Friday 31st May, 2024

President Ranil Wickremesinghe has asked why none of the presidential aspirants has pledged to abolish the executive presidency. Rhetorical as this question may sound, it may be said by way of an answer that the presidential hopefuls have, for once, refrained from making a promise they do not intend to fulfil in case of victory. All those who won the executive presidency by promising to abolish it reneged on their pledges. Circumstances compelled Presidents Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and Maithripala Sirisena to have some presidential powers reduced via the 17th and 19th Amendments to the Constitution. The 21st Amendment, which curtailed the executive powers of the President, came into being in 2022 due to a popular uprising.

Having savoured executive powers, albeit fortuitously, Wickremesinghe, who is the UNP’s presidential candidate, does not want to let go of them in case of winning the upcoming presidential election. Other contenders, Sajith Premadasa (SJB) and Anura Kumara Dissanayake (JVP/NPP), are overoptimistic and overconfident and therefore do not want to promise to abolish the executive presidency, which, they think, they will be able to secure with ease.

Addressing a group of young legal professionals in Colombo on Tuesday, President Wickremesinghe said the executive presidency had enabled the country to attain economic development, end the war and bring order out of chaos in 2022. He also stressed the need to make the executive President accountable to Parliament. If the executive presidency has stood the country in good stead, why should the powers vested therein be whittled down? Wouldn’t the enhancement of the powers of Parliament deprive the country of the benefits accruing from a strong presidency?

One may recall that but for President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s executive powers, the UNP and its allies would have derailed the country’s war in 2008. They sought to defeat the national budget by bribing several government MPs into defecting, but President Rajapaksa managed to scuttle their plan by leveraging his powerful position; his intervention helped make the defectors vote for the budget.

There have been situations where the Prime Minister/Parliament became more powerful than the President, but they plunged the country into chaos. The Executive President becomes a mere figurehead for all practical purposes when he or she happens to be at loggerheads with the Prime Minister elected from a different party. Perhaps, the framers of the current Constitution did not bargain for this kind of constitutional anomaly, which first came about in 1994 under the late President D. B. Wijetunga, with Chandrika Bandaranaike becoming the Prime Minister. Thankfully, they did not clash. Wijetunga was about to retire, and Chandrika won the presidency in quick succession.

Following the defeat of the SLFP-led People’s Alliance at the 2001 general election, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe (UNP) became more powerful than President Kumaratunga to all intents and purposes, and the latter dissolved Parliament in 2004, and an SLFP-led alliance (UPFA) formed a government. A similar situation prevailed under the Yahapalana government with Prime Minister Wickremesinghe undermining President Maithripala Sirisena, who sought to sack the former in 2018 but in vain. That government became dysfunctional and national security was compromised, so much so that the country experienced a devastating terrorist attack in 2019. At present, President Wickremesinghe, whose party has only a single parliamentary seat, is free from such trouble because the SLPP is too weak to take him on, and he can dissolve Parliament anytime.

The possibility of the next President losing control over Parliament cannot be ruled out though usually a newly-elected President’s party stands a better chance of winning a subsequent general election. The upcoming presidential election is expected to be closely contested, and one need not be surprised even if the winner fails to poll 50% of the total number of valid votes. His party may not be able to win enough seats at the next parliamentary election to form a stable government. He will not be able to dissolve Parliament immediately owing to the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, and the country will face political instability. One can only hope that what is feared will not come to pass.