{"id":103116,"date":"2020-06-02T16:09:40","date_gmt":"2020-06-02T23:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=103116"},"modified":"2020-06-02T16:09:40","modified_gmt":"2020-06-02T23:09:40","slug":"did-elections-commission-and-former-speaker-disregard-the-constitution-and-court-determinations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/06\/02\/did-elections-commission-and-former-speaker-disregard-the-constitution-and-court-determinations\/","title":{"rendered":"DID ELECTIONS COMMISSION AND FORMER SPEAKER DISREGARD THE CONSTITUTION AND COURT DETERMINATIONS?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By M D P DISSANAYAKE<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

19\nAMENDMENT:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nregard to the passage of the 19 Amendment  to the Constitution  of\nSri Lanka there are still key questions lingering.  The highest Court of\nthe Island in its determinations made it abundantly clear that the proposed\nchanges need to go before a Referendum.    But the government of\nRanil Wickremasinghe and TNA used back-door tactics to pass it on the floor of\nthe House.   The  former Speaker Mr Karu Jayasuriya gave his\nstamp of approval to make it into law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did\nspeaker ignore the  court determinations?  From where did he derive\nthe Constitutional power to do so?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

GENERAL\nELECTION:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ncurrent Election Commission has repeatedly failed to conduct the elections on\ntime.   For the past four and half years, they have been paid their\nsalaries and emoluments in full by the State.  They were employed for the\nsole and exclusive purpose of organising and  the conducting elections at\nthe appropriate time, as an Independent Institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nmost recent situations, the Elections Commission  on 19 March, 2020 \npostponed the elections date without announcing an alternative date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On\n3 April, the Election Commission took an unusual and unwarranted action of\nwriting to the President of Sri Lanka, recommending him to seek Supreme Court\nadvise  to seek an alternative date or MAKE ALTERNATIVE.  ( It is\npresumed  MAKE ALTERNATIVE\u201d meaning recalling the old Parliament!). \nAfter the EC was told by the Presidential Secretariat to do his job as per its\nmandate, few days later the EC, on its own, fixed 20 June as the new date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nis interesting that Mr Sumanthiran sought an injunction from the Supreme Court\nto issue a restraining order on the EC to refrain from issuing preferential\nnumbers for the candidates.   The Court disallowed the application\nand took the position that the EC is free to make a decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nEC on this matter had two options: 1. To take necessary steps to continue\nadministrative matters to conduct the election.  2. To delay taking any\nfurther actions until the final determinations by the Court.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nEC took the second option.  Did EC jump the Gun or shot itself in the\nfoot?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By M D P DISSANAYAKE 19 AMENDMENT: In regard to the passage of the 19 Amendment  to the Constitution  of Sri Lanka there are still key questions lingering.  The highest Court of the Island in its determinations made it abundantly clear that the proposed changes need to go before a Referendum.    But the government of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-m-d-p-dissanayake"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103116","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=103116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}