Sacking PM and other matters

Tuesday 13th, September, 2022

Sri Lanka’s Constitution is like a poor man’s innerwear; it is full of holes. There has emerged so much opposition to the executive presidency mainly because the Constitution allows the President to push the envelope, undermining the other branches of government and suppressing democracy. The incumbent government has undertaken to introduce the 22nd constitutional Amendment, which, it says, will help curtail some excessive powers of the President and strengthen the legislature and other state institutions. But legal experts have pointed out that the President’s power to remove the Prime Minister arbitrarily will remain intact. Dr. Jayampahty Wickramaratne, PC, has, in his article published on this page today, put forth a cogent argument for stripping the presidency of this draconian power.

One cannot but agree that the President’s power to sack the Prime Minister according to his or her whims and fancies is antithetical to the people’s franchise and democracy. If the constitutional provision that enables the President to do so is retained it will have the same effect as the Sword of Damocles on the Prime Minister. There is also the danger of the President plunging the country into chaos by recklessly exercising that power, as Dr. Wickramaratne has pointed out, citing, as an example, President Maithripala Sirisena’s abortive attempt to sack Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in 2018.

The Prime Minister, however, cannot frustrate an attempt by the President to sack him or her when the latter happens to be the leader of the ruling party. A President who controls the party in power can leverage his or her position to prevent the government MPs from rallying behind the Prime Minister.

There are also other serious constitutional flaws where the powers of the President and the Prime Minister are concerned. When the President and the PM happen to represent two different political parties, the latter becomes more powerful than the former, to all intents and purposes. Consensual governance being something alien to this country, they also tend to clash bringing the legislature and the executive on a collision course, as we saw between 2001 and 2004, when President Chandrika Kumaratunga (SLFP) and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe (UNP) were at each other’s jugular. A similar situation arose when the political marriage of convenience between President Sirisena’s SLFP and the UNP came to an end in 2018; Sirisena tried to sack Wickremesinghe (UNP), albeit without success. The government became so dysfunctional due to their clashes that national security was neglected, and about 270 precious lives were lost in terrorist attacks the following year.

Meanwhile, what we witnessed during the Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency has brought to light another constitutional flaw. The presidential system ceases to work properly even in a situation where the President represents the party with a parliamentary majority but is not its leader. It is not only his or her executive powers that make the President strong; his or her strength is also derived from his or her ability to control the ruling party. This is why the constitutions of the UNP and the SLFP provide for the appointment of the person who secures the executive presidency as the party leader. This arrangement enabled Presidents J.R. Jayewardene, Ranasinghe Premadasa, D. B. Wijetunga, Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa to control their parties. Sirisena, who became the President with the help of the UNP wrested control of the SLFP in 2015. Gotabaya’s failure as the President was also due to the fact that he was not the leader of the SLPP; the government parliamentary group therefore did not fully cooperate with him, and Basil Rajapaksa, who controls the party, became more powerful than the President. Not even the then Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa dared antagonise Basil. At present, President Wickremesinghe may be constitutionally empowered to sack Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, but both of them are at the mercy of the SLPP, which is under Basil’s thumb. The current PM will be safe as long as he is in the good books of Basil.

Similarly, the Constitution has to be amended to prevent political party leaders from abusing the National List (NL) to appoint as MPs persons other than those whose names are presented to the people as NL candidates before an election. They make a mockery of the people’s franchise when they bring in defeated candidates as NL MPs, and engineer NL vacancies to appoint persons of their choice to Parliament. The constitutional provision that enables unsuccessful candidates to claw their way into Parliament and go on to secure ministerial positions, the premiership and even the presidency has to be abolished forthwith.