Editorial
22-A and Catch-22
Friday 7th October, 2022
Sanity has prevailed; the parliamentary debate on the 22nd Amendment (22-A) to the Constitution Bill has been postponed. The government seems to have got cold feet due to stiff resistance offered by the Opposition and even a section of the ruling SLPP to the controversial Bill.The process of tinkering with the 1978 Constitution to effect changes to the executive presidency has taken a zigzag course. The first successful attempt to reduce the executive powers of the President was made in 2001, and it paved the way for the 17th Amendment (17-A), which led to the establishment of the Constitutional Council and the Independent Commissions to depoliticise some vital state institutions.
About nine years later, 17-A was deep-sixed, and the 18th Amendment (18-A) introduced to restore the powers of the executive presidency. In 2015, all those who voted for 18-A in Parliament, save one or two, backed the 19th Amendment (19-A), which reduced the executive powers of the President. Then came the 20th Amendment (20-A), which strengthened the executive presidency again. A fresh attempt is now being made to weaken the presidency through 22-A.
The government has, in its wisdom, chosen to bite off more than it can chew. It does not have a two-thirds majority to secure the passage of the 22-A Bill, and, worse, the SLPP is divided thereon, with the Basil Rajapaksa faction openly opposing it. If the pro-Rajapaksa MPs do not back the 22-A Bill, it will be a dead duck.
Why the government is in a mighty hurry to have the 22-A Bill passed defies comprehension. It has, true to form, got its priorities mixed up. What the country needs at this juncture is not a new Constitution or an amendment to the existing one, but an all-out attempt to sort out the economic crisis, which has the potential to unleash anarchy, which will render all laws useless.
Opposition to the 22-A Bill emanates mostly from its opponents’ fear that the government is planning to introduce some committee-stage amendments thereto without judicial sanction, thereby weakening, if not doing away with, the constitutional safeguards currently in place against moves being made to divide the country. The critics of the 22-A Bill also argue that President Ranil Wickremesinghe is under pressure from the UNHRC, India, and the US-led western powers to enable the full implementation of the 13th Amendment (13-A), and clear the way for federalism. Their fear is not unfounded. There have been instances where governments compassed their sinister ends by stuffing Bills with questionable sections at the committee stage and steamrollering them through Parliament.
Laws become faits accomplis in this country once they are passed owing to the absence of a constitutional provision for the post-enactment judicial review of legislation. There are some precedents. It has now been revealed that in 1988, the J. R. Jayewardene government surreptitiously inserted a section into the Parliamentary Elections Act by having an amendment Bill changed, after its ratification, to allow political parties to engineer National List vacancies and appoint persons of their choice to Parliament. This provision has made a mockery of Article 99 (A) and Article 101 (H) of the Constitution. In 2017, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government smuggled a slew of sections into the Provincial Council Elections (Amendment) Bill to postpone the provincial council elections indefinitely. It is argued in some quarters that 20-A prohibits such alterations and additions; Article 78 of the Constitution says ‘any amendment proposed to a Bill in Parliament shall not deviate from the merits and principles of such Bill’. But some constitutional experts are of the view that no legal remedy will be available even if changes are made to the 22-A Bill at the committee stage because laws cannot be challenged in courts after their enactment. There’s the rub.
The SLPP itself has opposed the government’s decision to put the 22-A Bill to the vote. On the one hand, it seems to think that a strong executive presidency is necessary for its survival, which hinges on the Executive President’s ability to rule the country with an iron fist and hold anti-government protesters at bay, and on the other hand, it does not have a two-thirds majority to secure the passage of the Bill, and is very likely to suffer a serious setback in Parliament if a vote is taken thereon. It is also possible that the SLPP has resorted to brinkmanship to have the 22-A Bill amended to prevent the President from dissolving Parliament after the expiration of two and a half years of its term. But how will the SLPP muster 150 votes even if it decides to back the Bill. As it stands, the chances of the 22-A Bill being ratified are extremely remote, but given the sheer number of MPs who are willing to defect, it is difficult to predict the outcomes of votes in Parliament.
President Wickremesinghe will stand to gain if the status quo remains, provided he is not under international pressure to have the 22-A Bill passed with provision for the full implementation of 13-A; he will be able to enjoy unbridled executive powers, and leverage his ability to dissolve Parliament in about six months to tame the SLPP parliamentary group, which needs elections like a hole in the head.
Let the government be urged to delay the debate on the 22-A Bill further and reveal the proposed changes to it thereby allowing an extensive public discussion to take place thereon. It has to show its hand, and give a cast-iron guarantee that it will not stuff the Bill with sections sans judicial sanction at the committee stage, which has become a sort of constitutional wormhole. The need for introducing constitutional provision for the post-enactment judicial review of legislation cannot be overemphasised.
Saturday 8th June, 2024
It was with shock and dismay that we received the news about death threats to COPF (Committee on Public Finance) Chairman Dr. Harsha de Silva over the ongoing parliamentary probe into the on-arrival visa scam. Dr. de Silva yesterday told Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, in Parliament, that he was facing death threats and intimidation, and it was incumbent upon Parliament to ensure his safety. He stopped short of naming names, but revealed that some ruling party MPs were among those who had ganged up against him. The Speaker only said there had been no complaint, and he would look into the matter.
The SLPP-UNP government has been doing everything in its power to have all parliamentary committees under its thumb. The COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises), which once helped restore public faith in the legislature by exposing state sector corruption, has now become a mere appendage of the incumbent regime, thanks to the appointment of SLPP MP Rohitha Abeygunawardena as its Chairman. The SLPP-UNP combine also tried to oust COPF Chairman Dr. de Silva, but in vain. However, it knows more than one way to shoe a horse.
The COPF, under Dr. de Silva’s chairmanship, has been a thorn in the side of the government, which is struggling to cover up numerous corrupt deals. Dr. de Silva yesterday told Parliament that he found it extremely difficult to function as the COPF head due to severe resource constraints his committee was facing; he himself had to pay the salaries of some of his staff members besides burning the midnight oil.
The sheer workload he had to cope with as the COPF chief had taken its toll on his health, he said, informing the Speaker that he was at the end of his tether, and at times thought of resigning from the COPF. This is exactly what the government wants him to do; resource squeezes and threats are aimed at making him quit.
On 26 May, Dr. de Silva revealed, in an ‘X’ post, that the COPF had uncovered some vital information about the visa scam and it would reveal everything after its final meeting on the issue; the COPF was committed to exposing the truth behind the controversial tender, he added. In an editorial comment on 27 May, we warned him.
While thanking him for his bold stand, we pointed out that by making such a statement, he had thrown caution to the wind, and become a marked target, with the government making an all-out effort to delay the COPF investigation lest the truth should come out much to the detriment of its interests in this election year. Unfortunately, what was feared has come about; Dr. de Silva is complaining of death threats and government moves to strangulate the COPF financially to derail its investigations.
Dr. de Silva’s predicament exemplifies the fate that befalls the few good men and women in Parliament. It is hoped that all those who seek an end to the state sector corruption will rally behind Dr. de Silva, and bring pressure to bear on the government to ensure his safety. Let Dr. de Silva be urged to reveal the names of those who have issued threats, veiled or otherwise, to him and are trying to scuttle the COPF probes.
Friday 7th June, 2024
The SLPP-UNP government is going hell for leather to make bad laws as if there were no tomorrow. It is abusing its parliamentary majority, which has been retained with the help of some crossovers, for that purpose. The Opposition, the media and trade unions are up in arms, and understandably so. The incumbent regime is a dead man walking; it is so desperate that it is capable of anything. Hence the need for it to be restrained.
The Electricity (Amendment) Bill (EAB) plunged Parliament into turmoil yesterday, but the government secured its passage. The Supreme Court (SC) determined the entire EAB inconsistent with the Constitution and recommended changes thereto. After unveiling the Bill, sometime ago, Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera hailed it as an excellent piece of legislation aimed at straightening up the power sector to serve the public interest better.
The SC determination left him with egg on his face. He reminded us of the proverbial curate who, while eating a stale egg, assured his host, a Bishop, that parts of it were excellent. Wijesekera’s egg, as it were, made Parliament stink yesterday, but he sought to please his masters by praising it as a silver bullet.
EAB should have been discarded and a new one drafted in consultation with all stakeholders. But the government is apparently driven by an ulterior motive; its aim is not to serve Sri Lanka’s interests but to look after those of some moneybags.
It is not uncommon for Bills to contain some flaws, which are rectified either before or during the committee stage. But there is something terribly wrong with draft Bills that are full of sections inconsistent with the Constitution. The drafters of EAB have demonstrated their sheer ignorance of the supreme law, and that they are not equal to the task of drafting Bills. If they had read the Constitution at least perfunctorily, they would not have drafted such a bad law.
Ignorant and incompetent, they do not deserve to be paid with public funds and must be sent back to law school. They must be summoned before Parliament and questioned on their serious lapses, which have caused public faith in the national legislature to diminish.
Curiously, the MPs who demand that judges, doctors, Central Bankers, and other public officials be summoned before Parliament have taken badly drafted Bills for granted. The power sector trade unions yesterday alleged that EAB was of Indian origin and geared towards furthering the interests of Adani Group at the expense of Sri Lanka.
Most critics of EAB are agreeable in principle to the need for power sector reforms; the Ceylon Electricity Board should be given a radical shake-up, and transformed into a modern organisation capable of providing a better service at a lower cost. They only asked the government to tread cautiously, consulting all stakeholders and taking action to ensure that the country’s interests prevailed over everything else. But the government was in a mighty hurry to steamroller the Bill through Parliament, making the Opposition ask whether it was doing so at the behest of some external forces involved in controversial power generation deals here.
What is passed by the current Parliament can be either amended or abolished by a future parliament in a constitutionally prescribed manner. But that does not mean that a government is free to pass bad laws, making the country enter into long-term agreements with powerful nations and their investors. It looks as if the SLPP-UNP regime did not care two hoots about the consequences of its actions.
Thursday 6th June, 2024
The outcome of India’s parliamentary election (2024) has led to a ‘perspective ambiguity’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi lost no time in declaring victory for the BJP-led NDA alliance, which secured 293 seats in the 543-member Parliament, but he must be a worried man. The BJP is short of 32 seats to form a government under its own steam; it has lost 63 seats or about 20% of its parliamentary strength. It had 303 seats in the previous Parliament, and that number has dropped to 240.
Modi has become the second Indian Prime Minister to win a third term. The first PM to do so was Jawaharlal Nehru. But Nehru won an outright majority in Parliament in 1962; Modi has had to depend on smaller parties in his alliance to retain his hold on power. Modi must be reeling from a sharp drop in his victory margin in his own constituency, Varanasi; it has decreased to 152,000 from 480,000 in 2019 whereas Modi’s bete noire, Rahul Gandhi, won Raebareli by a staggering 390,000 votes.
Modi, who reigned supreme with 303 seats in the previous Parliament, is now dependent on parties such as Nitish Kumar’s JD-U and Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP to form a government. He has had to lead an alliance of strange bedfellows. Both Kumar and Naidu were bitter critics of Modi. Kumar helped form the oppositional alliance, the INDIA bloc, before switching his allegiance to PM Modi. Naidu also closed ranks with the BJP in the run-up to the election. These politicians have been described as extremely ambitious and highly unpredictable, and whether Modi will be able to manage them and consolidate his grip on the NDA alliance remains to be seen. They will demand plum ministerial posts in return for their support. The TDP is said to be eyeing Transport and Health portfolios! That is the name of the game in coalition politics, where it is not uncommon for the tail to wag the dog, so to speak. These two political leaders are however not the only problem Modi will have to contend with. The next five years will feel like an eternity for PM Modi.
Nothing would have been more shocking for the BJP than its defeat in Uttar Pradesh’s Faizabad constituency, where the Ram Mandir has been built. Modi may have thought he would be able to win the Lok Sabha election hands down after the consecration of that temple, which became a centrepiece of the BJP’s election campaign. The BJP lost that seat to the Samajwadi Party! Modi must be disappointed that the Ram Mandir hype failed to trigger a massive wave of support for his party. This particular defeat signifies a massive setback for the BJP’s ethno-religious agenda.
Modi’s divisive election campaign failed to yield the desired result. The BJP’s failure to secure an outright majority could be attributed to a host of factors, some of them being the suppression of the Opposition, the arrogance of power, chronic unemployment, and the rising cost of living. The BJP also did not care to reimage itself in a positive light to attract the youth.
Modi will hereafter see the Congress-led INDIA bloc with 223 seats, in his rearview mirror. The Congress (99 seats) and its allies have eaten into the BJP support base considerably, but they have a long way to go before being able to capture power.
The bumpy ride ahead for the BJP-led coalition government to be formed may improve the INDIA bloc’s chances of bettering their electoral performance and turning the tables on the BJP and its allies in time to come. Modi will have a lot to worry about in his third term.
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