The president's deputy is the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, who leads the ruling party in Parliament.

The President may summon, suspend, or end a legislative session and dissolve Parliament any time after it has served for one year.

The primary modification is that the party that receives the largest number of valid votes in each constituency gains a unique "bonus seat" (see Hickman, 1999).

It is set out in the constitution, which defines courts as independent institutions within the traditional framework of checks and balances.

The Parliament has 225 members, elected for a five-year term, and 196 members elected in multi-seat constituencies through a proportional representation system where each party is allocated a number of seats from the quota for each district according to the proportion of the total vote that the party obtains in the district.