Sarath fires first salvo against plan to give police, land powers to provinces

By Saman Indrajith

President Ranil Wickremesinghe had no right to make use of his presidency to promise the full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, Parliament was told yesterday.

SLPP Colombo District MP Rear Admiral (Rtd.) Sarath Weerasekera said that the President had no mandate to promise the implementation of the 13th Amendment.

“He has not been given such a mandate. He has been made the President by the MPs who had been voted by 6.9 million people who are against the implementation of the 13th Amendment which leads to federalisation of this country. This 13th Amendment is not a solution for any problem that we had. It is something forced on us by India. There is no need of dividing this small country into nine separate administrative units,” Weerasekera said.

He said that hundreds of thousands of people have sacrificed their lives to maintain the unitary status of this country. “We cannot forget their sacrifice in the name of territorial integrity of the motherland. Those who had voted for the SLPP had that gratitude in their minds. They gave us two-thirds power, in Parliament, not to divide this country but to keep it a single nation. Now this latest threat to the unitary status has come up. It is envisaged to give police and land powers to the provinces. We would not let that happen,” Weerasekera said.