Playing with the sovereignty of the people
The printing of the draft constitution finished on Sunday 30 July and it went to the cabinet on the 31st. Every minister approved a 209-page document none of them had read, because there had been no time to read it. On 2 August it went to the Chief Justice.
ආණ්ඩුවේ සිහින ලෝකය සහ යථාර්ථය
Ivan explains the government’s plan to switch to a first-past-the-post system by using the urgent-bill procedure to obtain a Supreme Court ruling that no referendum is needed. He argues the court cannot allow a change to the constitution’s foundations without one, recalls the distortions of the 1970 and 1977 results that led to proportional representation, and notes that minority parties, the UNP and the JVP oppose it, so the government will have to face the election under the existing system.
A self-created impasse
The average number of votes a candidate needed to become an MP was 35,305 in 1994 and 32,492 in 1999. From that arithmetic the column works forward to the impasse the government has built for itself, and to what the courts could and could not do about extending a parliament.
බිත්තර නොකඩා ඔම්ලට් හැදිම
Ivan recalls that J.R. Jayewardene’s 1978 constitution concentrated power in an executive president, subordinating Parliament, the courts and the public service, and that Sirimavo Bandaranaike vowed to fight any resulting dictatorship. Quoting the People’s Alliance 1994 manifesto and Chandrika Kumaratunga’s January 1995 address pledging abolition, he notes that she now offers to change everything except the presidency, which would end only with her term, and contrasts this with F.W. de Klerk.
මේ මොහොතේ වඩා වැදගත් නිදහස් හා සාධාරණ මැතිවරණයකි
With six weeks left in Parliament’s term, the editorial finds the government’s rush to amend the constitution suspicious and says any PA–UNP reform draft should be tabled as a white paper and left to the new Parliament. It calls for an independent elections commission and domestic and foreign observers as the EU proposed, urges the Elections Commissioner to collect assets declarations from candidates and party officials, and asks unions, professional and religious bodies to help monitor the poll.
සම්මානය හා අධිකරණ නිදහසේ මළගම
Ivan welcomes the attention foreign powers are paying to the government’s anti-democratic conduct as well as to the LTTE. He argues that the northern conflict is part of Sri Lanka’s democratic crisis and that southern rulers, though elected, rule partly by terror. He proposes third-party-guided talks, an all-party agreement on constitutional principles, independent institutions, a right to information law and an election followed by a five-year national government on the South African model.
පාර්ලිමේන්තු මැතිවරණයක් ජනමත විචාරණයක ද
Ivan expects the government to try to avoid the parliamentary election due by October, fearing defeat after setbacks in the North. With many MPs unsure of renomination, he sets out the seat numbers and shows it would need only 19 opposition votes for a two-thirds majority to extend Parliament through a 1982-style referendum, explains MPs’ pay rises and land grants in that light, and predicts such a referendum could fail.
Self interest in making constitutions
As a nation we are on the edge of a great abyss, and the leaders behave like crabs dancing in water until it boils — so blinded by hunger for power that they cannot see the danger to themselves, let alone the danger to the country.
Tactics to ensure parliamentary power
The PA government is locked in a dilemma there is no easy way out of. Even a very satisfactory result at the coming parliamentary election would leave it with fewer seats than it holds now, which is why the electoral system itself is what it wants to change.
When will wisdom dawn on them?
Even after being elected to it, the President has several times called the executive presidency a dreadful cancer introduced into the body politic. By now proposing to keep that cancer to the end of her own term while reforming the constitution, she has turned the whole reform project into a selfish and ridiculous farce.