A lot went wrong in this country in the past four and a half years and now we seem to have found the reason for that: the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
President Maithripala Sirisena has said in a public speech, with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe also in the audience, that the 19th Amendment is damaging to the country because it creates two centres of power in the country and the impression that the President and the Prime Minister are ‘pulling in different directions.’ Without the 19th Amendment, President Sirisena argues, this Government would have been far more successful in the past four and a half years.
Let us refresh our memories about how President Sirisena was elected to high office. He campaigned on a platform of eliminating- or at least, reducing- the excesses of his predecessor, Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Sri Lankans, even though they are notorious for their short memories, will recall that Rajapaksa did away with most of the features of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution which led to the creation of a Constitutional Council and independent commissions governing key state institutions. Rajapaksa replaced that with the 18th Amendment which created a less powerful Parliamentary Council- and also removed the two-term limit on an individual holding the office of Executive President.
President Sirisena, when he was campaigning to be President promised the electorate that his government would abolish the Executive Presidency and that he would not run for President again. The first promise has not been kept and the nation- and perhaps the President himself- is uncertain about the second pledge.
If there was anything that came even close to removing the Executive Presidency, it was the 19th Amendment. Instead of abolishing the Presidency itself, it removed key powers the Executive President enjoyed. Former President J.R. Jayewardene’s pithy comment that the only act beyond his powers was to make a man a woman no longer applied to the Executive Presidency, following the enactment of the 19th Amendment.
The Constitutional Council was re-instated and key appointments- such as those of the Chief Justice, the Attorney General and the Inspector General of Police- had to be ratified by the Council. The President could no longer dissolve Parliament on a whim, unless four and a half years had elapsed. The President’s term of office was trimmed from six years to five and the two-term limit on an individual holding the office of President re-instated.
A chief architect of the 19th Amendment was President Sirisena himself. He campaigned tirelessly among his own party’s parliamentarians who reluctantly gave him their assent to push the amendment through Parliament with the required two-thirds majority.
After the legislation was enacted, the President proudly proclaimed that he was arguably the only leader in the world who voluntarily gave up his powers. He deserved every bit of that credit and rightly so.
Why then is President Sirisena having second thoughts? He is right when he says that it appears as if the President and the Prime Minister are pulling in different directions. In fact, that is quite an understatement for the events that occurred during the constitutional crisis late last year. However, is that the fault of the 19th Amendment?
The nation had witnessed how a President, unfettered by legislation such as the 19th Amendment, behaved. They rejected that because they felt that absolute power corrupts absolutely and no one- not even Mahinda Rajapaksa who won the war and liberated the nation from the scourge of thirty years of terrorism- should be given that kind of power. Therefore, they elected Maithripala Sirisena instead.
During the constitutional crisis triggered by President Sirisena himself when he sacked Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, he attempted to act beyond what was allowed in the Constitution. He appointed Rajapaksa who couldn’t demonstrate the support of a majority in Parliament.
Then, to overcome the impasse that ensued, President Sirisena dissolved Parliament, only to receive a slap on the wrists by the Supreme Court which deemed that the dissolution was unconstitutional- only because of the 19th Amendment.
The question then is, was all this the fault of the 19th Amendment or, did the 19th Amendment, in fact save the day- and democracy- by paving the way for the Supreme Court to restore the status quo by ruling that the opportunistic political shenanigans that were indulged in were out of order?
Sri Lanka has previously had two governments when the President and the Prime Minister had been from rival parties. The first was in 1994 when President D.B. Wijetunge governed with Prime Minister Chandrika Kumaratunga.
The next was in 2001, when Kumaratunga, by now President, governed with Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister. In both instances, there was no 19th Amendment in force and the Presidents were all-powerful.
It is worth recalling that after the 1994 general elections, President Wijetunge defied calls from sections of his own party to call upon Kumaratunga to form the government.
Thereafter, he did nothing to undermine that government and graciously yielded power to Kumaratunga after the Presidential election that followed. Kumaratunga herself did not enjoy governing with a rival party and that story did not have a happy ending, with Parliament being prematurely dissolved in 2004.
So, history tells us that while some Presidents have managed to work with their Prime Ministers even when they were from opposing political parties, others haven’t done so well. Ironically, even though President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe are from traditionally rival political parties, it was their commitment to work together that saw the President being elected. On the other hand, even when Presidents and Prime Ministers have been from the same political party, there have been differences of opinion- just ask Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa!
Is all this then the fault of the 19th Amendment- or is it more to the point to say that for some reason, the President and the Prime Minister haven’t been able to see eye to eye on many issues and therefore governance is falling apart at the seams? For example, the President believes the blame for the Central Bank bond scam lies with the Prime Minister who disagrees. The Prime Minister believes the blame for the Easter Sunday attacks lies with the President who disagrees. And so, the list goes on.
One could argue in hindsight, that this is all the fault of the 19th Amendment. It is often said that hindsight is a wonderful thing- more so when it suits your political agenda!