Monday 9th October, 2023

JVP Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake has said the government is planning to abolish the executive presidency because it is unable to face the next presidential election due in 2024. The term of the current Parliament ends in 2025, and the government is trying to go on savouring power by avoiding elections until such time, Dissanayake has said.

There is hardly anything that the beleaguered SLPP-UNP combine will not do to retain its hold on power. It has already caused the local government polls to be postponed indefinitely by refusing to allocate funds for the Election Commission on some flimsy pretext. The UNP has floated a story that it may not be possible to allocate funds even for the next presidential election. It has apparently sent a trial balloon, and its claim has fuelled speculation that the current regime is trying to remain in power indefinitely, without holding elections.

Given the government’s sheer desperation and readiness to do anything to stay in power, the JVP may be able to sell its aforesaid claim to the public, but the fact remains that scrapping the executive presidency is not a task that can be accomplished in a hurry. The only instance where a government made what could be considered a serious attempt to deep-six the current Constitution was in 2000, when the then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga presented a draft Constitution to Parliament.

Having secured a second presidential term, she wanted to return to Parliament as Prime Minister. Her plan went awry because the Opposition, especially the UNP, torpedoed her draft Constitution by preventing her from mustering a two-thirds majority. The incumbent regime, which is struggling to retain a working majority in Parliament, will find itself in a similar predicament in case it tries to abolish the executive presidency.

The 13th Amendment has made it even more difficult, both technically and politically, to abolish the executive presidency, which is seen in some quarters as the only countervailing force against the secessionist forces that are using the Provincial Council system to advance their separatist agenda. Interestingly, the JVP went all out to scuttle the implementation of the 13th Amendment in the late 1980s, and killed quite a few proponents of devolution.

It claimed that the Provincial Councils would lead to the division of the country, and therefore they had to be aborted. But it subsequently secured representation in the Provincial Councils, and has stopped demanding the abolition of the 13th Amendment, to all intents and purposes; some prominent members of the JVP-led NPP have even said they are for the full implementation of the 13th Amendment. The JVP, however, wants the executive presidency scrapped.

Curiously, government politicians who aggressively react to everything that the Opposition says, the way some stray dogs chase passing vehicles, have chosen to remain silent on the JVP leader’s claim at issue. Maybe they think it will help distract the attention of the public from real issues such as the high cost of living, corruption, nepotism, waste, and attacks on democracy.

The JVP will find itself in a bind if the government proposes to abolish the executive presidency. It will not be able to oppose a move to scrap an institution it has consistently condemned as evil for decades, and at the same time, it will not be able to support a political project aimed at furthering the interests of the government it is striving to bring down.

And while on the subject of the executive presidency, the government should be pressured to make public the draft Constitution prepared by a nine-member committee appointed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The committee members were Gamini Marapana P.C., Manohara de Silva P.C., Sanjeewa Jayawardena P.C., Samantha Ratwatte P.C., Prof. Naazima Kamardeen, Prof. A. Sarveswaran, Prof. Wasantha Seneviratne and Prof. G. H. Peiris. It is said that the committee was to hold a press briefing, but had to cancel it in view of last year’s political upheavals. The public has a right to know what the committee has proposed.