{"id":101651,"date":"2020-04-27T15:21:08","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T22:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=101651"},"modified":"2020-04-27T15:21:08","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T22:21:08","slug":"the-democracy-of-recalling-the-dissolved-parliament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/04\/27\/the-democracy-of-recalling-the-dissolved-parliament\/","title":{"rendered":"The Democracy of Recalling the Dissolved Parliament!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Palitha Senanayake<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

By selecting the 20th<\/sup>\nJune 2020 as the date on which Parliamentary election could be held the\nElection Commission has pushed the country, constitutionally, in to a no- man\u2019s\nland.  The commission seemed certain that\nthe country would not be normal by end of next month, the month in which the\nelection should be held with no constitutional issue.  But then it seemed certain that things will\nbe normal by June, the month after.  The\ncommission appears comfortable in forecasting what will happen in two months\nbut not what will happen next month.  Thus, we have a constitutional crisis on top\nof the Covid 19 crisis, courtesy the election commission.  In the end the Election commission seemed to\nhave made its point, \u2018Well, this is why we requested the President to seek\nSupreme Court opinion!\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Commissioner maintains that he\nprevailed over the pressure received to hold election as well as the pressure received\nto delay it. Well, the Commissioners job is not to give in to this political\ncamp or that but to hold free and fair elections when they are due.  However, the reason for this procrastination\nappears to be that it is not possible to have an election campaign to the\nheart\u2019s content of the candidates contesting in the prevailing pandemic\natmosphere. Here again the commissioners primary concern is the democratic\nrights of the people over and above those of the candidates. Alright, the\npeople have the right to get to know the candidates but this may not necessarily\nbe done in the way that we have been used to all this while. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The election campaigning ways that\ncontinued throughout in this country was first introduced in 1947 when the\nliteracy level of the people was only 6% of the population. It is said that the\nsymbols were first introduced and displayed prominently because the majority\ncould not read. Today the literacy level is  \n90 + % and that may require a differ campaigning strategy. In 1947\npublic support was portrayed through community leaders, with limited political\nacumen,  and intoxicant was the main\nmethod of obtaining this support, but today even though some social riffraff\nwould look for \u2018free drinks\u2019 during the time of an election campaign, their\nsupport may not have a positive effect. \nOn the other hand today the level of communication has reached new\nheights with television, internet and social media.  Thus, there are better and more effective\nways of getting at a more educated polity and hence the strategies have to\nfollow suit.  In any case we have to come\nout of this culture of offering a bottle of liquor and a meal to attend a\npolitical meeting with a free bus ride and also of holding meetings that phew\nvenom with no substance. Therefore let this dark cloud of Covid 19 have a\nsilver lining as well.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There however is another political aspect\nto this procastination in holding elections and that is, some politicians expect\nthat the pressure of delay in elections will render the country without a\nParliament for more than three months prompting the President to reconvene the\ndissolved Parliament. The fact that the Parliament was dissolved 6 months early\non Presidential proclamation has spawned a score to be settled  among these outgoing parliamentarians; the\nlast straw of hanging in power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who subscribe to this school of\nthought should realize that the world and the society will never be the same in\npost covid 19; at least for some time. The WHO has expressed optimism that a\ncure may be found towards September but that will take some more time to reach formal\ncommercial levels of production. In such a light is Sri Lanka going to postpone\nelections indefinitely until this pandemic is brought under total control? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The life of the Parliament, by lapse of\ntime or by proclamation, is constitutionally over and hence there isn\u2019t a\nchance of reviving it. The country has to go forward and not backwards and\nhence the need of the hour is to elect the new Parliament rather than to resort\nto political gimmicks to recall a dead body to life. The last Parliament,\nthough legally cremated on the 2nd<\/sup> march 2020 was dead in its moral\nand ethical right to continue to be the legislator in February 2018 when the\npeople expressed an overwhelming lack of support for same at the Pradeshiya\nSabha elections. That was the day the voters of this country gave a resounding\ndefeat to the incumbent and brought a relatively unknown set of people with a\ncompletely new political party; something that has never happened in the\npolitical history of this country.  The\nmajority overwhelmingly voted Podu Jana Peramuna, neither because they were\nwell educated on their policies nor on how they would govern once in power, but\nbecause they were so disillusioned with the policies of the Government that was\nin power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, that was the only chance the\npeople received to concur with the policies of the government that was elected\nin January 2015, promising to restore democracy!    It is\nindeed unfortunate that the Judiciary of the country looked only in to the\nlegal aspect of the life of the Parliament, when it restored it in power in November\n2018, glossing over the moral and ethical aspects of the same. And now with a\nnew President in power, the old Parliament has no justification to exist except\nto sabotage the program of work of the new President that the majority approved.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The philosophers who gave thought to\ndemocracy ( demos<\/em>– common people, kratos<\/em>– strength) back  in 507 BC in Athens, strictly thought in terms\nof a government by the will of the majority on a day to day basis. However this\nbecame too cumbersome an affair in practice and hence it was later decided that\nthe people should elect representatives for a stipulated period to govern the\ncountry for them and \u2018 in keeping with their aspirations\u2019. In this, it was not\nthe period for which representative was elected that mattered, but whether that\nrepresentative truly represented the wishes of the majority at all times. Thus,\nit was not acceptable (and was not democratic) for the elected representative to\nact as he\/ she pleased during the time stipulated, ignoring the wishes of the\nmajority. Therefore, did the previous legislator had a democratic right to\ncontinue as the legislator after it received such a resounding lack of support\nfrom the majority of this country, merely because it received a mandate for 5\nyears in 2015?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, since the elected President has said\nthat he is not in favor of convening the old parliament under any circumstance,\nif the Supreme Court orders to reconvene the dissolved Parliament in response\nto the petition filed by M A Sumanthiran, that order will be made in defiance\nof the 69 million majority who voted to elect the new President. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

No man is good enough to govern\nanother man, except with that other\u2019s consent<\/em>–\nAbraham Lincoln. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Palitha Senanayake By selecting the 20th June 2020 as the date on which Parliamentary election could be held the Election Commission has pushed the country, constitutionally, in to a no- man\u2019s land.  The commission seemed certain that the country would not be normal by end of next month, the month in which the election should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}