{"id":84715,"date":"2019-01-09T21:26:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T03:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=84715"},"modified":"2019-01-09T07:59:58","modified_gmt":"2019-01-09T14:59:58","slug":"does-the-method-of-determining-two-thirds-majority-of-parliament-in-sri-lanka-reflect-the-sovereignty-of-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/01\/09\/does-the-method-of-determining-two-thirds-majority-of-parliament-in-sri-lanka-reflect-the-sovereignty-of-people\/","title":{"rendered":"DOES THE METHOD OF DETERMINING TWO-THIRDS MAJORITY OF PARLIAMENT IN SRI LANKA REFLECT THE SOVEREIGNTY OF PEOPLE?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Many judgments of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, which were believed to be the accurate interpretation of the constitution and bills presented to the parliament.\u00a0 The Supreme Court is the authority to interpret the constitution, ruled in many instances that the legitimation of various bills requires the two-thirds majority of the representatives of the parliament.\u00a0 The idea of the two-thirds majority of parliament literally means that the condition of two-third majority represents the sovereignty of people. The literal meaning of the sovereignty of people reflects in elected representatives by the people.\u00a0 This is a quite confused view of ordinary people.<\/p>\n

In the parliament of Sri Lanka, there is two type of representatives.\u00a0 One is representatives elected by the votes of people and others are representatives appointed by the political parties who were not really elected representatives by the votes of people.\u00a0 How should define the two-thirds majority of parliament was not clearly interpreted by the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka.\u00a0 Without a clear interpretation, if the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka does rule that appointed representatives also include to the sovereignty of people, it will not accurate.\u00a0 Sri Lanka needs clarification of this point and corrects the various judgments made by the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

If we deeply investigate the history of appointed representatives, we would find that many appointed representatives were related to corrupt practices or rejected by people in elections or people were selected to appoint as they were relatives or favorites of the party leaders. \u00a0In fact, most appointed representatives were against the concept of the sovereignty of people.<\/p>\n

The other important point in relation to the sovereignty of people that constitutions in Sri Lanka have not interpreted the meaning of two-third majority and the Supreme Court always considered two-third majority including the appointed members by the political parties.<\/p>\n

The unelected members of the parliament became powerful than elected members of the parliament in many instances.\u00a0 Why did learned judges of the Supreme Court and President Lawyers didn’t consider this point?\u00a0 The appoint of members is based on various purposes, but is a purely an act against the sovereignty of people.\u00a0 Compare to the executive president of Sri Lanka, He or She is an elected representative by the people and there is no violation of the sovereignty of people with executive president in Sri Lanka and it is not against the democratic principle, but many members of the parliament are not elected by the people and they are representing against the fundamental principle of democracy.\u00a0 According to democratic principles, the executive president is represented the sovereignty of people and the attempt of the parliament which include representatives appointed against the sovereignty of the people is purely undemocratic.\u00a0 The prime minister of Sri Lanka is not a representative elected by the people and his attempt to abolished the executive president and taking to executive power to the prime minister is an attempt to cheat democracy.\u00a0 How did he get such ideas from Western democratic countries is difficult to understand by ordinary people in Sri Lanka?<\/p>\n

My view is the Supreme Court in Sri Lanka needs to clearly interpret the meaning of two-third majority and how to count the two-third majority in terms of the peoples’ sovereignty and democratic principles. Are appointed representatives honestly consider as elected representatives by the people. If not how to count the two-thirds majority according to the accurate principle of the sovereignty of people.<\/p>\n

The constitutions approved by the parliament of Sri Lanka in 1972 and 1978 had two third majority of the parliament without appointed members by the political parties and 18th<\/sup> amendment to the parliament also had two third majority of elected representatives by the people, but 19th<\/sup> amendment to the constitution had the two-thirds majority of elected representatives should be reviewed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS Many judgments of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, which were believed to be the accurate interpretation of the constitution and bills presented to the parliament.\u00a0 The Supreme Court is the authority to interpret the constitution, ruled in many instances that the legitimation of various bills requires the two-thirds majority of the […]<\/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-84715","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\/84715","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=84715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}