{"id":84265,"date":"2018-12-18T22:56:29","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T04:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=84265"},"modified":"2018-12-18T15:20:18","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T22:20:18","slug":"does-sri-lanka-need-to-abolish-executive-presidency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/12\/18\/does-sri-lanka-need-to-abolish-executive-presidency\/","title":{"rendered":"DOES SRI LANKA NEED TO ABOLISH EXECUTIVE PRESIDENCY?"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe, the Prime Minister and the leader of UNP has expressed at the victory rally held in Galle Face ground that he will form a new political front, which predominantly focus on abolishing the executive presidency with a view to transforming the political system to a parliamentary democracy with a cabinet government. The motive of Mr Wickremasinghe is, in fact, honestly to abolish the executive presidency or to coverup his weaknesses and failures in governing the country during the yahapalana regime aiming at re-electing in the next election, is quite difficult to understand. Politically, Mr Wickremasinghe experience and performance were a massive failure during the yahapalana regime as he was leading to destroy the unity and the economy allowing for massive corruptions done by his friends and colleague and the association with TNA which has prime aim to divide the country. He also ruined the entire rural economy, which is the heart of the country.\u00a0 In fact, people of Sri Lanka do not want revisiting old political slogans such as abolishing executive presidency, but they want re-establishing the destroyed economy and making justice punishing to corrupt friends of Mr Wickremasinghe who robbed the country. People also want political stability like traditional kings, in the system cantered the authority to a head of state elected by the vote of people.<\/p>\n

The executive presidency, which is inaudibly like traditional rule of Kings and Mr JR Jayewardene had clearly explained that why Sri Lanka wanted an executive presidential system to the country (Please read the book, Jayewardene of Sri Lank \u2013 A Political Biography by K.M. De Silva and Howard Wiggins).\u00a0 When presidential system was commenced in 1978, people of the country was annoyed with the so-called democratic cabinet government, which was a ground of jokers. The executive president who is elected by the votes of people reflect the sovereignty and firm decision-making power to the country.<\/p>\n

During the time of Mr J.R. Jayewardene, many economic decisions were made for the country and supported to uplift the rural economy empowering poor people as the new economic system gave a price to each product and service of regional Sri Lanka. Mr Premadasa as executive president further made decisions for the empowerment of rural people and Mrs Chandrika Bandaranaike as executive president attempted to change her own political party from traditional socialism to liberal system and withdrew the power of the Prime Minister when he was attempted to tactical strategies that were vicious to the country.\u00a0 Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa as an executive president like J.R. Jayewardene used the system to eliminate terrorism as well vicious dividing elements of the country and opened the way for economic policy implementation and a balanced growth between rural and urban areas. Mr Rajapaksa never allowed to divide the country.\u00a0 Mr. Maithripala Sirisena as an Executive President effectively worked to defeat the separatism disguisedly work with UNP and control external conspiracies that were harmful to unity of Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Executive presidency seems that it is a necessary evil to the country. The parliament in Sri Lanka is the most disgusted place to people and many people in the country state that MPs are like frogs jumping one side to other accepting bribes. They are elected to the parliament from the free votes of people and after the election, they do horse trading or relegate to tendering the status of them for the highest bidders. The quality of MPs is like a frog living in a well, many of them have no good education, skills and experience.\u00a0 The cabinet of the government also consist of MPs selected from the frogs of the parliament.\u00a0 In this environment, Mr Wickremasinghe\u2019s alternative strategy is to abolish the executive presidency and releasing frogs to a pool allowing them to play.\u00a0 These types of policies do not want Sri Lankans and with these policies there is no doubt that Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe will be achieved nothing at the next general election or the presidential election.<\/p>\n

The desire of Sri Lankans is not to creating a misguided Orumiththa Nadu, but a strong unitary state, which cannot be divided the country and support the building integrity of the nation. This will be ensured only with an executive presidency but not with a pool of progs. \u00a0I don\u2019t think that people of Sri Lanka can be misled second time. Now people are vigilante on what is Wickremasinghe planning to do. No leader in the world attempt go against the wish of the own people.<\/p>\n

Mr Ranil Wickramasinghe has already left the Temple Tree to his house.\u00a0 It means that he has already accepted the defeat at the next general election. However, people of Sri Lanka have no clear understanding of the consequences of a new constitution, which mainly focus to divide the power to provinces with a unification of the North and East.\u00a0 The system of the devolution of power also confirm that the central government has no authority to put hand on provincial governments affairs. This means the proposed constitution is to divide the country beyond a federal system and it is surely a dividing the country. \u00a0\u00a0When the new situation achieved through new constitution, foreign forces can use Sri Lanka with the support of North and East government to establish their ports and airports and sometimes they can use Sri Lanka for their weapon testing and even nuclear testing purposes. The people of Sri Lanka have no clear understanding about this and Mr Wickramasinghe secretly works out with Western forces.\u00a0 When there is an executive president, vicious strategy could be securitized by the executive presidential system and that is why Sri Lanka should not be abolished the executive presidential system.<\/p>\n

There are tremendous problems with the 19th<\/sup> amendment to the constitution.\u00a0 According to current experience of the country, although various committees established in terms of the 19th<\/sup> amendment, they are not working well and the system of appointing members to the committees are subject to political preferences and ruling party can influence the committee. The best example is the election committee, which failed to conduct elections on time in the country.\u00a0 The postponing was UNP tactical strategy and the election commission has supported to vicious elements of UNP.\u00a0 The audit committee has failed to conduct a forensic audit in relation to Central Bank Bond Scam and there are many failures in the committee system.<\/p>\n

When there is an executive president in the country, the president can order the committee to impartially work.<\/p>\n

Therefore, executive presidency will bring many benefits to Sri Lanka and it shouldn\u2019t be abolished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe, the Prime Minister and the leader of UNP has expressed at the victory rally held in Galle Face ground that he will form a new political front, which predominantly focus on abolishing the executive presidency with a view to transforming the political system to a parliamentary democracy with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edward-theophilus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84265","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=84265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}