{"id":69332,"date":"2017-08-31T14:21:08","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T21:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=69332"},"modified":"2017-08-31T14:21:08","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T21:21:08","slug":"presidents-dilemma-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/08\/31\/presidents-dilemma-2\/","title":{"rendered":"President\u2019s dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editorial\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

August 31, 2017, 12:00 pm<\/span>
\nPresident Maithripala Sirisena has told media heads and editors at a recent meeting in Colombo that he will complete his full term come hell or high water. He may be able to retain the presidency, but what guarantee is there that there won\u2019t be any change in the composition of Parliament. Nothing is so certain as the unexpected in politics. What befell the Kumaratunga government in 2001 is a case in point. President Chandrika Kumaratunga lost her parliamentary majority due to mass crossovers and her government fell a few months later. Whoever would have thought the Rajapaksa government would crash in 2015.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, President Sirisena has, in answer to a question from a journalist about a report that the UNP is mulling over quitting the ruling coalition next year, said he will keep the government going with the help of those who are willing to join it. Is he really equal to that task? He is heavily dependent on the UNP for his political survival though he leads the SLFP. The forces that rallied behind him to make his victory possible at the 2015 presidential election did not do so out of any love for him. They expected him to help topple the Rajapaksa regime, act as a figurehead and then fade away after completing his first term. But, he has become assertive and their plan has gone awry.<\/p>\n

The UNP, however, took precautions, curtailed President Sirisena\u2019s powers and, thereby succeeded in putting him in a constitutional straitjacket through the 19th Amendment, which, among other things, did away with his power to dissolve parliament prematurely.<\/p>\n

Ranasinghe Premadasa, while he was the Prime Minister of the JRJ government, once, lamented that a peon had more powers than he. However, when the Prime Minister and the President happen to represent two different parties, the former becomes stronger than the latter to all intents and purposes as we saw from 2001 to 2004 unless, of course, they form a joint administration.<\/p>\n

If the UNP breaks ranks and President Sirisena loses control over Parliament as a result, he will find himself in the same predicament as Kumaratunga, who had her opponents undermining her power between 2001 and 2004. President Sirisena\u2019s position is more vulnerable in that the UPFA parliamentary group, which consists of 95 MPs, is divided. The Joint Opposition (J0) led by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has about 50 UPFA MPs within its ranks. The UNP has 107 seats and needs only six more MPs to muster a working majority in Parliament without being dependent on the SLFP. UNP ministers and their SLFP counterparts are at daggers drawn; there have been instances where some irate UNPers even asked the SLFP ministers to leave the government.<\/p>\n

The main enemy of the JO, mostly consisting of SLFP dissidents, is not the UNP but President Sirisena. It is highly unlikely that it will throw a lifeline to the President if the UNP ditches him. The JO members may let the President stew in his own juice in such an eventuality so as to exploit his plight to regain control of the SLFP.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, it is advantageous for the UNP to face an election while the SLFP is divided. However, the UNP will have to win back its resentful supporters who are fed up with its honeymoon with the SLFP if it is not to suffer an electoral setback. Therefore, it may be compelled to pull out of the yahapalana coalition and consolidate its power in Parliament in time for the next presidential election which it won\u2019t be able to avoid again.<\/p>\n

This is the harsh political reality President Sirisena should not lose sight of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorial\u00a0Courtesy The Island August 31, 2017, 12:00 pm President Maithripala Sirisena has told media heads and editors at a recent meeting in Colombo that he will complete his full term come hell or high water. He may be able to retain the presidency, but what guarantee is there that there won\u2019t be any change in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69332","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=69332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}