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By Veeragathy Thanabalasingham
Colombo, July 14: Exactly two years ago, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country and resigned from office while overseas amid a popular unrest. Next Sunday will mark exactly two years since the United National Party (UNP ) leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, assumed office after being elected as President by Parliament for the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term.
The trend of political events that we have seen in these two years clearly shows that the political class quickly reverted to its old ways without learning any lesson from the ‘strong message’ delivered by Sri Lanka’s unprecedented popular uprising, the Aragalaya.
‘System Change’ was the main slogan of the people’s agitation. It has lost its true meaning to the extent that all politicians now speak in their own convenient way about system change.
Corruption, malfeasance, authoritarianism and abuse of power have been the cause of political and social decay. If we want to eliminate these evils, the first thing that needs to be done is to abolish the Executive Presidential system.
Leaders of political parties who had spoken loudly about the abolition of the Presidential system are, at present, only aiming to be elected as the next Executive President. It seems that nothing can be expected from the main parties regarding abolition in the first national election after the people’s uprising.
Today’s political debate is dominated by the Presidential election, which is constitutionally required to be held between mid-September and mid-October. Even more so, doubts have arisen whether the election will be held on time.
Postponing elections has always been a talking point since Wickremesinghe became President. The government indefinitely postponed the local government elections that were to be held early last year, citing financial constraints.
Long before his assumption of office as President, during the ‘Yahapalanaya ‘ government as Prime Minister, legal problems were caused by not being able to hold Provincial Council elections. As such there have been no local elections for over a year and no Provincial Council elections for six years since their respective due dates.
People have a strong suspicion that the present government will do everything to avoid going for elections. As a tactic to postpone the elections, government politicians have repeatedly, over the past two years, talked about moves to abolish the Executive Presidential system and the postponement of parliamentary elections.
Even though President Wickremesinghe has repeatedly said that the Presidential election will be held according to the constitution, he is unable to dispel that doubt in the public domain.
There was talk at one point that Wickremesinghe might be inclined to hold Presidential election ahead of schedule. It was then pointed out that constitutional provisions allowed only a popularly elected President to call an early election after four years of his or her five-year term.
More recently, UNP General Secretary Palitha Range Bandara proposed a constitutional amendment to extend the terms of the President and Parliament and hold a referendum to pass it. Wickremesinghe and his party distanced themselves from the proposal.
With less than three months to go before the Presidential election, the controversies that have erupted in recent weeks over the tenure of the President have led to speculation that the election could be disrupted.
The 19th Amendment to the Constitution brought in 2015 to curtail the powers of the President reduced the term of the President to five years. But the clause containing the terms and conditions for extending the term of the President was left at six years without making a suitable change.
In order to extend the term of office of the President, a constitutional amendment must be passed with the support of a two-thirds majority in Parliament and the approval of the people in a referendum. If it is changed from six years to five years in the relevant clause, it should go for a referendum.
Concerned about passing the 19th Amendment without holding a referendum, the government of the day refrained from making the necessary change. The Jaffna District Tamil National Alliance (TNA ) Parliamentarian M.A.Sumanthiran clearly explained this during the debate last week in the House regarding the timely conduct of the Presidential election.
Opposition parties and civil society organizations have raised suspicions that President Wickremesinghe may try to extend his tenure by a year using the legal ‘loophole’.
A businessman from Moratuwa had filed a Fundamental Rights Petition seeking an order preventing the Election Commission from making arrangements to conduct the Presidential election until the Supreme Court’s pronouncement on the tenure of the President. There were various speculations about the people who could have been behind him.
Four days after the Supreme Court rejected his petition earlier last week, a lawyer filed another fundamental rights petition last Friday. In that petition, he asked the Supreme Court to order the postponement of the Presidential election to facilitate holding a referendum for the proper passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution as it has not been properly passed by Parliament.
The terms and conditions for extending the term of office of the President are laid down in Article 83 (b) of the Constitution. The cabinet last week approved the proposal submitted by President Wickremesinghe to bring a constitutional amendment to change the phrase ‘ exceeding six years’ to ‘exceeding five years’.
It is against this background that one will, no doubt, view the fundamental right petition of the lawyer. Whether the President or the government has anything to do with that lawyer’s action is anybody’s guess.
Even the political forces against the President may be behind the lawyer with the intention of waging a smear campaign that the President is hell bent on postponing the Presidential election.
The important question now is how the Supreme Court is going to deal with that fundamental rights petition tomorrow.
Later in his term as President in 2019, Maithripala Sirisena sought an interpretation from the Supreme Court on his tenure. Since he was elected as President in January 2015, he approached the Supreme Court in the hope that he would be able to remain in office for six years as the Constitution stipulated that the term of office of the President was six years (although it was later reduced to five years in the 19th Constitutional Amendment) at the time of his election.
However, the Supreme Court in its decision firmly stated that the tenure of the President is only five years. Even though the highest court of the country had said so five years ago, we are witnessing various political dramas about when the next Presidential election will be held.
Apart from simply criticizing the President and the government, the opposition parties have not been able to deal with the matter effectively. It is difficult to understand the need for a debate in Parliament about the election which should be held constitutionally in due time.
Anyway, President Wickremesinghe, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna(JVP ) led National People Power (NPP ) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake will be the three main candidates in the Presidential hustings. Among them, Premadasa and Dissanayake announced their candidacy last year and have already started campaigning.
However, Wickramasinghe has not yet openly announced that he will contest the election. There may be reasons on his part. That is another matter. His supporters seem to have doubts that he will contest if he sees that there will be no chance of winning.
He has a history of skipping the Presidential race three times in a row when he saw no chance of winning. But a strange campaign post was seen on social media saying ‘ ENCOURAGE RANIL TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT.’
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