{"id":70690,"date":"2017-10-15T13:27:57","date_gmt":"2017-10-15T20:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=70690"},"modified":"2017-10-15T13:27:57","modified_gmt":"2017-10-15T20:27:57","slug":"proposed-new-constitution-and-diabolical-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/10\/15\/proposed-new-constitution-and-diabolical-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"Proposed new constitution and diabolical lies"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>A.B. DODANWELA\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span class=\"article_date\">October 15, 2017, 9:05 pm<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.island.lk\/modules\/modPublication\/article_title_images\/1733731018proposed.jpg\" alt=\"article_image\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The government and the foreign funded NGOs and some individuals backing moves to introduce a new constitution, maintain that the voters at the last presidential and parliamentary elections gave the government a mandate for this exercise. They propagate this lie in a bid to legitimise their project, whereas the truth is otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>The citizens of this country have not given a mandate to the present government to introduce a new constitution.<\/p>\n<p>At the last Presidential election, the Presidential candidate Maithripala Sirisena gave an undertaking to abolish the executive presidency and bring about amendments to the Constitution so as to usher in good governance in view of rampant human rights violations, breakdown of the rule of law, abuse of power, allegation of misuse of state funds, and nepotism and corruption during the previous regime. The people, elected the present government to bring about such changes as are necessary to restore democracy. A pledge to introduce a new constitution was not in Sirisena\u2019s election manifesto.<\/p>\n<p>However, at the parliamentary elections in August 2015, the UNP said in its manifesto that it would introduce a new constitution. If the UNP had been elected to office with a clear majority there would have been no question about introducing a new constitution, but it obtained only 107 seats in a 225-member Parliament. The election results were a clear rejection of the UNP policies let alone constitution making. In spite of these irrefutable facts Dr. Upul Abeyratne, a member of the Constitutional Committee, in a television debate recently claimed that the electorate had given a mandate for a new constitution. This is pure fabrication.<\/p>\n<p>The real reason for introducing a new constitution is to comply with a secretly negotiated undertaking the UNP gave the TNA etc, at the last presidential and general elections, to get their support to secure victory.<\/p>\n<p>Though the government maintains that the unitary character of the state will be preserved, with the devolution of powers, envisaged by the constitutional committee, will make Sri Lanka a de facto federal state in all but name as all ingredients of a federal state are present in the constitutional proposals.<\/p>\n<p>It is sad that the sovereignty of the people has been undermined by the government to please the separatist elements and the so-called \u2018international community.<\/p>\n<p>A.B. DODANWELA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A.B. DODANWELA\u00a0Courtesy The Island October 15, 2017, 9:05 pm The government and the foreign funded NGOs and some individuals backing moves to introduce a new constitution, maintain that the voters at the last presidential and parliamentary elections gave the government a mandate for this exercise. They propagate this lie in a bid to legitimise their [&hellip;]<\/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-70690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70690","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=70690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}