{"id":47438,"date":"2015-08-29T14:11:19","date_gmt":"2015-08-29T21:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=47438"},"modified":"2015-08-29T14:11:19","modified_gmt":"2015-08-29T21:11:19","slug":"prime-ministerial-headaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/08\/29\/prime-ministerial-headaches\/","title":{"rendered":"Prime Ministerial Headaches"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
\u00a0This should have been easy.\u00a0 It has been easy all these years.\u00a0 Hold election, release results, count numbers, pick the leader of the party which returned the most candidates to Parliament and appoint him\/her as Prime Minister.\u00a0 Then Parliament convenes, the Speaker is elected, the Leader of the Opposition is selected and Cabinet is appointed.\u00a0 Seems pretty straightforward.<\/div>\n
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It seems easy because not only does the United National Front for Good Governance (UNFGG) have 106 seats, the coalition\u2019s main ally, Maithripala Sirisena has effectively looted the runner-up, the United People\u2019s Freedom Party (UPFA), dragging its main constituent the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) out AND placing in the UPFA\u2019s driving seat, i.e. the post of General Secretary, a loyalist.\u00a0 Adding insult to injury, violating all norms of decency and giving the proverbial finger to the spirit of democracy, Sirisena smuggled into Parliament 7 loyalists who had been rejected at the polls.\u00a0 Those 7 owe him.\u00a0 Add 7 to 106 and you get 113.\u00a0That\u2019s an absolute majority.<\/div>\n
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There\u2019s a price to pay though, apparently. \u00a0 The President wants his party to be part of the Government; hence all this talk of a \u2018National Government\u2019.\u00a0 Negotiations between the UNP and the SLFP to divide the ministerial cake, and machinations to secure preferred portfolios\u00a0 to divide the goodies are natural outcomes.<\/div>\n
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It cannot be easy for Ranil Wickremesinghe, Leader of the UNP.\u00a0 If we didn\u2019t have the 19th Amendment there\u2019d be a long line of MPs outside the PM\u2019s door virtually begging for party membership and a portfolio.\u00a0 But Article 46 (1) of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution limits the Cabinet to 30 members and so \u00a0 Wickremesinghe cannot (unlike Mahinda Rajapaksa) wave portfolio carrots at the Opposition.<\/div>\n
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A minority government is clearly an option but he would have to count on the JVP or the TNA to remain neutral in the event of a No-Confidence Motion.\u00a0 It\u2019s a risk.<\/div>\n
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As big a risk is what\u2019s currently under discussion. The term \u2018national\u2019 is being used too easily.\u00a0 Politicians can use any word or term to describe even the polar opposite of its meaning.\u00a0 We saw what J.R. Jayewardene\u2019s \u2018Dharmista Samaajaya\u2019 was all about.\u00a0 It\u2019s English version was \u2018A just and free society\u2019.\u00a0 We saw that \u2018justice\u2019 and we experienced that \u2018freedom\u2019.\u00a0 The current avatar<\/i> of that is yahapaalanaya.<\/i>\u00a0 The first signs are not hopeful.\u00a0 But just so people know what\u2019s what, a dictionary definition might help.<\/div>\n
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NATIONAL: na\u00b7tion\u00b7al.\u00a0 \u02c8naSH(\u0259)n(\u0259)l. Adjective.\u00a0 Of or relating to a nation; common to or characteristic of a whole nation. Example: This policy may have been in the national interest.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Now consider the word\/term \u2018coalition\u2019 and things become more clear:<\/div>\n
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COALITION: co\u00b7a\u00b7li\u00b7tion.\u00a0 k\u014d\u0259\u02c8liSH(\u0259)n. Noun. An alliance for combined action, especially a temporary alliance of political parties forming a government. Example: A coalition of conservatives and disaffected democrats\u201d.<\/div>\n
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It looks like the compilers of this dictionary were looking at Sri Lanka\u2019s current political situation!<\/div>\n
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These distinctions are immaterial as far as constitutional article and its interpretation are concerned.\u00a0 Let\u2019s look at what the 19th Amendment says about \u2018national\u2019.<\/div>\n
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There is ambiguity in Article 46 (4) and 46 (5) of the 19th Amendment.\u00a0 In a situation where no single party obtains an absolute majority there\u2019s provision for a \u2018National Government\u2019 [46(4)], with \u2018National\u2019 defined in 46(5) as \u2018A Government formed by the party that obtains the highest number of seats together with other<\/b>recognized political parties or independent groups (emphasis mine).\u2019\u00a0 The interjection of the word \u2018all\u2019 or else \u2018any\u2019 before \u2018other\u2019 would have resolved the issue. As it stands the courts may have to interpret whether a UNP-SLFP affair is legitimate or whether it should be a grand orgy of the political.\u00a0 Speaking of courts, we have to say that the President has demonstrated that he\u2019s no different from his predecessors.\u00a0 Read, \u2018he can sway\u2019.<\/div>\n
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Even if that issue is resolved there\u2019s the inherent problem of \u2018living together\u2019 with people who have sorry track records as ministers and those who have been rejected by the electorate, not to mention the trust-deficit of those who don\u2019t give a hoot to things like \u2018mandates\u2019.\u00a0 Presidential machinations have not helped, this must also be noted.<\/div>\n
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Ranil Wickremesinghe obviously believes that this coalition\/national government is best under the circumstances.\u00a0 If his conclusions are drawn from promises made in the run up to the Presidential Election, there\u2019s something to applaud there.\u00a0 It might imply that he is serious about securing the numbers necessary for reforms as envisaged in the now dusty 20th Amendment, a Code of Conduct for Parliamentarians and the Right to Information Act in the main.\u00a0 If these can be done in the honeymoon period of this strange marriage, then even if it ends on the rocks, the people would have benefitted.<\/div>\n
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There are many, however, who can pull the rug from under his feet.\u00a0 He knows what Chandrika Kumaratunga did to him in late 2003.\u00a0 He knows there\u2019s no love lost between the UNP and the SLFP.\u00a0 He knows all about political machinations to retain power.\u00a0 He knows that his own party\u2019s human resources are pretty thin. He knows that there are sections of the Opposition that will not suffer in silence the errors of his Ministers, especially in dealing with the Eelam lobby or those that feed Eelamist projects knowingly or unknowingly.<\/div>\n
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He has \u2018top men\u2019 who have dubious track records, some as ministers (in the last 8 months) and some in the party who did nothing during those long years in the Opposition but emerged just as the tide turned. He has good men of integrity that he brought in through the National List in 2010 who have not only served him well but have won the approval of the people at the polls.\u00a0 So there are those who will strengthen him and others who will drag him down.\u00a0 And then he has to deal with the Mother of All Enemies:\u00a0 Self.<\/div>\n
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He needs no more proof that Maithripala Sirisena is a shrewd politician who will use the still considerable powers of his office to achieve his objectives (he thinks nothing of dumping mandates in trash cans).\u00a0 At the right time.<\/div>\n
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It is not easy for Wickremesinghe.\u00a0 But for better or worse, the majority of the people have placed trust in him.\u00a0 He has to be clear.\u00a0 Forthright.\u00a0 Courageous. And look over his shoulder from time to time.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE \u00a0This should have been easy.\u00a0 It has been easy all these years.\u00a0 Hold election, release results, count numbers, pick the leader of the party which returned the most candidates to Parliament and appoint him\/her as Prime Minister.\u00a0 Then Parliament convenes, the Speaker is elected, the Leader of the Opposition is selected and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47438","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\/47438","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=47438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}