Exactly two years passed yesterday (13) since President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country and resigned from office while overseas amid popular unrest. Next Sunday (21) will mark two years since United National Party (UNP) Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was elected as President by Parliament for the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term, assumed office.
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 historical and unprecedented popular uprising.
‘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.
Executive presidential system
As much as corruption and malfeasance were the main causes of the economic crisis, authoritarianism and abuse of power have been the cause of political and social decay. If we want to eliminate these two evils, the first thing that needs to be done is to abolish the executive presidential system.
Even the leaders of the political parties who have 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 the 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 on whether the election will be held on time.
Postponing polls
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 the President, during the ’Yahapalana’ Government as the Prime Minister, legal problems were caused by not being able to hold the Provincial Council Elections. As such there have been no Local Government 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 to the people in the elections. As a tactic to postpone the national 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 the Presidential Election ahead of schedule. It was then pointed out that constitutional provisions allowed only a popularly elected president to call an early Presidential Election after four years of the five-year term elapse.
More recently, UNP General Secretary Palitha Rangebandara proposed a constitutional amendment to extend the terms of office of the President and Parliament and hold a referendum to pass it. Wickremesinghe and his party distanced themselves from the proposal before the controversy erupted.
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
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 a suitable change being made.
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 to referendum.
Concerned about passing the 19th Amendment without holding a referendum, the Government of the day refrained from making the necessary change. 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.
Legal loophole
Opposition political parties and civil society organisations have raised suspicions that President Wickremesinghe may try to extend his tenure by a year using a legal ‘loophole’.
A businessman from Moratuwa had filed a Fundamental Rights (FR) petition seeking an order preventing the Election Commission from making arrangements to conduct the Presidential Election until the Supreme Court’s pronouncement of a decision on the tenure of the President. There was various speculation about the people who could have been behind him.
Four days after the Supreme Court rejected that petition earlier last week, a lawyer filed another FR petition on Friday (12). In that petition, he has 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 FR petition of the lawyer. Whether the President or the Government has anything to do with that lawyer’s action is a different matter.
Even the political forces against the President may be behind the lawyer with the intention of waging a smear campaign that the President is bent on postponing the Presidential Election.
Ball in the Supreme Court
The important question now is how the Supreme Court is going to deal with that FR petition.
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 was only five years. Even though the highest court said so five years ago, we are witnessing various political dramas being staged when the next Presidential Election is less than 100 days away as per the Constitution.
Apart from simply criticising 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 elections, which should be held in due time as per the Constitution.
Key candidates
Anyway, President Wickremesinghe, Opposition and Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) Leader Sajith Premadasa, and Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led National People’s 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, Wickremesinghe 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 may avoid contesting the election again, if he sees 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.
A strange campaign post was seen on social media saying, ‘Let’s encourage Ranil to contest the Presidential Election’.
(The writer is a senior journalist based in Colombo)