18 December 2014 06:35 am Views - 4796
Q: Couldyou explain your reasons to join the government after your party decided to support the common opposition candidate?
The JHU has been questioning the good governance principles of the UPFA for a long time. In fact as my party colleagues had pointed out, I am the one who initiated that campaign. Since we failed to get satisfactory answers from the UPFA, we decided to leave the UPFA. If the party’s objective was to establish good governance in the country, we should have initiated a new force to campaign for it. I expected the JHU to field a candidate at the presidential elections to represent unrepresented lobbies such as good governance, eco-friendliness and nationalism. Unfortunately, instead of choosing that line, the JHU opted to support Maithripala Sirisena.
Maithripala Sirisena is not a bad person. Unfortunately he is surrounded by anti-nationalist, anti-democratic, corrupt political forces of this country like Ranil Wickremesinghe, Chandrika Kumratunge and Vickremabahu Karunaratne.
Now they say Sri Lanka’s presidency is the most powerful in the world so once Maithripala is elected as the president he will ignore these people around him and will establish good governance. They make such statements displaying their ignorance of the Sri Lankan Constitution. We don’t have the most powerful presidency in the world. Our country has a semi-presidential system. Hence, presidential power is determined by the parliament. If the parliamentary power is with the president’s party, he is a very powerful person. But when opposition has the parliamentary power, the president becomes a nominal officer.
I have three examples to quote. In August 1994, PA led by Chandrika Kumaratunge captured parliamentary power when President Wijetunge of the UNP was in office. Chandrika became the de facto head of government making the president nominal. In September 2001, Chandrika lost the parliamentary majority and the JVP – who had only 10 parliamentary seats at the time - came to bridge the gap. Nevertheless they were able to rule the country by controlling the president. Chandrika nearly implemented whatever was demanded by the JVP. Thirdly, in December 2001 , the UNP led by Ranil captured parliamentary power when Chandrika was the president. Right now, I have a solitary aim – that is to ensure the victory of Mahinda Rajapaksa and that is it. After his victory I will decide on what to do – whether I want to continue with politics. Frankly I am disgusted with politics. Thereafter, Ranil functioned as the head of government, ignoring Chandrika. Ranil was able to sign the peace accord with the LTTE, ignoring the so called most powerful president of the world. This shows that the true leader of the country is the one who controls the parliamentary majority.
If Maithripala wins, he won’t have a parliamentary team. He failed to even bring a single parliamentarian from his own Polonnaruwa district. So he will depend on Chandrika, Ranil and Sampanthan to get the parliamentary majority for his government. As Chandrika had to listen to the JVP in 2001, Maithripala will have to please and appease the Ranil-ChandrikaSampanthan clan for his survival. That is the danger we are talking about.
Q: So if what you are saying is true – that the parliament in fact is more powerful than the president – then why is the JHU, including yourself, so adamant on getting the executive presidency reformed?
The present presidential system has a lot of anomalies. The US President is more powerful than the Sri Lankan President. But there are controlling instruments in action. He is accountable to the legislature, he is subject to the judiciary and he doesn’t have dictatorial powers. Unfortunately, the Sri Lankan Constitution doesn’t have these three features. Our president can form a oneman-cabinet taking all the ministries under him. He can appoint all 225 parliamentarians as ministers. So the Sri Lankan system should be reformed to include these three features.
This is contradictory to what you stated earlier – that the president as the head will have to do as the parliament wishes.That is when he doesn’t have a parliamentary majority. When his own party has the parliamentary majority, he can exercise some dictatorial powers. But in Maithripala’s context, he doesn’t have his own party to form a parliamentary majority. So he will not exercise power like Mahinda Rajapaksa, but be a puppet like Chandrika under the UNP and JVP and President Wijetunge under the PA.
Q: So you are admitting that the present president has dictatorial powers and yet, you are supporting him. How do you justify this?
I am not saying that President Mahinda Rajapaksa has dictatorial powers, I am saying that the president’s office has been given dictatorial powers by the Constitution which is why we are demanding that the Constitution be reformed.