{"id":83029,"date":"2018-11-10T08:03:57","date_gmt":"2018-11-10T15:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=83029"},"modified":"2018-11-10T08:03:57","modified_gmt":"2018-11-10T15:03:57","slug":"thank-god-an-election-is-in-the-horizon-lets-end-the-current-principal-agent-problem-in-sri-lankan-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/11\/10\/thank-god-an-election-is-in-the-horizon-lets-end-the-current-principal-agent-problem-in-sri-lankan-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Thank god!!!….an election is in the horizon! Let\u2019s end the current \u201cPrincipal -Agent\u201d problem in Sri Lankan Politics."},"content":{"rendered":"

Ruwan Perera Toronto-Ontario Canada\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Now, the general public as well as the political parties can exercise their democratic\u201d rights.<\/p>\n

MPs are merely the representatives of the public.<\/p>\n

Its better to ask the opinion of the principal (People)\u201d rather than the agent (MPs)\u201d. A General election provides the best opportunity for that.<\/p>\n

    \n
  • 19th<\/sup> amendment is an inconsistent \/ill thought change\/s made to the constitution<\/li>\n
  • Somehow, it has become the law and thus be honored is a skin-deep argument with a limited scope. Their thinking resembles that of<\/li>\n
  • Shylock of Shakespeare\u2019s Merchant of Venice who insisted on abiding by an unfair agreement mistakenly signed by Antonio<\/li>\n
  • Devadatta\u2019s\u201d insistence that all monks must follow his strict rules<\/li>\n
  • Also, it reminds us of \u2018Nari-Bena\u2019 who insisted on upholding to the perceived promise made by the girl\u2019s mother<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Due to the practical difficulties of running a direct democracy, world has chosen representative democracy where elected officials represent public in the process of policy making.<\/p>\n

    An inherent flaw of the system is that the voters are compelled to make the difficult judgement that their chosen candidate\/party will remain loyal to the line of thinking existed at the time of election.<\/p>\n

    During the elected term,<\/p>\n

      \n
    • The voters form their own opinion based on the changing conditions such as living expenses, government performance, policies on key elements of the society\/county to name a few<\/li>\n
    • Expectation is that their representatives would change their course accordingly and represent the ever-dynamic expectations of their respective constituencies<\/li>\n
    • However, there is no proper system to evaluate the performance of elected officials during their term of 4-5 years\n
        \n
      • Presidential approval rating is an unofficial way of measuring the President\u2019s alignment with his voters\/general public in the United States<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        Having frequent elections is one of the best solutions to evaluate performance and to correct the cause.<\/p>\n

        If the government approval rate has dropped below 35 % and the government is moving forward on a destructive trajectory, there are no adequate provisions in the constitution for cause correction. The only available solution is to dissolve the parliament and declare a general election which would enable public to correct the cause of the government in line with their thinking, through electing a new set of parliamentarians.<\/p>\n

         <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Ruwan Perera Toronto-Ontario Canada\u00a0 Now, the general public as well as the political parties can exercise their democratic\u201d rights. MPs are merely the representatives of the public. Its better to ask the opinion of the principal (People)\u201d rather than the agent (MPs)\u201d. A General election provides the best opportunity for that. 19th amendment is an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83029","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=83029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}