Author: TELO Admin

Sri Lanka’s newly gazetted 22nd amendment to the constitution bill does not curtail the powers of the president nor introduce checks and balances in any meaningful manner, contrary to the demands of the people of Sri Lanka, the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) said.

In the absence of any genuine attempt to address the inherent problems of governance, this attempt at reform will only worsen the existing political and economic crisis and destroy whatever little remaining faith citizens might have in constitutional governance, the organisation said in a statement issued on Thursday June 30.

“CPA has carefully considered the contents of the Bill and notes that the Bill does not revert the Constitution to the structure of government that prevailed under the Nineteenth Amendment (2015-19). The Minister of Justice had proposed two previous versions of this Bill (one as a Private Member’s Bill). The present gazetted Bill represents a significant weakening of the previous limited proposals by the Minister of Justice and leaves intact the unchecked powers of the Executive President,” the statement said.

Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe had previously claimed that the amendment, as drafted by him, will largely be a restoration of the 19th amendment which will see some of the powers conferred on the president by the controversial 20th amendment will be repealed.

The 19th amendment to the constitution, enacted during the Yahapalana government of former President Maithripala Sirisena and then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe saw some of the executive powers of the president curtailed and parliament significantly strengthened. That amendment was rolled back by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) government after its 20th amendment to the constitution was passed in parliament, conferring the office of the president with even more sweeping powers.

Sri Lanka’s prevailing economic crisis which has precipitated a political crisis has brought to the fore the need to speedily introduce constitutional reforms, and Minister Rajapakshe’s 21st amendment (referred to in the bill as the 22nd amendment) promised to be a restoration of the more progressive provisions of the 19th.

However, the CPA, a public policy research and advocacy think tank, said the final version of the 21st (or 22nd) amendment bill that was approved by the cabinet of ministers on Monday June 27 was a watered-down version of the original.

For example, the organisation said, the proposed Constitutional Council has been significantly diluted from what prevailed under the 19th amendment.

“The proposed composition of the Council favours the government and enables the government to control or influence 7 of the 10 members. Thus, it is CPA’s view that the Council is merely an expanded version of the Parliamentary Council that exists under the Twentieth Amendment. The original intent behind the creation of the Constitutional Council under the Seventeenth Amendment, which was to de-politicise governance, involved two methods: one was to ensure a majority representation in the Council for non-politicians, and the other was to remove government dominance over the political members. The composition of the Council proposed in the Bill achieves none of those objectives and in turn, undermines the independence of the institutions to which appointments are made through the Council,” it said.

Whilst some effort has been made to curtail the president’s powers in relation to the appointment and removal of the cabinet of ministers, the CPA said, these have all been rendered ineffective by the transitional provisions that make them applicable only from the next parliament. The president will also be able to appoint all secretaries to ministries at his own discretion, which the CPA said again protects the executive power concentrated in the office of the president.

Minister Rajapakshe, for his part, has called for wide support for his version of a 21st amendment to the constitution after the Supreme Court determined that the provisions of a competing draft by the main opposition required a referendum. The main opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB)’s 21st amendment concentrated heavily on abolishing Sri Lanka’s all-powerful executive presidency and, according to a determination by the Supreme Court, many of its provisions require a two thirds majority in parliament along with a people’s referendum.

“We have included everything that can be passed without a referendum,” Rajapakshe told parliament on June 21, defending his version of the amendment.

The amendment bill gazetted over a week later, on Thursday June 30. The document can be found at this link.

In its statement, the CPA said that though Sri Lanka’s worsening economic crisis was the result of due to the failures of successive governments, the present holder of the executive presidency exacerbated the issue as a result of arrogating more power to himself through the 20th amendment to the constitution and “fatally undermined even the weak checks and balances and the separation of powers implemented by the 19th amendment“.

“The only appropriate institutional reform response to this unprecedented disaster through constitutional reform is the complete abolition of the executive presidential system and the return to a full parliamentary constitutional
democracy,” the CPA said.

The rhetoric used to usher in the 20th amendment in 2020 that called for unilateralist and centralised executive decision-making for economic development is directly linked to the present crisis and such a model must be unequivocally rejected, the organisation further said.

“Considering the multiple challenges confronting Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka’s economic recovery cannot and must not be yet again based on a heavy executive decision-making governance model. For these reasons, it is clear from the perspective of both constitutional principle and constitutional design that the Bill is not in any sense a meaningful
contribution to the necessary institutional reform that must be part of Sri Lanka’s economic recovery,” it said.

Attorney-at-Law Luwie Ganeshathasan expressed similar sentiments.

“This 22A is no change from what we have right now, it is just dressed up to look like something new. I am not even sure why we are wasting our time and money debating this in Parliament. If this is the best “reform” this Parliament can deliver, they might as well go home,” he tweeted Thursday morning.

So to recap, the governments 22A is the weakest proposal so far to reform the Presidential system. It does not go to the level of even the 19A. More importantly many of the limited changes made will not impact @GotabayaR unless he dissolves the current Parliament. (10/

— luwie niranjan (@LuwieNiranjan) June 30, 2022

Britain on Monday said that, while Sri Lanka is a human rights priority country for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, its assessment was that a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) against those responsible for alleged human rights violations in Sri Lanka would not have the required support from members of the UN Security Council.

Vicky Ford, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) was responding to a question raised in the British parliament by Labour MP Stephen Morgan, who asked whether her Department is taking steps to ensure that those responsible for human rights violations against the Tamil community in Sri Lanka are brought to justice in the International Criminal Court.

“It would not advance the cause of accountability for an ICC referral to fail to win Security Council support or to be vetoed,” Parliamentary Under-Secretary Vicky Ford stated in a written answer.

She further stated –

We, alongside our partners in the Core Group on Sri Lanka, have led international efforts over many years to promote accountability, reconciliation and human rights in Sri Lanka. On 23 March 2021 the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted resolution 46/1, which provides a continued framework for international engagement on human rights. It calls on the government of Sri Lanka to make progress on human rights and stresses the importance of a comprehensive accountability process for all violations and abuses committed in Sri Lanka. The Minister of State for South Asia, Lord (Tariq) Ahmad of Wimbledon, visited Sri Lanka in January 2022. He travelled to the North and East as well as Colombo and met a range of civil society groups, including Tamil representatives, to discuss human rights. The Minister also urged the Government of Sri Lanka to take steps to deliver justice and accountability.

Sri Lanka Cabinet has given green light to a proposal submitted by the Prime Minister to obtain a grant from the United States of America, nearly two years after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa rejected a $480 million from the U.S.-based Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).

The $57 million comes through two agreements signed between the Governments of Sri Lanka and U.S. to supply funds to strengthen the cooperation for democratic good governance and social integrity’ and to create a sustainable and covered economic development’

The proposal by the Premier Ranil Wickramasinghe suggested signing a new agreement for implementation of a new programme for financing 57 million US dollars by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The project has been named as ‘The Programme for a Democratic, Prosperous Sri Lanka with the Ability to Survive Amidst Disasters’ until the year 2026, paying the preliminary attention on the fields of productive democratic governance, growth based on a secure market and strengthening the resources required to sustain pressure and stress.

President Rajapaksa in November 2021 said that his government will never sign the MCC agreement proposed by the U.S soon after the then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit. However, the U.S. cancelled the MCC offer to Sri Lanka one month after Rajapaksa’s statement.

As much as India has been supportive towards Sri Lanka and doing its best to help the nation, The Indian Government needs to also pressurize for a provincial council election to be held so that the opinion of the people is made known, says Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) MP Mano Ganesan.

He made this statement while speaking to the media today (29).

“As much as an election must be pushed forward for, due to the lack of funds, the Indian government and other nations must support financially for an election to be held. The other nations of the world are reluctant to help Sri Lanka at the moment as the credibility has been lost by the Government of Sri Lanka. The international community has lost trust with the President of Sri Lanka as well. The might have not openly stated it, but this is the fact. Thus, right now an election is needed,” said MP Ganesan.

He further mentioned that despite the voices of the people being loud and clear, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has refused to step down, thus an election was the only way forward so that the President can be ousted.