{"id":109026,"date":"2020-11-25T16:33:49","date_gmt":"2020-11-25T23:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=109026"},"modified":"2020-11-25T16:33:49","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T23:33:49","slug":"the-19th-amendment-get-over-it-already","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/11\/25\/the-19th-amendment-get-over-it-already\/","title":{"rendered":"The 19th Amendment: get over it already!"},"content":{"rendered":"

MALINDA SENEVIRATN\u200bE<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

\n\nThere are all kinds of yahapalanists. There are those who cannot be in denial simply because they were right in the middle of the yahapalana project or rather a project by that name (for good governance was certainly not their cup of tea as history showed and practice demonstrated). Then there are those who opted for a change of clothes. Name change, symbol change, address change etc., didn\u2019t make them unrecognizable. SJB and UNP, telephone and elephant, it\u2019s the same. All yahapalanists. The praise and blame accrue to one and all. Well, add to this the Yahapalana Fan Club made of sideline politicians who are double-headed and double-addressed, i.e. rights advocates and professionals.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now these worthies are big fans of the 19th Amendment. It was great, they say. And they add, \u2018the 20th is draconian and dictatorial; it rolled back the gains of the 19th and is even worse than what JR initially instituted in 1978.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where\u2019s the substantiation, though? Let\u2019s take a look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start with the brag. The brag of course had to do with the 18th. It also had to do with a peculiar political context where the champion and the intended beneficiary (Ranil Wickremesinghe) led a party that had minority representation in Parliament whereas the man whose powers were to be clipped, Maithripala Sirisena had just assumed office with a majority of the national vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 18th would be effectively repealed, they bragged. It was. The 19th would embody the Yahapalana promise(s). We would have accountability and transparency. Democracy would be enhanced. Good governance assured. Cabinet would be limited to 30 ministers. That was part of the brag. Seniority and meritocracy will mark appointments and promotions, they told us. We know how that fell by the wayside! The independence of the judiciary would be restored, they promised. Well, they made a mockery of the last by turning the Supreme Court into a political circus almost immediately after Sirisena was sworn in as President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s get to the process which includes the passage of the amendment. It was drafted. Nothing wrong with that. The Supreme Court was petitioned. Nothing wrong with that. The Supreme Court offered a determination. Essentially, important elements of the draft were shot down. Now what did the Yahapalanists do?  Did they follow yahapalana practice to the letter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, the objections were of an order that amending the document in ways that took these into consideration would have violated established parliamentary procedure. Typically, at the committee stage, only minor corrections are made. In other words, yahapalana theory would have required the yahapalanists to withdraw the amendment, get back to the drawing board and come up with a fresh draft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They didn\u2019t do that. They produced an amendment that was very different to what was tabled. That\u2019s giving a finger to established procedure. Not very yahapalana-like, was it? It only demonstrated (and rather early in the tenure of that regime) that \u2018yahapalanaya\u2019 was a lie. A hoax.  It was voted on in the dead of the night by clearly irresponsible and perhaps tired and sleepy MPs. Sarath Weerasekera voted against it. Only he. Kudos to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The substance. As mentioned it was about giving power to a man who, at that point, did not have the trust and confidence of the people. One must mention that Wickremesinghe\u2019s swearing-in was also a travesty of established procedure. The incumbent was sacked by way of the newly sworn in President signing a letter. Immediately, i.e. before the letter was delivered, President Sirisena appointed Ranil Wickremesinghe<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it was done. It was done in such a way that no one knew who really called the shots. Ball-passing between the Prime Minister and the President became a common occurrence. Finger-pointing was frequent. It was the easy out for a bunch of people lacking imagination, suffering innovation-lack and who were absolutely incompetent. Things were so confusing that it took the  Supreme Court to say what was what and that too only with respect to dissolution-power. This was when Sirisena joined forces with Mahinda Rajapaksa in late 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cabinet-size. This was a joke. On paper, we got the number 30. It was cheered. It was bragged about. On paper also was this neat device called \u2018National Government\u2019 which the amendment-drafters left undefined. \u2018In a National Government, cabinet size would be determined by Parliament. The matter finally hit the \u2018constitutional experts\u2019 in the yahapalana camp only when it could no longer be hidden. When Sirisena took the SLFP out of the coalition, Jayampathy Wickramaratne, the big boss behind the drafting, unashamedly said that since the SLMC (Sri Lanka Muslim Congress) was with the UNP, it remains a \u2018national government.\u2019 In other words, in his mind, a bloated cabinet was still constitutional! The yahapalana braggarts maintained a dead silence on the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much was made of the Constitutional Council (CC) which, the braggarts claimed, corrected the clauses of the 18th that crippled independent institutions. However, in reality, it was Ranil Wickremesinghe\u2019s whims and fancies that held the day. The composition of the CC, naturally and understandably tilted in favor of the regime. It was politician-heavy, which of course wasn\u2019t quite yahapanish. However even the non-politicians (non-political only because they weren\u2019t in Parliament, let\u2019s keep that in mind!) were partisan. Check the names of those \u2018civil society\u2019 people in the CC, the names of those appointed to various commissions and the appointments and promotions recommended by the commissions themselves. Friends and loyalists. That\u2019s it. Why else would some of these \u2018independents\u2019 resign the moment Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected President?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So now we have the 20th. Much of the confusion has been sorted out. Some of the better elements of the 19th have been retained. Are we ok now? Of course not. Cabinet size is still not cleared, although President Rajapaksa has kept it within the ceiling mentioned in the 19th. The CC just rubber-stamped Wickremesinghe\u2019s wishes. President Rajapaksa has far more sway and that\u2019s not necessarily a good thing.  Nevertheless, unlike the yahapalana braggarts, he has recommended that the six senior most judges be promoted to the Supreme Court. The yahapalana regime didn\u2019t do that, not even with the so-called democracy-safeguards instituted to ensure independence of the judiciary. If it was Sirisena, Wickremesinghe or even Mahinda Rajapaksa, this might not have been the case. That itself shows the flaw. It should not be dependent on whether or not the incumbent values meritocracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka has a long way to go to resolve a simple issue: what\u2019s best for us, a parliament-led system or an executive presidential system of governance? The proposed new constitution might sort this vexed issue out and hopefully in a way that effectively blocks the possibility of abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, the 19th is nothing like its champions make it out to be. A piece of trash that did away with another piece of trash (the 18th). Stank. Get over it already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

malindasenevi@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MALINDA SENEVIRATN\u200bE There are all kinds of yahapalanists. There are those who cannot be in denial simply because they were right in the middle of the yahapalana project or rather a project by that name (for good governance was certainly not their cup of tea as history showed and practice demonstrated). Then there are those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malinda-seneviratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109026","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=109026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}