By Saman Indrajith

TNA Jaffna District MP MA Sumanthiran told Parliament on Saturday that an impeachment motion could be brought against President Ranil Wickremesinghe for using the latter’s parliamentary time to violate the provisions of the Constitution.

Participating in the debate on Budget 2024 under the expenditure heads of the Ministry of Justice, Sumanthiran said that the President had stated in Parliament on 24 Nov., that the Constitutional Council was under the purview of the executive branch of government. “This is wrong and it is a deliberate attempt to violate the Constitution and that amounts to an offence on which the President could be impeached,” Sumanthiran said.

MP Sumanthiran said the President came to the Chamber on 24 Nov., and read from some Supreme Court determinations, claiming that the Constitutional Council was a part of the executive. “I spoke on the same matter on the same day, but the President did not remain in the House. He left. Two days later he came to the Chamber again and replied to me. And then he left again.

While the Opposition Leader was asking him to stay, he left the Chamber. The President before leaving told this House that as per the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, the CC was a part of the executive. He said that he, KN Choksy and Karu Jayasuriya drafted that law. That is also wrong. It was brought at the insistence of the JVP.

The President was actually talking about the 18th and 19th Amendments which were aborted in this House. They wrote them during his tenure as the Prime Minister to clip the wings of the executive presidency. He was reading from those determinations, and claimed that those readings were from the 17th Amendment.

He also claimed that I provided counseling to those deliberations before the Supreme Court. That too was wrong. I was not in the country then and I was reading for my Masters elsewhere.  Chief Justice Sarath Silva giving the determination on the 17th Amendment to the Constitution stated that the establishment of the CC was the core of the 17th Amendment.

The provisions pertaining to the CC are in the Chapter 7 (A). The Leader of the House too on the day the President spoke said that it seems the CC comes under the executive. Executive powers are in Chapter 7 and a new chapter was created as 7 (A). It is a sui generis [unique] chapter stating that the CC is neither part of the executive nor the legislature. On the day of my intervention, I did not state that the CC was a part of the legislature but it was a part of the legislative structure. That is what the determination of the 17th Amendment says. The CC is a body separated from the executive, separated from the legislature but is under the aegis of Parliament.

President comes here and says what he wants. The half-baked arguments go unchallenged. That is not democracy. When someone challenges his claim, he gets up and walks away.

The 17th Amendment was brought for good governance. Subsequent amendments took good qualities away and brought them back to the Constitution. But the President behaves as if there were no checks and balances and thinks that the CC should accept his nominations. That is wrong. That was not the intention of Parliament when it implemented these amendments which sought to curtail untrammeled powers of the executive.

Now, we have come to a crisis of governance. This has implications on economic recovery as well. This has been highlighted by the IMF too. The President has violated the Constitution in this House for the second time within a month. This is deliberate offence on which he could be impeached,” Sumanthiran said.