Ayes, Noes and duplicity

Monday 24th August, 2020

Chief Opposition Whip Lakshman Kiriella has demanded to know how come those who supported the 19th Amendment are now trying to scrap it. His reference is obviously to his political opponents in the SLPP government bent on getting rid of the 19th Amendment. The answer to his question is that they are doing so because Sri Lankan politicians act out of expediency rather than principle.

The 17th Amendment, which was a progressive legislation regardless of its flaws was passed without a division in 2001. Mahinda Rajapaksa was a minister in the Chandrika Kumaratunga government at that time. So were most SLPP and SLFP seniors who are currently savouring power. But Rajapaksa introduced the 18th Amendment after securing a second term as the Executive President and effectively neutralised the 17th Amendment in the process. Many others who had voted for the 17th Amendment unflinchingly helped him secure the passage of the 18th Amendment. In so doing, all of them made a mockery of their commitment to good governance.

As Kiriella has said, in 2015, all UPFA/SLFP MPs who had backed the 18th Amendment, save one, voted for the 19th Amendment, which strengthened the independent commissions created by the 17th Amendment. In so doing, they helped limit the number of terms a President can serve to two and strip the President of the power to hold Cabinet posts. The UNP, which captured power in Parliament, after defeating President Rajapaksa, had only 46 seats and the ousted UPFA a two-thirds majority. How did the UNP achieve that goal?

The defeat of President Rajapaksa left the UPFA MPs shell-shocked. They were too scared to stand up to the new government, which the newly elected President Maithripala Sirisena had formed. They took the path of least resistance without ruffling the feathers of the new leaders; many of them even joined forces with the new government for fear of reprisal.

Some yahapalana grandees including former President Sirisena, who backed the 19th Amendment, and flaunted it as an achievement of theirs, are now in the SLPP administration, and they will back the 20th Amendment to be presented to Parliament soon. It is only natural that their erstwhile yahapalana colleagues accuse them of duplicity. However, these critics are behaving just like the proverbial crab which asked its offspring to walk straight while he was moving sideways. Among those who are campaigning against the executive presidency, calling it a threat to democracy, are some senior politicians who voted for the 1978 Constitution, which created that institution. Prominent among them is former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. It has been a case of political sour grapes for them; a UNPer has not been able to secure the executive presidency since 1994—for more than a quarter century and, therefore, they want it done away with. Ironically, the UNP was instrumental in clipping the wings of the Executive President in 2015. They have proved that they are as hypocritical as their SLPP counterparts who condemned the executive presidency as a curse while they were in the Opposition.

Meanwhile, the JVP plunged the country into a bloodbath in a bid to scuttle the 13th Amendment, which paved the way for the establishment of the Provincial Councils, in the late 1980s. Their reign of terror and equally ruthless counterterrorism operations by the UNP governments during that period left tens of thousands of people dead and many others missing. But the JVP later had representation in the Provincial Councils. Strangely, the 20th Amendment it proposed with a view to having the executive presidency abolished did not call for doing away with 13th Amendment!

Meanwhile, SJB MP Harin Fernando has told Parliament that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s Policy Statement gave him the creeps; he has said he believes that it marks the beginning of the country’s journey towards a dictatorship. If so, he and his party should have called for a division and made an attempt to prevent the ratification of the President’s policy statement.

The history of the 1978 Constitution and the 19 amendments thereto has been one of duplicity and capriciousness. If Machiavelli were alive today, he would add to The Prince a new chapter on the Sri Lankan politicians.