The prospect of any election being held in Sri Lanka in the near future appears to be dim given President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s fresh call to change the electoral system first before going in for elections.
And the lack of enthusiasm among political parties for enacting the 22nd Constitutional Amendment (22A), that is meant to prune the draconian powers of the Executive Presidency, casts doubt about the Lankan polity’s commitment to abolishing the Executive Presidency and returning to the parliamentary form of government. Abolition has been on the cards since 1995 but efforts to do that have always failed.
Since the beginning of 2022, the parliamentary opposition and the peoples’ movement called “Aragalaya” have been demanding elections to install a “legitimate, popularly elected” government in place of the present Ranil Wickremesinghe regime, that has “no legitimacy despite being legal.”
But Wickremesinghe and the Rajapaksa-run Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) that supports him, are against fresh elections on the grounds that the grave economic situation in Sri Lanka does not warrant any diversion of attention and funds from solving the country’s pressing economic problems. Wickremesinghe has appealed all political parties to abjure traditional competitive politics for at least two years to concentrate on meeting the unprecedented economic crisis.
Presidential and parliamentary elections are due only in November 2024 and August 2025 respectively. But polls for the Provincial Councils and the local bodies are long overdue. Last week, Wickremesinghe said that he would want the electoral system to be changed first. He said that he would call for a parliamentary committee to study the various options in regard to electoral reforms and come up with a common suggestion by July 2023. If no suggestion came, he would put his own suggestion to the people in a referendum. He proposes a mixture of the First Past the Post System (FPPS) and the Proportional Representation System(PRS) in place of the present wholly PR System.
In his view, the PRS has led to parliaments being divided and unstable. Divided and weak parliaments have weakened the Presidency too. The Presidency needs a united parliament to pass laws. The PR system has resulted in the entry into parliament of even very small parties with narrow interests. These make it difficult to arrive at a consensus on key national issues.
While President Wickremesinghe’s arguments in favor of electoral reform are well-founded, electoral reform is a very contentious issue. Many of the small parties are ethnicity or religion-based that crave for separate representation because the Sri Lankan polity is communal divided.
The President also wants the village local bodies to be democratized. He wants to devolve power to non-political ‘Jana Sabhas’ at the village level and reduce the total number of local body members from the current 8000 to 4000 before holding the next local elections.Then there is the unresolved and contentious issue of delimitation of electorates. Delimitation is communally surcharged.
Given these factors, political observers rule out elections in the short term. The only elections that will be held are the Presidential and parliamentary elections, but these are due only in November 2024 and August 2025 respectively.
22 (A) Jinxed?
The 22 nd.Amendment to curb the powers of the Executive President by setting up a Constitutional Council and Independent Commissions with the participation of non-politicians and officials, is due to be debated in parliament later in October. But it is unlikely to be passed. The Rajapaksa-led SLPP is miffed by the inclusion of a clause to bar dual citizens from holding political office as it will affect its founder-leader Basil Rajapaksa. But the opposition will insist on its retention. If the SLPP votes against the Amendment, it will not get the required two-thirds majority.
Apart from this, Wickremesinghe himself might not want the Executive Presidency to be pruned as he needs the powers to set the economy right, carry out long awaited reforms and meet the IMF’s stipulations. . At present it is entirely up to the President to consult the Prime Minister or the Parliamentary Council. But under 22A, he would have to consult the PM. He cannot defy the Constitutional Council.
However, the Executive Presidency cannot do without parliament as it is parliament which holds the purse strings and makes laws. Therefore the President has to be assured of parliamentary support. President J.R. Jayewardene, who conceptualized and institutionalized the Executive Presidency in 1978, described it as one that ‘would not be subject to the whims and fancies of parliament’. But he and his successor R.Premadasa had their way in carrying out radical economic reforms because they had enough MPs in parliament. But when the President had no support in parliament, as during the rule of Chandrika Kumaratunga (1995-2005), the Presidency was shackled. Economic development and economic reform suffered partly because of the diversion of attention to securing parliamentary support and partly because of the expensive and unending war against the Tamil separatists.
However, Mahinda Rajapaksa strengthened the Presidency during 2005-2015 by garnering parliamentary support through ingenious ways and used the parliamentary strength to win the war against the separatists and then carrying out massive development schemes. Mahinda Rajapaksa fortified himself also by replacing the 17 th.Amendment by the 18 Amendment, that brought back the President’s powers taken away by the 17 th. Amendment.
But even with all the power he got, Mahinda Rajapaksa failed to bring about economic reforms. This was because he took to crass populism, to keep politicians, parliament and the masses on his side. He also found it expedient to allow corruption and encourage crony capitalism to sustain himself in power. These derailed much-needed reforms. The enormous powers that he had as Executive President were not used to put Sri Lanka on the high road to development as the Asian Tigers South Korea and Taiwan did.
Given the Executive Presidency’s failure, the successor government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe brought the 19 th.Amendment to re-establish the Constitutional Council and the Independent Commissions. But the poor performance of, and the disunity displayed by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe regime, gave rise to the opinion that the country needed a strong ruler with a lot of power. This brought the war-winning Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa to power in November 2019. And Mahinda Rajapaksa was back as Prime Minister in August 2020. The Rajapaksas enacted the 20 th. Amendment (20A) to recover the powers of the Executive Presidency. With his rule souring due to his acts of omission and commission, and at the prompting of the new Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa agreed to the 21 Amendment (21A) to curb his powers. Later, it was reintroduced as the 22A.
But despite having a strongman as President, the 20A and also the backing of two-thirds of parliament, the government of the Rajapaksas collapsed like a house of cards in July 2022 when the masses rose against it. Shortages were the order of the day. Sri Lanka had defaulted on foreign loans and was going around with a begging bowl.
But fortunately, parliament survived and Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took charge because no one else was willing to take charge, showed a rare determination to stay put and bring back normalcy.
Strongly feeling the need for economic reforms, he is using the State machinery and the support he is getting from the SLPP (that is still the single-largest party in parliament) to carry out the reforms needed to get the US$ 2.9 billion IMF bailout and also persuade foreign creditors to restructure debt. If he is to achieve these goals, Wickremesinghe needs to retain the Executive Presidency.
