20A and volte-face

Tuesday 15th September, 2020

Nobody has accepted responsibility for drafting the 20th Amendment (20A) to the Constitution. This ‘fatherless’ Bill has become a huge embarrassment to the SLPP government, which may have thought that securing its passage would be a walk in the park. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has been left holding the baby. The government has decided to review 20A, we are told. It is putting the cart before the horse. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa has appointed a committee to study 20A and submit a report thereon to him fast. The Bill should have been reviewed before being gazetted.

Interestingly, those who ganged up to oust President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in 2015, and went all out to destroy him politically thereafter, albeit in vain, are now bemoaning what they call an attempt to reduce him to the level of a peon. They are quoting the late Ranasinghe Premadasa, who, as the Prime Minister in the J. R. Jayewardene government, famously said that he was as powerless as a peon. However, our Constitution is such that the PM becomes more powerful than the Executive President to all intents and purposes when they happen to be elected from different parties. From 2001 to 2004, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe undermined President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who finally got rid of him by dissolving Parliament. After the 2015 regime change, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe lorded it over President Maithripala Sirisena, and the 19th Amendment (19A) helped him consolidate his power further. 19A stripped the President of the power to sack the PM and dissolve Parliament until the expiration of four and a half years of the term of a government.

The PM is more powerful than the President, at present, although they come from the same party; prior to the introduction of 19A, it would have been the other way around. Had the President and the PM been political rivals elected from different parties, they would have been at each other’s jugular by now just like Sirisena and Wickremesinghe. Fortunately, they are from the same party and, above all, members of a family known for its unity.

The proposed 20A seeks to strip the PM of some powers and strengthen the position of the President again, and the Opposition is trying to make this out to be an attempt to make Mahinda as powerless as a peon. They are obviously trying to pit Mahinda against Gotabaya and cause dissension within the ranks of the SLPP.

President Rajapaksa is ready to submit a fresh draft of 20A, according to a report we published yesterday. This is welcome news. He could have bulldozed his way through, given the SLPP’s steamroller majority in Parliament. After all, the Cabinet approved 20A in its present form. But he has decided against going ahead with it and agreed to take dissenting views on board. His critics have accused him of having dictatorial tendencies, which, they claimed, had driven him to have 20A crafted. He has countered adverse criticism by opting to have 20A reviewed.

Flexibility is not a sign of weakness. If the JRJ government had not contemptuously rejected opposing views out of hand, the existing Constitution would not have been seriously flawed and full of amendments; 19A has some flaws, which should be rectified, but 20A in its present form is not the solution.

The Opposition has agreed in principle that the President should be able to hold the defence portfolio, and the government would have been able to enlist its support to change 19A. Instead, it sought to discard 19A lock, stock, and barrel so as to do away with the limit on the number of Cabinet ministers, reduce the powers of the Auditor General, abolish the National Procurement Commission, replace the Constitutional Council with a Parliamentary Council and vest the power of making all key appointments in vital state institutions in the President.

It is hoped that the review committee will rid 20A of its draconian features and make it acceptable to those who are concerned about democracy.