A new Constitution?

Friday 16th October, 2020

Some religious dignitaries have called upon the government to abandon its 20th Amendment (20A) project and introduce a new Constitution, instead. The present Constitution is seriously flawed; the 20A has stirred a controversy, and in its present form contains some questionable provisions. (We refrain from commenting on the observations and remedies prescribed in the Supreme Court determination, which has been leaked to the media, and wait until it is officially presented to Parliament to make known our views thereon.) The concerns of the prelates should be appreciated, but the promulgation of a new Constitution is beyond the realms of possibility, and the 19th Amendment (19A) has to be straightened up urgently.

The President must be able to hold the defence portfolio. The Constitution says, “The President shall be a member of the Cabinet of Ministers and shall be the Head of the Cabinet of Ministers”, but prevents him/her from being a minister! This contradiction has resulted from the emasculation of the executive presidency, under the yahapalana government to strengthen the position of the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Incumbent President Gotabaya Rajapaksa finds himself in a constitutional straitjacket. The main plank of his presidential election campaign was national security, which is also his long suit. He should be able to hold the defence portfolio, and 19A has to be amended for this purpose.

There are other flaws in 19A and the yahapalana leaders’ conduct aggravated and magnified them. The Constitutional Council (CC) was reduced to a mere appendage of the UNP-led government. When Pujith Jayasundera was appointed the IGP, we questioned the CC’s wisdom, arguing that SDIG S. M. Wickramasinghe was better suited for the job. Jayasundera has recently admitted before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry probing the Easter Sunday blasts that he was at his official residence, of all places, on the day of terrorist bombings although he had received intelligence about the impending attacks! The police under him did precious little to neutralise Zahran’s NTJ even after finding the main training facility of the terrorist outfit, in Puttalam. The independence of some civil society members in the CC was also in question; one of them has been receiving funds from some western powers including the US known for meddling with the internal affairs of this country. As for the vital appointments in the state sector, the government did as the CC said and the CC did as PM Wickremesinghe said. Wickremesinghe was the puppeteer, and the CC the puppet. But the proposed Parliamentary Council with the incumbent PM as the puppeteer is certainly not the answer.

The proponents of 20A argue that the people rejected 19A by defeating those who introduced it, at the last three elections. This argument is tenable. It can also be argued that people rejected the 18th Amendment (18A) by defeating those who had brought it in, at the presidential and parliamentary polls in 2015. Therefore, how can the incorporation into 20A provisions akin to those in 18A be justified?

The promulgation of a new Constitution is a will-o’-the-wisp. All attempts to repeal the 1978 Constitution have gone pear-shaped all these years mainly due to the issue of devolution of power. President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s draft Constitution fell through, in 2000, because she failed to secure the support of her rivals as well as some of her allies for what came to be dubbed the devolution package, which envisaged Regional Councils with more powers than the Provincial Councils (PCs). The yahapalana government also baulked at the question of devolution of power. Mountains, which had been in labour for about four years, finally delivered a stillborn mouse. The present dispensation consists of two schools of thought as regards devolution—one for the 13 Amendment, and the other against any form of devolution. The TNA and its foreign allies are demanding that more powers be devolved to the provinces; if their demand is granted there will be federalism in all but name.

The UNP, the SLFP/UPFA, the JVP and the TNA got together and postponed the PC polls indefinitely by enacting the Provincial Councils Elections (Amendment) Act of 2017 in the most deplorable manner and have thereby proved that the PCs are useless, albeit unwittingly. So, the incumbent government does not want to address the issue of devolution lest it should open up a Pandora’s Box of in the process although it pretends to be keen to write a new Constitution.

What the new government should have done was to rid the 19A of its flaws to give the President some constitutional leeway among other things. If it had taken that route, it may have been able to secure the passage of its constitutional amendment unanimously in Parliament, and concentrate on the economic front without shielding destroyers of forests, supporters of terror and other such political dregs in return for their votes in Parliament to maintain its two-thirds majority.