IS 19A LEGALLY ENFORCEABLE?
Posted on December 2nd, 2018

By M D P DISSANAYAKE

The Ranil Wickremasinghe government did not follow the procedures laid down by the Supreme Court in regard to 19 Amendment to the Constitution. The inconsistent articles of the 19A were not placed before the public for a referendum as directed.

Instead, several changes were made at the Committee stages, to by-pass or ignore the Supreme Court determinations.

Jayampathy Wickremaratne’s  approach to by-pass the Supreme Court, is subtly analysed by Ken Adams, the U.S. contract drafting guru, seems to appreciate that there is a certain efficiency to using the concept conveyed by mutatis mutandis as a simple means of incorporating from one agreement into another provisions that require simple adjustments to make them specifically applicable in the new agreement”.  But  cunning Tamils persuaded UNP to include inconstant clauses, and subsequently approved by the Legislature. The Supreme Court is now in the box seat, inter-alia  it may find that contempt of court by the then Sri Lankan Government.

19A has made a mess just to satisfy Tamil Leaders.  It would not be a surprise if the Supreme Court determine that the violation of  its judgement  by the Legislature by making the changes  without a referendum  renders all such subsequent  changes null and void”.  That would make the Executive President somewhat more powerful.

2 Responses to “IS 19A LEGALLY ENFORCEABLE?”

  1. nilwala Says:

    Whatever “tricks” are tried by TNA/RW et al., it will require the Referendum by the People as determined earlier by the Supreme Court on the 19A, but was never carried out as RW knew the People would reject it, but thought he could get away with it using the Parliamentary Supremacy arguments. There is a good possibility of tampering via the electronic voting system which has been RW’s “baby” to find a way to fiddle with the numbers in order for him to deliver on promises made.
    There should be a complete rejection by the public of any attempt to bring in electronic voting at the next General and Presidential Elections. Down the road a paper trail of the votes should be installed to prevent any “hanky panky”.

  2. Cerberus Says:

    Agree with Nilwala. In the USA they have done Gerrymandering to create lines in a district in such a way that the ruling party gets an advantage at the following election. I think UNP was doing something like this using delimitation commission. The USA too brought in electronic voting machines which could be very easily adjusted to change the count using a smartphone. In the U.K. and also in Europe they use paper ballots which are foolproof. Our people are naive and they think a machine is foolproof. TNA is full of trickery. As pointed out by Mr. Dissanayake it was the TNA’s requests to modify the 19A to suit their agenda that messed it up. It is now such a mess I wonder if anyone can fix it. Ranil is so desperate if he comes into power even for one day he will try to pass all kinds of bills to protect himself and his corrupt party. If he could pull off the Central Bank bond scam which he did within a few days of being appointed as PM illegally in Jan 2015 in a minority party what else will he stoop to? It is shameful that he been using people like Amila Thero who appear to have been paid via companies on Ravi K’s orders thereby giving a bad name to Buddhist priests. Our people will have to be very vigilant and very careful. Just as the LTTE killed the UNP stalwarts such as Lalith, Gamini, and Kadiragamar I hope there will not be any attempts on the President or the PM during these crucial times. Our security forces will have to very vigilant and not take anything for granted. All our leaders will have to be very careful and not depend on the ‘Pirith Noola’ as they tend to do.

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