Minister of Urban Development Dinesh Gunawardena, who heads the parliamentary select committee appointed for the purpose, said that all parties represented in the parliament have agreed to the mixed system and a final decision would be made on May 29.

Karu Jayasuriya, deputy leader of the main opposition United National Party (UNP) said the committee had addressed the issue as it became a crying need to change the present system.

Sri Lanka switched to proportional representation system with the adopting of the new constitution in 1978.

Since 1989 all parliamentary, provincial and local elections have been held based on the proportional representation method.

Critics have pointed out that the people's wishes had not been properly addressed in the proportional representation and it had also led to unhealthy intra-party competition among candidates of the same party.

This stiff competition had led to increased violence at every election.

Another setback in the present system is that no party is able to gain decisive parliamentary majority in the assembly consisting of 225 legislators.

Source: Xinhua