Editorial
The 20th Amendment
There has been no credible explanation of why the government has remained as coy, as it remains to be to this day, about the authorship of the 20th Amendment. When first asked about it, Prof. GL Pieris, Chairman of the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and cabinet minister fended the question saying there were many contributors. He then attempted to close the matter saying the cabinet took “full responsibility” for it. We do not need a law professor and former vice-chancellor widely acclaimed as a legal pundit to say that. If the cabinet had passed it, and it had done so before Pieris spoke, it is quite obvious that the cabinet must accept responsibility and the matter needs no further elaboration. Now Minister Keheliya Rambukwella, the cabinet spokesman, has said (at last week’s cabinet news briefing) that the president had authorized it. Even a school kid studying basic civics knows that ever since the JRJ Constitution was enacted in 1978, the president is both Head of State and Head of Government and he presides over cabinet meetings. Thus he is part of the collective cabinet responsibility. Are we to understand from the latest contribution to the question that although Justice Minister Ali Sabry presented the draft amendment to cabinet, it was the president who gave it to him and presumably asked him to present it?
These maters, no doubt, will be canvassed in parliament when the already gazetted amendment is presented to it. Given the dust this matter has already raised, with criticism coming not only from the opposition but also from sections of the government and those who helped it to come to power, the country has been told that there will be some changes to the draft presented. What these are has not yet been clearly spelled out. They will presumably be introduced at the committee stage of proceedings in parliament. This is a practice that those who are now in power roundly condemned when used by their predecessors. We have heard a lot about various provisions being “smuggled in” during the committee stage discussion of bills before parliament denying those who may choose to mount challenges on the legality of legislation in the pipeline the opportunity of doing so. There can also be no proper study of what is being done if any government resorts to such questionable practices. The Constitution, after all, is the basic law of the land and it is incumbent on those governing the country to have the widest possible discussion on any proposed changes. Committee stage amendments just will not do.
All governments, even those with the necessary two thirds majority to make changes in laws at variance with the constitution, have refrained from making any law that would require a referendum. That is something that has been avoided like the plague. Certainly a referendum is something that costs the taxpayer much more than an arm and a leg and must not be lightly resorted to for reason of expense alone. But this is not why governments of all hues have done their damnedest to avoid them. Politicians in office do not wish to go before the people at any cost unless they are compelled to. We have only known one referendum, that of December 1982 when the J.R. Jayewardene government that had in 1977 won a massive mandate with a five sixths majority, wanted the people’s acquiescence to extend the tenure of then then parliament by six more years. We thus had the infamous lamp and pot game, widely condemned as rigged, that permitted Jayewardene who had a few weeks earlier won a presidential election to duck a parliamentary election. It is commonly accepted that his UNP would have been returned if he did go to to the polls, but not with its 1977 majority, especially with the proportional representation system of elections then in place.
When President Mahinda Rajapaksa wished to change the constitutional barrier placing a two term limit on the presidency in order to seek a third term in 2015, the supreme court did not hold that this required a referendum, in terms of the constitutional provision that matters affecting the franchise of the people must obtain the people’s consent at a referendum. Then Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake held that abolition of the term limit was an “enhancement” of the franchise rather than a diminishing. It may be argued that enhancing or diminishing would either way be a matter affecting the franchise. But that was not how the court, headed by a judge subsequently impeached by the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, saw it. The fact that Rajapaksa lost the 2015 election where he sought the third term, having abbreviated his previous term, is now all water under the bridge.
Government assurances that pluses like the Right to Information law enshrined in the 19th Amendment, which even the ranks of Tuscany must admit had many imperfections, have been widely welcomed. There is no doubt that the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government chose to include provisions like dual citizens not being eligible to run for public office clearly targeting the Rajapaksas was venal in intent. Coming from the UNP who anointed several persons who had opted for foreign citizenship as ambassadors to represent this country was rich, to say the least. There is no doubt that there are many flaws in the 20th Amendment that Mr. Sajith Premadasa has promised to scuttle having (together with Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe) scuttled the UNP. We are glad that eminent persons such as Prof. Savitri Goonesekera, in a contribution she had made to our newspaper today, has focused on some of the weakness in the draft 20A. Hopefully the government will accept democratic dissent in the right spirit rather that taking the easier route of having its way after allowing the opposition to have its say.
Saturday 8th June, 2024
It was with shock and dismay that we received the news about death threats to COPF (Committee on Public Finance) Chairman Dr. Harsha de Silva over the ongoing parliamentary probe into the on-arrival visa scam. Dr. de Silva yesterday told Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, in Parliament, that he was facing death threats and intimidation, and it was incumbent upon Parliament to ensure his safety. He stopped short of naming names, but revealed that some ruling party MPs were among those who had ganged up against him. The Speaker only said there had been no complaint, and he would look into the matter.
The SLPP-UNP government has been doing everything in its power to have all parliamentary committees under its thumb. The COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises), which once helped restore public faith in the legislature by exposing state sector corruption, has now become a mere appendage of the incumbent regime, thanks to the appointment of SLPP MP Rohitha Abeygunawardena as its Chairman. The SLPP-UNP combine also tried to oust COPF Chairman Dr. de Silva, but in vain. However, it knows more than one way to shoe a horse.
The COPF, under Dr. de Silva’s chairmanship, has been a thorn in the side of the government, which is struggling to cover up numerous corrupt deals. Dr. de Silva yesterday told Parliament that he found it extremely difficult to function as the COPF head due to severe resource constraints his committee was facing; he himself had to pay the salaries of some of his staff members besides burning the midnight oil.
The sheer workload he had to cope with as the COPF chief had taken its toll on his health, he said, informing the Speaker that he was at the end of his tether, and at times thought of resigning from the COPF. This is exactly what the government wants him to do; resource squeezes and threats are aimed at making him quit.
On 26 May, Dr. de Silva revealed, in an ‘X’ post, that the COPF had uncovered some vital information about the visa scam and it would reveal everything after its final meeting on the issue; the COPF was committed to exposing the truth behind the controversial tender, he added. In an editorial comment on 27 May, we warned him.
While thanking him for his bold stand, we pointed out that by making such a statement, he had thrown caution to the wind, and become a marked target, with the government making an all-out effort to delay the COPF investigation lest the truth should come out much to the detriment of its interests in this election year. Unfortunately, what was feared has come about; Dr. de Silva is complaining of death threats and government moves to strangulate the COPF financially to derail its investigations.
Dr. de Silva’s predicament exemplifies the fate that befalls the few good men and women in Parliament. It is hoped that all those who seek an end to the state sector corruption will rally behind Dr. de Silva, and bring pressure to bear on the government to ensure his safety. Let Dr. de Silva be urged to reveal the names of those who have issued threats, veiled or otherwise, to him and are trying to scuttle the COPF probes.
Friday 7th June, 2024
The SLPP-UNP government is going hell for leather to make bad laws as if there were no tomorrow. It is abusing its parliamentary majority, which has been retained with the help of some crossovers, for that purpose. The Opposition, the media and trade unions are up in arms, and understandably so. The incumbent regime is a dead man walking; it is so desperate that it is capable of anything. Hence the need for it to be restrained.
The Electricity (Amendment) Bill (EAB) plunged Parliament into turmoil yesterday, but the government secured its passage. The Supreme Court (SC) determined the entire EAB inconsistent with the Constitution and recommended changes thereto. After unveiling the Bill, sometime ago, Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera hailed it as an excellent piece of legislation aimed at straightening up the power sector to serve the public interest better.
The SC determination left him with egg on his face. He reminded us of the proverbial curate who, while eating a stale egg, assured his host, a Bishop, that parts of it were excellent. Wijesekera’s egg, as it were, made Parliament stink yesterday, but he sought to please his masters by praising it as a silver bullet.
EAB should have been discarded and a new one drafted in consultation with all stakeholders. But the government is apparently driven by an ulterior motive; its aim is not to serve Sri Lanka’s interests but to look after those of some moneybags.
It is not uncommon for Bills to contain some flaws, which are rectified either before or during the committee stage. But there is something terribly wrong with draft Bills that are full of sections inconsistent with the Constitution. The drafters of EAB have demonstrated their sheer ignorance of the supreme law, and that they are not equal to the task of drafting Bills. If they had read the Constitution at least perfunctorily, they would not have drafted such a bad law.
Ignorant and incompetent, they do not deserve to be paid with public funds and must be sent back to law school. They must be summoned before Parliament and questioned on their serious lapses, which have caused public faith in the national legislature to diminish.
Curiously, the MPs who demand that judges, doctors, Central Bankers, and other public officials be summoned before Parliament have taken badly drafted Bills for granted. The power sector trade unions yesterday alleged that EAB was of Indian origin and geared towards furthering the interests of Adani Group at the expense of Sri Lanka.
Most critics of EAB are agreeable in principle to the need for power sector reforms; the Ceylon Electricity Board should be given a radical shake-up, and transformed into a modern organisation capable of providing a better service at a lower cost. They only asked the government to tread cautiously, consulting all stakeholders and taking action to ensure that the country’s interests prevailed over everything else. But the government was in a mighty hurry to steamroller the Bill through Parliament, making the Opposition ask whether it was doing so at the behest of some external forces involved in controversial power generation deals here.
What is passed by the current Parliament can be either amended or abolished by a future parliament in a constitutionally prescribed manner. But that does not mean that a government is free to pass bad laws, making the country enter into long-term agreements with powerful nations and their investors. It looks as if the SLPP-UNP regime did not care two hoots about the consequences of its actions.
Thursday 6th June, 2024
The outcome of India’s parliamentary election (2024) has led to a ‘perspective ambiguity’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi lost no time in declaring victory for the BJP-led NDA alliance, which secured 293 seats in the 543-member Parliament, but he must be a worried man. The BJP is short of 32 seats to form a government under its own steam; it has lost 63 seats or about 20% of its parliamentary strength. It had 303 seats in the previous Parliament, and that number has dropped to 240.
Modi has become the second Indian Prime Minister to win a third term. The first PM to do so was Jawaharlal Nehru. But Nehru won an outright majority in Parliament in 1962; Modi has had to depend on smaller parties in his alliance to retain his hold on power. Modi must be reeling from a sharp drop in his victory margin in his own constituency, Varanasi; it has decreased to 152,000 from 480,000 in 2019 whereas Modi’s bete noire, Rahul Gandhi, won Raebareli by a staggering 390,000 votes.
Modi, who reigned supreme with 303 seats in the previous Parliament, is now dependent on parties such as Nitish Kumar’s JD-U and Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP to form a government. He has had to lead an alliance of strange bedfellows. Both Kumar and Naidu were bitter critics of Modi. Kumar helped form the oppositional alliance, the INDIA bloc, before switching his allegiance to PM Modi. Naidu also closed ranks with the BJP in the run-up to the election. These politicians have been described as extremely ambitious and highly unpredictable, and whether Modi will be able to manage them and consolidate his grip on the NDA alliance remains to be seen. They will demand plum ministerial posts in return for their support. The TDP is said to be eyeing Transport and Health portfolios! That is the name of the game in coalition politics, where it is not uncommon for the tail to wag the dog, so to speak. These two political leaders are however not the only problem Modi will have to contend with. The next five years will feel like an eternity for PM Modi.
Nothing would have been more shocking for the BJP than its defeat in Uttar Pradesh’s Faizabad constituency, where the Ram Mandir has been built. Modi may have thought he would be able to win the Lok Sabha election hands down after the consecration of that temple, which became a centrepiece of the BJP’s election campaign. The BJP lost that seat to the Samajwadi Party! Modi must be disappointed that the Ram Mandir hype failed to trigger a massive wave of support for his party. This particular defeat signifies a massive setback for the BJP’s ethno-religious agenda.
Modi’s divisive election campaign failed to yield the desired result. The BJP’s failure to secure an outright majority could be attributed to a host of factors, some of them being the suppression of the Opposition, the arrogance of power, chronic unemployment, and the rising cost of living. The BJP also did not care to reimage itself in a positive light to attract the youth.
Modi will hereafter see the Congress-led INDIA bloc with 223 seats, in his rearview mirror. The Congress (99 seats) and its allies have eaten into the BJP support base considerably, but they have a long way to go before being able to capture power.
The bumpy ride ahead for the BJP-led coalition government to be formed may improve the INDIA bloc’s chances of bettering their electoral performance and turning the tables on the BJP and its allies in time to come. Modi will have a lot to worry about in his third term.
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