{"id":93436,"date":"2019-09-30T14:01:59","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T21:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=93436"},"modified":"2019-09-30T14:02:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T21:02:00","slug":"curiouser-and-curiouser-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/09\/30\/curiouser-and-curiouser-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Curiouser and curiouser!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editorial Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The government has urged the public to ensure its presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa\u2019s victory, in November, to enact a new Constitution, among other things. One is puzzled. It had a two-thirds majority in Parliament, besides having the Executive President on its side, from January 2015 to October 2018, but failed to fulfil its pledge to introduce a new Constitution. There was a national government in power, but the UNP, which promised constitutional reforms, did not make a serious effort to grab that opportunity probably because it feared a political backlash in the southern parts of the country. It craftily put its constitution-making project on the back burner. Now, it is trying to market the same pledge in the run-up to the next presidential election as well! It is apparently trying to use that promise as a carrot to enlist the support of the Tamil political parties, which cannot face their voters, having failed to make good on their pledge to have more powers devolved to the provinces; some of them went to the extent of promising federalism.
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The next President will have no say in Parliament, and, therefore, it defies comprehension how anyone can get a new Constitution passed after the upcoming presidential election. The executive presidency is a misnomer to begin with. It has been stripped of almost all vital powers. The real effect of the 19th Amendment (19A) to the Constitution will kick in when the transitional provisions, introduced in favour of the incumbent President, cease to be effective come the end of his term. His successor will be a mere figurehead so much so that President Maithripala Sirisena has said that the presidency is not worth fighting for ever again. His critics may argue that it is a case of sour grapes, but his argument is tenable.
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The next President won\u2019t be able to hold any Cabinet post or remove even a deputy minister. He will find himself in a gilded straitjacket. The Prime Minister will be more powerful than he, in most respects. Time was when the late Ranasinghe Premadasa lamented, in Parliament that he, as the Prime Minister, was like a glorified peon, where his powers were concerned. He told the truth in that he had to function under President J. R. Jayewardene, who was also the UNP leader.
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When a President and a Prime Minister were elected from the same party, the former was more powerful than the latter; it was the other way around when they were elected from two different parties. But, in the future, the President won\u2019t be able to control the PM in any manner even if they happen to represent the same party, thanks to 19A. This is the political reality.
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It may be seen that the government won\u2019t be able to fulfil its pledge to introduce a new Constitution even if it wins the upcoming presidential election; it won\u2019t have a two-thirds majority in Parliament. The situation will remain the same even in the event of its victory at the next general election; it may be able to engineer some crossovers in such an eventuality. President Sirisena has gone on record as saying that during last year\u2019s constitutional coup, the crossovers were paid as much as Rs. 500 mn each. But the numbers in Parliament alone won\u2019t help replace the present Constitution; there will have to be a referendum, which is a worrisome proposition for any government.
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Meanwhile, as things stand, there is no need to change the Constitution to get rid of the executive presidency, which has already been rendered impotent, to all intents and purposes. It is being argued in some quarters that only those who are desirous of having more powers devolved to the provinces are campaigning for a new Constitution.
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Pressure is bound to mount on UNP presidential candidate, Sajith Premadasa, in the coming weeks, to make his position known on the government\u2019s offer of a new Constitution. It will be interesting to see what he has got to say.
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Editorial Courtesy The Island The government has urged the public to ensure its presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa\u2019s victory, in November, to enact a new Constitution, among other things. One is puzzled. It had a two-thirds majority in Parliament, besides having the Executive President on its side, from January 2015 to October 2018, but failed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93436","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=93436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}