Chicanery over Constitutional reform - EDITORIAL

The abolition of executive Presidency in general and the proposed 22nd Amendment to the Constitution currently are best two cases to understand the chicanery on the part of our politicians. All Presidents who took office after D. B. Wijethunga repeatedly and shamelessly hoodwinked the masses in respect of abolishing the executive Presidency, while the current political parties seem to do the same with regard to the 22nd Amendment.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe last Thursday (October 6) instructed Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena to inquire from political parties in the Opposition regarding their final stance on the 22nd Amendment citing that various parties in the Opposition had expressed contradictory views on the matter. 

Ironically, the two-day Parliamentary debate on the Amendment which was scheduled to start on the same day (October 6) had to put off due to conflicting views within the ruling party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). One can digest the existence of contradictory views among various parties; despite them represent the Opposition or ruling party, but emergence of controversies within the ruling party which is currently a single party at the last moment is questionable. 

The General Secretary of the SLPP Sagara Kariyawasam told media on Saturday that those who supported the 20th Amendment to the Constitution just less than two years ago cannot support another amendment which negates the essence of the former. No doubt it is a logical point and overtly correct from the ethical point of view. However, on the other hand, one can also argue that those who contributed to the enactment of the autocratic 20th Amendment have a moral responsibility to reverse the harm done to the country by it.

Besides, the realization dawn on Kariyawasam a few months after his party agreed to or meekly submitted to former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s view that the country should revert to the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. It was in the wake of the chaotic situation exploded after the attack on the protesters in the Galle Face Green on May 9 by the supporters of the then Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa that the former President expressed that he was prepared to forgo the powers conferred on him by the 20th Amendment. 

Accordingly, Justice, Prisons Affairs and Constitutional Reforms Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapaksha took measures to draft a new Constitutional amendment while President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was in office.  Policy approval was given to the draft by the Cabinet on June 20, subsequent to which it got the Attorney General’s nod after being formalized by the Legal Draftsman.  It was published in the government gazette on June 29. It was refashioned after Ranil Wickremesinghe ascended to the Presidency and presented in the Parliament on August 10 after being reapproved by the new Cabinet on August 1.

Therefore, the draft Amendment was conceived, born and bred within the ranks of the SLPP, the party that brought in the 20th Amendment. It was in essence approved twice by the Cabinet dominated by the SLPP members who voted for the 20th Amendment. Hence, Kariyawasam’s argument seems to be a smokescreen to cover up the mind change of a powerful leader or the leaders of his party.  

There are several contentious provisions in the current draft 22nd Amendment over dual citizens contesting elections, the duration given to the President to dissolve the Parliament and permitting the President to hold ministerial portfolios, among others. Nevertheless, the crux of the draft – curtailing powers of the President through the Constitutional Council functioning under the Parliament - has from the beginning been almost unanimous. Any opposition to the overall document coming at this stage seems to be a pressure tactic to achieve some desired changes in it or a mind change corresponding to the circumstances in May and now where there are no considerable threats to the authority of the SLPP leadership.

History is full of chicanery in respect of abolition of executive Presidency as well. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga who campaigned for the abolition did not accept the support for it when Gamini Dissanayake, the then leader of the UNP offered in 1994. Then she had been lamenting over lack of two thirds of power to scrap the system. Mahinda Rajapaksa twice promised to do the same, but strengthened the executive Presidency instead when he obtained the two thirds of power in Parliament in 2010.  Maithripala Sirisena even promised to hold a referendum for the purpose, if needed, during his first media briefing on November 21, 2014, as the Opposition’s common candidate at the 2015 Presidential election. Yet, his government brought in the 19th Amendment claiming that executive Presidency cannot be scrapped for want of a referendum on it. 

All these leaders might have spent hundreds of millions, if not billions, of rupees from the public coffers for meetings, discussions, parliamentary select committees, papers, court proceedings etc. in these processes which ultimately have gone down the drain.