{"id":107794,"date":"2020-10-20T15:51:12","date_gmt":"2020-10-20T22:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=107794"},"modified":"2020-10-20T15:51:12","modified_gmt":"2020-10-20T22:51:12","slug":"lessons-from-our-history-and-post-independent-experiences-restoration-of-the-executive-authority-of-the-state-of-sri-lanka-is-most-welcome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/10\/20\/lessons-from-our-history-and-post-independent-experiences-restoration-of-the-executive-authority-of-the-state-of-sri-lanka-is-most-welcome\/","title":{"rendered":"LESSONS FROM OUR HISTORY AND POST INDEPENDENT EXPERIENCES – RESTORATION OF THE EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY OF THE STATE OF SRI LANKA IS MOST WELCOME"},"content":{"rendered":"

By M. Lakshhman Wickramasinghe<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

In\nthe public discussion about the merits and demerits of the 19th<\/sup> or\n20th<\/sup> Amendments the most vital national issue, it seems, has not\nreceived high recognition that it deserves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our\ntwo thousand plus years of history and the unfortunate developments that took place\nin the post- Independent era have  taught\nSri Lanka one vital lesson. And for a small country like Sri Lanka, placed as\nit is geographically, this is an absolute maxim.  That is that Sri Lanka\u2019s territorial\nintegrity, its degree of \u2018exercisable\u2019 sovereignty, and independence of action\nlocally and internationally can only protected and exercised when the executive\nauthority of the State of Sri Lankan  is\nstrong,  uncompromised and integrated. In\nlayman\u2019s terms the Country should have adequately strong executive power at the\nCentre and concomitantly a strong national security policy and structure.\nWithout a strong central executive authority there would certainly be no\neffective national security policy. In such a governance situation, it would be\nhard put to manage and control \nseparatists, terrorist, and extremist forces that could  be unleashed against the Country.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From\ntime immemorial this lesson has been taught to Sri  Lankans. King Pandhukabhaya  began the establishment of the Anuradhapura kingdom\nby  establishing  village boundaries over whole of Sri Lanka.\nBut 120 years after King Pandhukabhaya , there were two South Indian invasions\nwhich saw the occupation of the Country by two horse traders by the names of Sena\nand Guththika, for 12 years and by Elara, a navy captain for 44 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

King\nDutugemunu realized that the highly decentralized governance system (which\nexisted at the time he came to power), which was headed by a \u2018Parumaka\u2019,  (who \nwas  the Chief of a Cluster of  about 6 to 10 \nVillages that are fed by the cascade village tank   system) was completely inadequate to\nstrengthen the governance system for the protection of the Country and the\npeople. Hence, King Dutugemunu  was the first\nto establish a strong unitary system of centralized  governance in Sri Lanka.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nwere innumerable invasions from south India when the central governance\nstructures and the kings of Sri Lanka  had\nbecome weak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President  Jayawardene \nestablished a mixed system of a parliamentary and Presidential rule for\nthe Country and through the 1978 Constitution \nprovided adequate power to the Executive President of Sri Lanka. But the\nYahapalanaya\u2019s  19th<\/sup> Amendment  truncated the powers of the Executive President\nin its attempt to strengthen the hand  of\nthe Prime Minister. The attempt to create two centres of executive authority\nwithin the central governance structure weakened the central government of Sri\nLanka to the lowest levels since Independence. The Yahapalana experience of the\nlast five years was proof enough. The people of our country was at the\nreceiving-end of the impact of weakened central governance  during the 2019 Easter attacks partly due to\nthe erosion of executive authority in the Centre brought about through the 19th<\/sup>\nAmendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nshould be the duty of all Sri Lankans to support the restoration of the\nexecutive power of the Central Government of Sri Lanka as a counter- force  to Provincial Councils  and general propensity of the current  electoral system to spawn weak governments.\nThe 2019  Presidential election and the\n2020 Parliamentary election results were exceptional results due to the\ncharisma of an exceptional and trusted personality. Notwithstanding that result,\nthe Executive authority of the Central Government of Sri Lanka that was\ntruncated through the 19th <\/sup> Amendment\nshould be restored to the office of the President to ensure future peace and\nharmony in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By M. Lakshhman Wickramasinghe In the public discussion about the merits and demerits of the 19th or 20th Amendments the most vital national issue, it seems, has not received high recognition that it deserves. Our two thousand plus years of history and the unfortunate developments that took place in the post- Independent era have  taught […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-constitution","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107794","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=107794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}