Machiavellianism

Wednesday 9th September, 2020

The government is all out to steamroller its 20th Amendment (20A) through. The JVP has fired a shot across the SLPP’s bow. It has told the media that it will go flat out to foil the government’s move to secure the passage of the proposed amendment. The SJB has threatened to move the Supreme Court against 20A. Among the SLPP leaders defending 20A, which seeks a reversion to status quo ante, are some grandees who claimed, during the J. R. Jayewardene and R. Premadasa governments that the overconcentration of power in the presidency was disastrous.

Former MP Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne, one of the architects of the 19th Amendment (19A), in an article we published yesterday pointed out that 20A affected people’s fundamental rights and, therefore, it had to be approved by the people at a referendum besides being passed with a two-thirds majority in Parliament.

Government apologists seem to think that the Attorney General (AG) can determine the constitutionality or otherwise of Bills to be presented to Parliament. They maintain that 20A does not require a referendum because the AG has said so. There have been instances where the AG got it all wrong as regards Bills and presidential orders and was left with egg on his face. When President Maithripala Sirisena ordered the dissolution of Parliament, in 2018, having failed to grab power, the then AG defended the presidential action before the Supreme Court, which, however, declared it unconstitutional. In 2017, Speaker Karu Jayasuriya informed Parliament that the AG had given the nod to changing the Provincial Council Elections (Amendment) Bill at the committee stage. That Bill was stuffed with sections sans judicial sanction to postpone the PC polls indefinitely. The AG obviously blundered and democracy suffered. Unfortunately, there is no constitutional provision for post-enactment judicial review of laws. The Court of Appeal, on Monday, allowed SLPP MP Premalal Jayasekera, sentenced to death, to attend Parliament, although the AG had informed the Prisons Chief that Jayasekera could not do so. The AG’s opinion on 20A, therefore, should not go unchallenged. Only the Supreme Court is empowered to interpret the Constitution.

Our position is that 19A should be changed instead of being abolished so that the country will benefit from the salutary features thereof. The President should be able to hold the Defence portfolio because he is responsible for national security. But the moves to reduce the powers of the Auditor General, replace the Constitutional Council with a Parliamentary Council and abolish the National Procurement Commission are deplorable. 20A also seeks to vest in the executive presidency too much of power, and the proposed constitutional provision for preventing people from filing fundamental right cases against presidential actions is nothing but draconian.

The SLPP worthies who are backing 20A are followers of Machiavelli, who encouraged leaders to act out of expediency rather than principle in furthering their interests and not to hesitate to renege on promises. The JVP has acted similarly as regards the Constitution. In the late 1980s, it destroyed many lives and state assets worth billions of rupees in a bid to scuttle the 13th Amendment (13A), which created the Provincial Council system. It unleashed mindless terror to topple two UNP governments during that period, albeit in vain, but the 20th Amendment it proposed, a few years ago, did not seek to abolish 13A. The UNP, which created the executive presidency, and its breakaway group now want this institution abolished as they have failed to win it for the last 26 years or so. It is a case of sour grapes. The leftists in the SLPP called the existing Constitution a curse when JRJ introduced it, due to excessive executive powers vested in the presidency, but, today, they are backing 20A.

The JVP has said Chandrika Kumaratunga, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena pledged to abolish the executive presidency before securing it but did not fulfil their promises. Sri Lanka’s post-Independence political history is replete with such broken promises and duplicity on the part of political leaders.

Article 9 of the Constitution says ‘the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka shall give to Buddhism the foremost place’. One cannot help wondering why no constitutional recognition has been given to the ism that the State, governments and political leaders actually give the foremost place, albeit unofficially—Machiavellianism, or a cynical tendency to advance one’s own interests by manipulating others.