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20A root of many evils: Lakshman Kiriella
by Saman Indrajith
The independence of the public service has deteriorated with the Executive Presidency becoming more powerful after the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, says Chief Opposition Whip Kandy District SJB MP Lakshman Kiriella.
In an interview with the Sunday Island, Kiriella said that the 17th Amendment was introduced to set up several independent commissions. “This was reversed by the 18th Amendment but was subsequently restored by the 19th Amendment and the independent commissions began to function again giving both the police and the public service the strength to execute their duties independently.
“Soon after that it was noticed by all that the judiciary, police and public service were gradually finding their independence. However all that has been reversed by the 20th Amendment, which consolidated all powers with the Executive Presidency. This is the main problem in our society today. We have capable judges, police officers and public officials, but their independence has been taken away. This was the reason we have witnessed many officials resigning from their posts,” Kiriella said.
“The spree of resignations by top officials has been endless and worrying, but also encouraging because it is a sign that officials want to do what is right and not simply follow the ruler’s diktat,” he said.
Even the European Union delegation that visited the country recently to review the GSP Plus had observed that the incumbent government was turning back one by one the democratic achievements gained for the people by the 19th Amendment.
“We introduced 19A which brought about democratic values as well as further ensuring the rights of the people. Powers that had been concentrated around the presidency were delegated to the PM, parliament, cabinet and the constitutional council. The country was set on the path of democracy by the changes in 19A. Soon after this government came to power, they did away with it and consolidated all powers around the executive presidency once again. This is the mother of all ills and problems people are facing today.”
19A had ensured the protection of human rights and upheld principles of rule of law. “We as a nation are bound to ensure the protection of human rights outlined in the conventions and treaties that have been ratified and we have signed. That is an international obligation. After doing away with the 19A, a situation has been created depriving people of those rights. Before the 20th Amendment the appointments to the top posts had been done by the constitutional council. The council we have now has no powers to reject any nomination and proposes its own. This is a sad situation.”
Q: You were Leader of the House under Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. When Sajith Premadasa became the Opposition Leader he chose you as the Chief Opposition Whip. How could you win the trust of both leaders who have so many differences of opinion?
A:
I count 33 years in parliament politics. I am a lawyer too. I am conversant with Standing Orders of Parliament and parliamentary traditions. That might be the reason for their choice to select me to hold those top most posts in both sides of the well of the House.
Q: President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has admitted that he made mistakes in governance. Would you like to comment?
A:
This is again has its origin in the 20th Amendment. Why has this happened? Because he amassed all power in his hands. All the powers of the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, parliament and the Constitutional Council have been taken over by the President. There is no team spirit. Everything is decided by a single person and that could lead to failures and disasters.
When the 19th Amendment was brought to Parliament, I was the Leader of the House. We had only 45 MPs in the UNP. But we could persuade the opposition that we were trying to go in the right direction to obtain their support to get two thirds of the votes to pass the amendment. But when this government brought in the 20th Amendment they did not ask the opinion of the opposition. Even we did not know what it would be until we came to parliament. A country cannot be run in that manner.
Q: The President also spoke of a new Constitution. What is the opposition’s standpoint on this?
A:
We do not think that the most urgent problem in our society at this time is a new constitution. Look at the way the government is preparing the draft. Usually a new constitution is prepared by a council representing parties in parliament. That could have been done by a parliamentary select committee. Who is making the new constitution? A bunch of lawyers who appeared for the cases against President Gotabaya Rajapaksa have been given the task of preparing a new Constitution. It is as if a private contract. There is no single word or debate in parliament in this regard. When we brought the 19th Amendment we discussed its content with all parties in parliament. A group of lawyers have been tasked to make a new constitution for the country.
Q: There are statements by some ministers about elections. Most of them mean provincial council election. Are you ready for that?
A:
There is no governance in the country. There is no price control. People have lost the democratic powers and privileges they had before this government came to power. The government on the other hand has not fulfilled the promises it made to get the votes. In a democratic system, the usual practice is to have an election, either provincial, local government, presidential or general, at least every two years. That is how the constitutions of many countries operate. It is same in India. Now nearly two years have passed since this president came to power. We challenge the government to hold an election if possible to see the way people reject them. When I heard the President’s recent speech I did not think they would go for an election even next year.
Q: The President too has accepted that an election should be held but the Attorney General has opined that an election cannot be held for the provincial council under the previous system of elections.
A:
Elections could be held according to the previous system. There is only one clause against it. It could be brought to parliament in the form of an amendment to activate the previous system of holding elections. Such amendment could give powers to the representative election method known to people. If the government brings such an amendment we would support it. In that manner the government could hold elections without postponing them.
Q: The president says that there had been shortcomings because he lacked experience in politics. Yet you say that he has all the powers. How could one fail if he has all the powers?
A:
In politics you need experience. The President has a genuine desire to develop the country. We accept that. Yet in politics the desire or need alone would not bring about results. You need experience. One cannot run a country just because you have all the powers. You have to learn work with others with team spirit. Army officers were appointed to the top posts while leaving out many capable and qualified civil officials. This is country is used to a civil administration, not military.
Q: The president promises to eliminate corruption. Is that possible?
A:
He has not been able to prove that by action. How can one could expect him to eliminate corruption? Haven’t you seen the way they have released many who had been accused of frauds and corruption in the recent past? So many cases have been withdrawn by the prosecutors themselves. Those who had been accused of many corrupt deals were released one by one in an unprecedented manner.
Q: People complain of the prices increases of essentials. Do you think that the SJB would have been able to control such a situation if it were in power?
A:
In a market economy, the prices are decided by the market. That is the truth. A government however could manage the price controls by using various strategies. For example, during the times of our government we had a cost of living committee which met regularly. That committee kept an eye on the market. Whenever there was a shortage of any commodity in the market it permitted imports. Suppose there is a rice shortage and the rice millers and businessmen try to jack up the prices. We import rice so that there would not be any price increase. The government should actively engaged in that process. You cannot control prices in the market by appointing an army officer to do the job. Today businessmen and traders decide the prices. The government should involve itself in managing this situation.
On 17 February, the Indian Navy posted a cheerful message on X.
“Welcome!” it wrote, greeting the Iranian warship Iris Dena as it steamed into the port of Visakhapatnam to join an international naval gathering.
Photographs showed sailors in crisp whites and a grey frigate gliding in the sea harbour on a clear day. The hashtags spoke of “Bridges of Friendship” and “United Through Oceans”.
Two weeks later the ship, carrying 130 sailors, lay at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. It had been torpedoed by a US submarine off Sri Lanka’s southern coast on 4 March.
Commissioned in 2021, the Dena was a relatively new vessel – a Moudge-class frigate of Iran’s Southern Fleet, which patrols the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman.
According to US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, the vessel “thought it was safe in international waters” but instead “died a quiet death”. Rescue teams from Sri Lanka have recovered at least 87 bodies. Only 32 sailors survived.
The sinking marks a dramatic widening of the war between America, Israel and Iran. And, though it occurred in international waters of the Indian Ocean and outside India’s jurisdiction, it is an awkward moment for Delhi.
“The war has come to our doorsteps. That is not a good thing,” says retired Vice Admiral Arun Kumar Singh.
For some strategists, the episode carries broader implications for India’s regional standing.
Indian strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney wrote on X that the US torpedoing of the Iranian warship in India’s “maritime neighbourhood” was “more than a battlefield episode” – calling it a “strategic embarrassment” for Delhi.
“By sinking a vessel returning from an Indian-hosted multilateral exercise, Washington effectively turned India’s maritime neighbourhood into a war zone, raising uncomfortable questions about India’s authority in its own backyard,” Chellaney wrote.
Just days before its destruction, the Dena had been a diplomatic guest of the Indian Navy.
The ship had travelled to Visakhapatnam, a sun-washed port city on India’s east coast, to participate in the International Fleet Review 2026 and Exercise Milan, a large multilateral naval exercise meant to showcase India’s growing maritime leadership.
Seventy-four countries and 18 warships took part in the events, which Delhi described as a demonstration of its ambition to become the Indian Ocean’s “preferedsecurity partner”.
Visiting ships at such multilateral exercises usually do not carry a full combat load of live munitions, unless scheduled for a live-fire drill, according to Chellaney. Even during the sea phase, when drills and live firing take place, ships carry only tightly controlled ammunition limited to the specific exercises.
Singh, an invitee to the event, recalls seeing the warship and its Iranian sailors in Visakhapatnam just days before its fate changed.
“I saw the boys marching in front of me,” he says of the Iranian naval contingent during the parade along the seafront, just 10m away. “All young people. I feel very sad.”
He says on 21 February, the assembled ships – including the Iranian vessel – sailed out for the sea phase of Exercise Milan, scheduled to run until 25 February.
“What happened next is less clear: the ship may have returned to port or peeled away after exercises. Either way, the waters where it was later sunk – off Galle in Sri Lanka – lie only two to three days’ sailing from India’s east coast,” Singh says. What the ship was doing in the 10-12 days in between is not clear.
Singh, who has commanded submarines, believes the sequence leading up to the attack was probably straightforward.
The US, he notes, tracks vessels across the world’s oceans. “They would have known exactly when the ship left and where it was heading,” he says. A fourth of America’s submarine fleet of 65-70 is at sea at any given time, according to analysts.
According to the Indian Navy, the Iranian warship had been operating about 20 nautical miles west of Galle – roughly 23 miles (37km) – in waters that fall under Sri Lanka’s designated search-and-rescue zone.
The attack, Singh says, appears to have involved a single Mark-48 torpedo, a heavyweight weapon carrying about 650 pounds of high explosive, capable of snapping a ship in two. Video footage suggests the submarine may have fired from 3-4km away, around 05:30 local time.
The aftermath was grim and swift.
The warship reportedly sank within two to three minutes, leaving little time for rescue. “It’s a miracle they managed to send an SOS,” Singh says, which was picked up by the Sri Lanka Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Colombo.
According to the Indian Navy, a distress call from the Iranian warship was picked up by Colombo in the early hours of 4 March, triggering a regional search-and-rescue effort.
The navy said in a statement that Sri Lanka’s navy began rescue operations first, while India moved to assist later.
The Indian Navy deployed a long-range maritime patrol aircraft to support the search and kept another aircraft with air-droppable life rafts on standby.
A naval vessel already operating nearby reached the area by late afternoon. Another ship, which sailed from the southern Indian port city of Kochi to join the effort, continues to comb the waters for survivors and debris.
Under the Second Geneva Convention, countries at war are required to take “all possible measures” to rescue wounded or shipwrecked sailors after a naval attack. In practice, however, this duty applies only if a rescue can be attempted without putting the attacking vessel in serious danger.
Singh says submarines are rarely able to help.
“Submarines don’t surface,” he says. “If you surface and give up your position, someone else can sink you.”
Singh suspects the speed of the sinking – and possibly sparse shipping in the area at the time – meant few nearby vessels could respond. “A ship breaking up that fast leaves almost no chance,” he says.
In a shooting war, Singh says, the legal position is blunt.
Fighting between the United States and Iran had been under way since 28 February, with claims that 17 Iranian naval vessels had already been destroyed.
“When a shooting war is on, any ship of a belligerent country becomes fair game,” he says.
Many questions remain. Why was the Iranian warship still in waters near Sri Lanka nearly two weeks after leaving India’s naval exercise? Was it heading home, or on another mission? And how long had the US submarine been tracking it before firing?
For Delhi, the episode is diplomatically awkward.
India has drawn closer to Washington on defence while maintaining long-standing political and economic ties with Tehran – a balancing act the war has made harder.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called broadly for “dialogue and diplomacy” to resolve conflicts, but has neither addressed the sinking of the Iranian vessel directly nor criticised the American strike.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the attack as “an atrocity at sea” and stressed that the frigate had been “a guest of India’s Navy”. Meanwhile Sri Lanka has taken control of another Iranian naval vessel off its coast after an engine failure forced it to seek port, a day after the US attack.
The episode has nonetheless sparked debate within India’s strategic community.
Kanwal Sibal, a veteran diplomat, argued that India’s responsibility may not be legal, but it is moral.
“The Iranian ship would not have been where it was had India not invited it to the Milan exercise,” he wrote on X. “A word of condolence at the loss of lives of those who were our invitees would be in order.”
Others like Chellaney have framed the issue in more strategic terms.
He described the strike as a blow to India’s maritime diplomacy. The torpedoing of the frigate in “India’s maritime backyard”, he argued, punctured Delhi’s carefully cultivated image as a “preferred security partner” in the Indian Ocean.
“In one torpedo strike, American hard power has punctured India’s carefully cultivated soft power,” says Chellaney.
As the debate gathered pace in strategic circles, India’s official response remained cautious.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on X that he had held a telephone conversation with Araghchi, and also posted a photograph of a meeting with Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh at a foreign policy summit in Delhi.
For military historian Srinath Raghavan, the legal position is clear: once the Iranian vessel left India’s shores, Delhi had no formal responsibility.
The strategic message, however, is harder to ignore.
“First, the spreading geography of this war. Second, India’s limited ability to manage its fallout,” says Raghavan.
“Indeed, the US Navy has fired a shot across the bow aimed at all regional players, including India.”
[BBC]
Latest News
Heat Index at ‘Caution Level’ in the Sabaragamuwa province and, Colombo, Gampaha, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura, Vavuniya, Hambanthota and Monaragala districts
Warm Weather Advisory Issued by the Natural Hazards Early Warning Centre of the Department of Meteorology at 3.30 p.m. on 06 March 2026, valid for 07 March 2026.
The public are warned that the Heat index, the temperature felt on human body is likely to increase up to ‘Caution level’ at some places in the Sabaragamuwa province and in Colombo, Gampaha, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura, Vavuniya, Hambantota and Monaragala districts.
The Heat Index Forecast is calculated by using relative humidity and maximum temperature and is the condition that is felt on your body. This is not the forecast of maximum temperature. It is generated by the Department of Meteorology for the next day period and prepared by using global numerical weather prediction model data.
Effect of the heat index on human body is mentioned in the above table and it is prepared on the advice of the Ministry of Health and Indigenous Medical Services.
ACTION REQUIRED
Job sites: Stay hydrated and takes breaks in the shade as often as possible.
Indoors: Check up on the elderly and the sick.
Vehicles: Never leave children unattended.
Outdoors: Limit strenuous outdoor activities, find shade and stay hydrated.
Dress: Wear lightweight and white or light-colored clothing.
Note: In addition, please refer to advisories issued by the Disaster Preparedness & Response Division, Ministry of Health in this regard as well. For further clarifications please contact 011-7446491
Latest News
Prompt solutions will be provided for the salary anomalies prevailing within the teacher and principal services — PM
Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya stated that the government has paid close attention to the salary anomalies prevailing within the teacher and principal services and that prompt solutions will be provided following extensive discussions held with trade unions.
The Prime Minister made these remarks while responding to questions raised in Parliament on Friday (06).
Presenting data on existing vacancies in the education sector, the Prime Minister explained the current situation.
There are 903 vacancies existing in the Sri Lanka Education Administrative Service (SLEAS) and 3,790 vacancies in Sri Lanka Principals’ Service (SLPS).
In order to fill the vacancies which still remain due to various reasons, including selected officers not accepting appointments after the examinations and interviews conducted since 2021, interviews are scheduled to be held in the second week of March 2026.
Further, in order to fill the vacancies for the years 2021 and 2025, competitive examinations will be conducted in the future with the approval of the Public Service Commission.
At present, entry into the Principals’ Service is considered as a new recruitment. As a solution to the salary-related issue arising in this regard, a new Cabinet paper is being prepared seeking approval to consider appointments to the Principals’ Service as a promotion, thereby enabling appropriate salary conversion.
The Prime Minister also emphasized that sustainable solutions are required not only for salary issues in the education sector but also for salary-related concerns in several other sectors. Accordingly, the government plans to appoint a new Salary Commission. Through this commission, the government expects to provide lasting solutions to the issues faced by teachers and principals within this year.
In accordance with the service minute of the Principals’ Service, several training programmes have been made mandatory for the professional development of principals.
These include, Induction training at the beginning of service, capacity development training prior to promotion to Grade II and Grade I, and periodic awareness programmes conducted at provincial and zonal levels.
The Prime Minister further stated that discussions are undertaking with the Department of Management Services regarding the proposals submitted by principals’ associations. Based on the responses received, the government is prepared to take the necessary steps through the Cabinet of Ministers.
[Prime Minister’s Media Division]
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