Referendum to extend President’s term: Is it ploy to avoid election defeat?

It is undoubtedly election phobia of the United National Party (UNP) headed by President Ranil Wickremesinghe that prompted Palitha Range Bandara, the General Secretary of the Party to suggest on Tuesday to hold a referendum to extend the term of the President and Parliament for two more years. 
“This is the best option at this moment to save the nation. The Government has reached agreements with the IMF, World Bank and other donors on economic reforms and it is essential to extend the terms of the President and Parliament to make this exercise a success,” Range Bandara told the media. 

Personal opinion 

Although Wickremesinghe and several other UNP leaders have disowned their General Secretary’s statement, the general perception is that this is not his personal opinion but a collective decision of the top most few inner circle leaders of the party to test the waters – to feel the response of the people and the Opposition. 
This is not the first time that the UNP had expressed this idea. UNP Chairman Vajira Abeywardena floated it at a district-level meeting in the South on June 14 last year. Abeywardena suggested conducting a referendum in place of the next Presidential election requesting the people’s approval for his leader to run the country for 12 more years. To justify his suggestion, he reminded the infamous first and only referendum in 1982 which too was held under his party’s government to postpone a General election.
However, his suggestion then did not cause such a fuss as the one that has been caused now. One has to read Range Bandara’s remark along with this and several other comments made by Abeywardena to get an idea about the origin of it. Abeywardena made another statement in April last year that President Ranil Wickremesinghe should be elected uncontested for another term, claiming that Wickremesinghe’s possible rival candidates could not even think of how to resuscitate the economy.
Again, on October 24, the UNP Chairman stated that the estimated cost of the Presidential election, which amounts to Rs. 13 billion, could be directed towards reducing electricity tariffs and providing much-needed relief to the people if a national consensus is reached to name President Wickremesinghe as the sole candidate for the position.

Fear of defeat 

There is little or no doubt that it is the fear of defeat at the forthcoming elections and not that there is nobody other than Wickremesinghe to salvage the country from the current economic crisis that has prompted them to make such suggestions. The country has not recovered from the economic crisis after Wickremesinghe took over, but only managed to end the queues for fuel and cooking gas following the inflow of foreign exchange with the implementation of the bailout package of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which was ironically initiated by former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who ruined the economy. 
The threefold price hike of essential items endured by the people between the years 2021 and 2022 is still tormenting the masses. Also, another more brutal crisis is lurking ahead as no political party including the UNP has a development plan that would resolve the foreign debt crisis which has deepened with the fresh borrowings after the IMF programme was put in place. However, this would be the fate of the country at this stage, even if somebody else had taken over when President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country in 2022. 
The suggestion by the UNP that a regime change at the next Presidential election would disturb the current IMF programme is also unfounded. Jathika Jana Balawegaya /National People’s Power (NPP) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake or the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) leader Sajith Premadasa would only win the forthcoming Presidential election, given the current mood of the country. SJB follows the same economic policy including in respect of the IMF, as the UNP does. The party was formed by the majority group of the UNP who broke away from the latter in 2020, not on any policy grounds, but driven by the perception that Wickremesinghe has been a failed leader with regard to elections.  

Avenues

Similarly, the NPP leader in a recent TV interview explained that despite having  avenues initially that were different from approaching the IMF, now the country has reached a point of no return from the IMF programme and has to go ahead with it.  Thus, the pessimism that the UNP is attempting to instill in the minds of the people over a regime change is also baseless. 
The contention put forward by the UNP Chairman and the General Secretary over the cost of the Presidential election is ridiculous. The Presidential election could only be deferred by a Constitutional amendment which according to legal experts, would require two-thirds majority support in Parliament and the approval by the people at a referendum. In other words, if the Presidential election is to be replaced by a referendum the cost of which would be the same as that of the said election.  
JVP/NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake referring to Range Bandara’s statement questioned on Wednesday how Wickremesinghe who cannot win the Presidential election could win a referendum.  If the referendum flopped, a similar amount of public funds has to be spent again for a Presidential election. Hence, it is the proposed referendum and not the Presidential election that would be a waste of public funds. If a Constitutional amendment is presented to put off the Presidential election ignoring all these facts and possibilities, it first has to go through a Supreme Court scrutiny. Then it would have to be passed in Parliament by two-thirds majority which would be a challenge to the UNP. However, despite leaders of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) having opposed Range Bandara’s suggestion, its members who still accept Rajapaksas’ leadership might throw their weight behind the President, as they have done thus far since Wickremesinghe assumed the topmost office in July 2022. 
The referendum stage would be the last hurdle in this process for the UNP. Since the majority of people in the country seems to be divided between the NPP and the SJB the UNP’s referendum option is most likely to be doomed to failure, unless it resorts to large-scale rigging, through violence and abuse of power, as it did during the infamous referendum in 1982. However, the UNP is not so strong today to unleash such a violent campaign. 
The 1982 referendum was meant to extend the term of the Parliament which was to end in 1983 by another six years. The UNP government of President J.R.Jayewardene presented the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution to achieve the purpose.

 
False allegation 

First, they arrested the leaders of Sri Lanka Freedom Party, the main Opposition under a false allegation that they, like the Naxalites in India, had conspired to murder the President and overthrow the government.  SLFP leader Sirimavo Bandaranaike had already been deprived of her civic rights. During the referendum goons grabbed the poll cards of the possible opponents of the Fourth Amendment  illegally printed poll cards and distributed them among the government supporters. 
Polling agents of Opposition parties were chased away from the polling booths by the goons and in many polling booths voters had been compelled to show their marked ballot papers to the polling agents, according to the Election Commissioner Chandrananda de Silva’s report on the referendum. President Jayewardene, Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa, Ministers Ranil Wickremesinghe, Lalith Athulathmudali, Gamini Dissanayake and Ananda Tissa de Alwis were at the forefront of the Government’s referendum campaign. 
Seven months after the referendum, the JVP which challenged the referendum results in the Supreme Court was proscribed under a false allegation which ultimately ended up in a bloodbath in 1988/89.