Other side of executive presidency
The President called the 1978 constitution ridiculous and went on enjoying the privileges of the system it created, without even reforming away its contradictions. She is paying for that now.
Challenges before the constitutional council
Freeing the institutions under the Constitutional Council from politicisation, and directing them so as to guarantee good governance, is one of the council’s main obligations. The first thing it has to do is define properly what the institutions and the posts under it are responsible for.
Debilitated, but not too bad
For all the serious and inherent limits of the Seventeenth Amendment, the fact that a Constitutional Council and a system of independent commissions have been enacted is a very important step. It was the JVP’s intervention that got even this debilitated version through.
17 වැනි සංශෝධනයට සුභ පැතුම්
Despite its limitations, the enactment of the 17th Amendment is an important step towards rebuilding institutions broken by political interference. The editorial calls the Constitutional Council the heart of the reform and urges the Prime Minister, Opposition Leader and all parties to appoint honest people with backbone rather than political henchmen, to fill the commissions likewise, and to clean the top of the pyramid first by removing corrupt heads of institutions.
පෙරමුණේ අවංකභාවය උරගා බැලෙන පරික්ෂණයක්
Ivan calls the JVP–PA probation pact a test of the JVP’s maturity and honesty. Its claimed gains are hollow: the referendum was dropped because of public protest, and Parliament was brought forward only a day, perhaps because astrologers deemed the 7th inauspicious. Quoting the PA’s 1994 manifesto, he shows the pledge of 20 ministers covered all ministers, and warns that the pact’s ‘mutually agreed amendments’, a presidential nominee on the Constitutional Council and resistance to reviewing office-holders could deform the 17th Amendment.
රවට්ටන්න යන්නේ කාවද?
The politicisation of institutions that should be independent is a main cause of the country’s decline, and the 17th Amendment was meant to hand key appointments to a respected Constitutional Council. The editorial notes that the opposition draft provided for eight members, including five eminent persons chosen jointly by the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader, but the government, backed by the JVP, now proposes seven members including a presidential nominee, giving it a majority. This, it says, merely dresses up the old system.
A test for JVP’s sincerity
The probationary programme agreed between the PA and the JVP will be decisive for both the PA and the UNP, and more decisive still for the JVP — because everything it does in this period will show its political maturity, its capacity to act on firm principle, and its honesty.
17 වැනි ව්යවස්ථා සංශෝධනය
Ivan welcomes the JVP–PA agreement to enact the 17th Amendment’s Constitutional Council and four independent commissions by 24 September, and describes the council’s makeup and the fourteen offices it would fill. He lists further posts that should come under it, faults the draft for leaving current office-holders in place and for having no complaints procedure, and says the Bribery Commission, the Auditor General, the Attorney General and the Elections Commissioner must be held to redefined duties.
How independent are independent commissions?
Whatever the limits of the JVP’s programme, enacting the Constitutional Council and the four independent commissions of the Seventeenth Amendment before 24 September would be a first step towards changing the political culture of this country.
පරිවාස වැඩපිළිවෙළ කෝකටත් තෛලයක් නොවේ
The editorial says the country now has a People’s Alliance government steered by the JVP: the bottle is Chandrika’s but the wine is the JVP’s. If the JVP’s probation programme at least secures the five independent commissions, an idea that came from civil society, that is a gain. But as a pact between only two parties, it cannot resolve the economic collapse, the war, political instability or the politics of hatred, and its benefits will be temporary.