President emerges stronger?

Wednesday 22nd February, 2023

The current Parliament has completed two and a half years of its term, and President Ranil Wickremesinghe is now in a position to dissolve it at a time of his choosing. The Opposition has already asked him to do so on the grounds that the government is without any legitimacy and therefore has to seek a fresh mandate from the people. Angered by the government’s efforts to postpone the local council polls, the Opposition parties are bound to ratchet up pressure on the President to end the term of Parliament and cause a general election to be held so that the people will be able to endorse or reject the government’s departure from what is stated in its election manifestos. But that is a tall order, given the SLPP-UNP alliance’s fear of elections.

Ironically, a person who lost his seat at the last general election has become the President and is now in a position to dissolve Parliament!

Those who cherish parliamentary democracy and the doctrine of the separation of powers have not taken kindly to the President’s power to dissolve Parliament before the expiration of its full term. Dr Colvin R. de Silva, an ardent opponent of the executive presidency, famously described the system of government introduced by the 1978 Constitution as a constitutional presidential dictatorship dressed in the raiment of a parliamentary democracy. He was spot on. But in 1994, for the first time, the legislature became superordinate with the UNP losing control of Parliament, and the Prime Minister being elected from the SLFP-led People’s Alliance, but PM Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and President D. B. Wijetunga got on well before the former secured the presidency a few months later. But from 2001 and 2004, President Kumaratunga and Parliament controlled by the UNP were at loggerheads. Kumaratunga chose to cut the Gordian Knot in the end; she sacked the UNP government in 2004 and called a general election. President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe fell out in 2018, and a clash between them plunged the country into chaos so much so that national security was neglected, and the Easter Sunday terror attacks occurred in 2019.

The legislature should not be subordinated to the Executive, and ideally the two branches of government must work together in case of the President and the Prime Minister being elected from two different parties. But in this country, such an arrangement is only wishful thinking. Most Presidents have misused their power to dissolve Parliament for political expediency. But in 2004, that power arguably stood the country in good stead for once. President Kumaratunga dissolved Parliament on the grounds that the UNP government had compromised national security in the name of a flawed truce; the LTTE had used the Norwegian-crafted ceasefire to fortify its camps around the Palaly airport and the Trincomalee harbour and positioned its heavy guns there with a view to mounting attacks on those targets simultaneously and cutting of military supplies to the North. When hostilities resumed, the LTTE attacked the port and the airstrip, but could not achieve its goal as the military had taken precautions. If the UNF government had lasted longer, it would have been a different story. It was wrong for President Sirisena to try to sack the UNF government in 2018, but with hindsight, one may argue that if there had occurred a change of government at that time, the warnings of the Easter Sunday attacks would not have gone unheeded.

It is being argued in some quarters that President Wickremesinghe can now leverage his power to dissolve Parliament to bargain with the SLPP from a position of strength and liberate himself from the clutches of the SLPP. Wickremesinghe is beholden to the Rajapaksa family for his election as President, and dependent on the SLPP for parliamentary support. In fact, he is a big fish in the Rajapaksas’ pond. His ability to dissolve Parliament will be a burr under the saddle of the SLPP, which however is not in danger of having to contest a general election any time soon, for the UNP, too, is scared of facing any electoral contest. It will be plain political hara-kiri for President Wickremesinghe to dissolve Parliament at this juncture although his relations with the Rajapaksa camp are said to be turning sour. The possibility of the current dispensation becoming as dysfunctional as the Yahapalana administration with the President and the government parliamentary group pulling in different directions and causing political instability cannot be ruled out—absit omen!