{"id":77964,"date":"2018-06-01T17:02:29","date_gmt":"2018-06-02T00:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=77964"},"modified":"2018-06-01T17:02:29","modified_gmt":"2018-06-02T00:02:29","slug":"is-the-20th-amendment-jvps-panic-reaction-to-gotabhayas-possible-entry-into-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/06\/01\/is-the-20th-amendment-jvps-panic-reaction-to-gotabhayas-possible-entry-into-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the 20th Amendment \u00a0JVP\u2019s Panic Reaction to Gotabhaya\u2019s possible entry into Politics\u00a0?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Charles.S.Perera<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Who wants the 20th<\/sup> Amendment, the people of Sri Lanka or the JVP ?<\/p>\n

The people of Sri Lanka do not want the 20th<\/sup> Amendment. They will instead accept an amendment to the 19A to give back to the President\u00a0 the Executive Powers\u00a0 taken away from him to enable him to dissolve the Parliament or sack the Prime Minister who the people of the country do not want any more.<\/p>\n

The 20th<\/sup> Amendment presented by the JVP is not only to remove the executive powers of the President , but also remove the elected President. Instead the 20th<\/sup> Amendment proposes the election of \u00a0a member of the Parliament\u00a0 as the President by the members of the Parliament. In other words under 20A the future President of Sri Lanka would not be a person elected by the people.<\/p>\n

Hence the 20 A is for the benefit of JVP which cannot win more than six parliamentary seats at an election. The JVP with this amendment expects to have a \u00a0President favourable to it elected in the Parliament , and\u00a0 a Prime Minister favourable to JVP prepare the list of Ministers of the Cabinet to be sent to the President\u00a0 for his pseudo approval? \u00a0The President will be under the control of\u00a0 the Cabinet of Ministers. The President of Sri Lanka elected under 20A will not represent the People, but the Parliament.\u00a0 What a prospect for the people of Sri Lanka ?<\/p>\n

But voila the JVP would\u00a0 at last hope to have Ministers in a future Government which would be\u00a0 not of the people, by the people and for the people !!!<\/p>\n

A pandit says\u00a0 the Executive President could be done away with as the Supreme Court can do the controls an Executive President is expected to do. What nonsense\u00a0 !! We saw how the Yahapalanaya managed to deviate from Supreme Court decisions to pass undesirable Parliamentary acts like the Local Government Election Bill with which the Country is now burdened with more than 8000 Provincial Council Members.<\/p>\n

We even saw the Supreme Court giving a wrong interpretation to a clause in the Constitution in the impeachment of the Chief Justice. The 19th<\/sup> Amendment should have been removed as it does not stand the challenges the people are faced with unable even to remove an unpopular Prime Minister or dissolve the Parliament. What is the guarantee that \u00a0ruling given by the\u00a0 Supreme Court is not\u00a0 carried out by \u00a0a\u00a0 cunning Prime Minister led by foreign anti Sri Lanka forces, \u00a0using other means to deviate from the SC ruling ?<\/p>\n

With the 19th<\/sup> Amendment to the Constitution Sri Lanka is already facing a dilemma with a powerless President unable to sack an unpopular\u00a0 Prime Minister or dissolve the Parliament. From the day one the Sirisena Ranil Government was instituted it had not been a voter friendly government.<\/p>\n

Further more the \u00a0Sirisena Ranil Government does not represent any more the people it elected, \u00a0and remains rejected by a massive vote of \u00a0the \u00a0people\u00a0 against the candidates of the UNP and SLFP at the \u00a0Local Government elections. But now \u00a0the Executive President whose powers have been reduced by the 19th<\/sup> Amendment is left with only a few of his former supporters in Parliament.<\/p>\n

The Yahapalanaya Government does not follow democratic principles making a mockery of\u00a0 democracy in the Sri Lanka Parliament. The Speaker of the Parliament today is an official unable to take independent democratic decisions on his own being led by the nose by his party leader the Prime Minister. \u00a0He allows\u00a0 seditious, and offensive speeches, subjecting selected members of parliament for vilification made regularly \u00a0by a Minister a former Army Commander who does not understand subtle diplomacy, or knows\u00a0 how to control his speeches and behave respectably within the Parliament.<\/p>\n

The speaker of the Parliament \u00a0refused to accept a group of more than 50 Parliamentarians as the opposition of the Parliament and instead appointed the leader of a group of Parliamentarians-TNA \u00a0representing only one Community of the Country with 16 members as the leader of the Opposition, because his party had signed an agreement with the government which had promised\u00a0 to make them the Parliamentary Opposition.<\/p>\n

In this situation\u00a0 is this the correct Parliament in which to introduce a very controversial inacceptable Constitutional Amendment like the 20A propose by JVP which does not even represent a respectable percentage of the people of the country ?<\/p>\n

In the meantime it becomes apparent that an invisible hand\u201d moves\u00a0 the\u00a0 unpopular pseudo Marxist JVP to propose a 20th<\/sup> Amendment which if passed even by accident would cause more trouble than the hastily adopted\u00a0 19 A. It is surprising the 20th<\/sup> Amenment comes with India proposing development of North and East and the unpopular Prime Minister Ranil W visiting the North and signs agreements promising plans for the development of the North and\u00a0 East.<\/p>\n

The American Ambassador states that USA will go hand in hand with Sri Lanka in its development projects. But USA has so far given nothing for the development of Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Why has India taken up the development of the village of Venerable Late Sobhitha Thero in Anuradhapura. Strange coincidences along\u00a0 side JVP\u2019s move to present the 20th<\/sup> Amendment to the constitution. At a recent Hiru TV program Salakuna JVP leader admits that the 20 Amendment was written by people he is not ready to name.<\/p>\n

JVP went with capitalist UNP to denounce the Rajapakses and make them unpopular,\u00a0 hoping that people will rally round them as a people friendly political\u00a0 party. But \u00a0in the meantime the \u00a0name of another Rajapakse is being brandished \u00a0as a \u00a0possible Presidential Candidate and a popular one at that, \u00a0there is therefore a panic reaction \u00a0within the Yahapalanaya Government and those of its supporters.<\/p>\n

It is in that situation that\u00a0 the JVP \u00a0has been suggested by the invisible\u00a0 hands moving \u201d behind it \u00a0to prepare a plan instead of removing the executive powers of the President, \u00a0to remove the President himself from being elected by the people, so that the chances of the other Rajapake to be elected at a future Presidential election becomes nul and void.<\/p>\n

That is certainly \u00a0why the JVP now presents \u00a0the 20th<\/sup> Amendment removing the constitutional right\u00a0 of the people to elect a President by their vote, but instead elect a President in the Parliament from amoung its members.<\/p>\n

Hence as the other Rajapakse is known to \u00a0be able to do the right thing by the people and fearless to ask interfering\u00a0 foreign enemies to roll up their mats \u00a0and make a quick escape, it is possible those enemies of Sri Lanka \u00a0may have sounded the JVP of the danger of their falling out of political power and having to spend years in political wilderness,\u00a0 has \u00a0come up with a 20th<\/sup> Amendment to the Constitution no different from the disastrous 13Amendment to the Constitution which was forced \u00a0ino it by India.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka has a Royal lineage .\u00a0 The past history of Sri Lanka\u00a0 before it was colonised and terrorised by foreigners was ruled by great kings and each time it was ruled by\u00a0 a Sinhala Buddhist \u00a0King\u00a0 he united \u00a0the whole country under him, and \u00a0the country prospered. Hence,\u00a0 the people of Sri Lanka- the Sinhala Buddhists who claim direct relation to that royal heritage have in their veins the pride of their great Sinhala\u00a0 Kings and that is why even today a good leader capable of uniting the country and bring peace and security is popularly acclaimed as their ancients with their Kings.<\/p>\n

Therefore, a President should represent that glory of the past. A President with executive powers is necessary when the Parliament with their elected representatives fail to deliver the services expected of it to the people.<\/p>\n

The Yahapalanaya Government of the Present Parliament is not people friendly as some of its members have forgotten the reason why they had been elected, and instead of attending to the welfare of the people, they are attending to their own welfare, committing even daylight robberies of the Central Bank.<\/p>\n

The Yahapalanaya Government\u00a0 prepared the situation to suit their purpose by passing the 19th<\/sup> Amendment, which has made to-day\u2019s Parliament ineffective and a burden to the people with the executive powers of the President curtailed making him \u00a0unable to redress the situation\u00a0 by changing the \u00a0Prime Minister- the cause of all present ills of \u00a0inefficient Yahapalanaya Government with a \u00a0Parliament which cannot even be dissolved by its President.<\/p>\n

In this situation presenting a 20th<\/sup> Amendment to the Constitution is a sheer suicide of the Parliamentary democracy in Sri Lanka. It is also the end of the more than 2600 years history of Sinhala Buddhist heritage, which the minority Tamil and Muslim Communities, and the UNP and JVP ignore. Because the Sinhala Buddhist culture and Buddhism is not their concern.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the 20h Amendment proposed by the JVP should be rejected, and the Excuive Presidency \u00a0preserved. We should continue with the 1978 Constitution without attempting to write a new Constitution now.<\/p>\n

The 20 th Amendment is not what the people want today. The people are tired of the Yahapalanaya Government which has deceived them. The Yahapalanaya \u00a0 and the JVP have done nothing to improve their condition of living. The poor are getting poorer. The prices of\u00a0 every consumable commodity \u00a0are\u00a0 daily on the increase. The Ministers responsible come to TV not to speak of solutions but merely to say \u00a0that things are better than it had been during the previous Government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Charles.S.Perera Who wants the 20th Amendment, the people of Sri Lanka or the JVP ? The people of Sri Lanka do not want the 20th Amendment. They will instead accept an amendment to the 19A to give back to the President\u00a0 the Executive Powers\u00a0 taken away from him to enable him to dissolve the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77964","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=77964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}