Is the 21st Amendment yet another political ruse, a mere cosmetic exercise where Parliament will go through the motions of trying to enact the amendment and then, through mounting legal challenges and procrastinating, try to buy time till the supplies of gas, fuel and electricity normalise, hoping that the general public will then abandon the struggle?
There is also the chance that even if President Rajapaksa genuinely tries to enact a decent version of the 21st Amendment, the Basil brigade will try and scuttle it by voting against it in Parliament.
Will the much awaited 21st Amendment see the light of day or will it be aborted? Or worse still, will we see the birth of a 21st Amendment that is defective and is nothing like the amendment that is sought after by the public but a watered-down, meagre version?
This is the ongoing discussion in political circles. There are reports that efforts by newly appointed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s efforts to get processes started for enacting the 21st Amendment have come to a near standstill due to resistance from a group of parliamentarians from the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP).
There were several potential amendments that were circulating. They came from the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL), the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) and Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe.
It is the latter that the government is proceeding with. To begin with, it is a slightly diluted version of the 21st Amendment and does not compare very well with the 19th Amendment that was in operation before.
The 19th Amendment prevented the President from dissolving Parliament until after four and a half years from its first meeting. The proposed 21st Amendment allows the President to do so just one year after the general election.
Similarly, the 19th Amendment required the President to consult the Prime Minister before making Cabinet appointments and did not allow him to hold portfolios for himself. The proposed 21st Amendment retains the feature of consulting the Prime Minister but allows the President to retain portfolios, effectively negating consultations with the Prime Minister. If the President did not agree with the Prime Minister’s choice for a portfolio, he could retain it himself!
The 19th Amendment also prevented the President from holding the Defence portfolio. The 21st Amendment allows this. Minister Rajapakshe argues that it is not reasonable for the President to be Commander-in-Chief as provided for in the Constitution while the Defence Minister is a different person.
However, this is not the most contentious provision in the proposed 21st Amendment. Minister Rajapakshe has retained the 19th Amendment’s provision of barring dual citizens from entering Parliament. This is what has led to all the consternation- because it effectively prevents Basil Rajapaksa from remaining in Parliament.
Basil Rajapaksa made a mockery of the Finance Ministry and his presentation of the last budget was a farce. He had an ignominious exit from his portfolio. Nevertheless, he still retains clout within the SLPP which is his brainchild and is packed with his loyalists.
When Mahinda Rajapaksa was unexpectedly ousted from power at the January 2015 presidential election and retreated to Medamulana to mull over his political future, his prospects seemed bleak. His successor, Maithripala Sirisena had even wrested control of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the war winning, twice-elected President could have been excused if he thought his career as a politician was well and truly over.
It was Basil Rajapaksa who conceptualised a new political party of the Rajapaksas, by the Rajapaksas, for the Rajapaksas and the SLPP, or the ‘pohottuwa’ party was born. In the space of a few years, it became the country’s dominant political force, helped of course by the incompetence of the ‘yahapalanaya’ administration.
The rest is history. Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the 2019 presidential election convincingly and the SLPP followed it up with a near two-thirds majority at the general election nine months later. The SLPP lists contained many of Basil Rajapaksa’s acolytes who are blindly loyal to him. Because the party recorded over 60 per cent of the vote in most districts, these loyalists entered Parliament and now form the bulwark of Basil Rajapaksa’s support in Parliament. They will never vote for a 21st Amendment that would cause Rajapaksa to leave Parliament.
Wickremesinghe’s task is unenviable. He has to convince a hostile party with an entirely different agenda to vote for the 21st Amendment or else, his own credibility- or more accurately, what little is left of it- is at stake. For two other ministers, Harin Fernando and Manusha Nanayakkara, imported from the SJB, the situation is worse: they will have to leave the government, if they are to honour the pledge they gave to the public.
More important is what President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s thinking is. At a stormy meeting of the government parliamentary group, watching SLPP parliamentarians tear in to Wickremesinghe, the President reportedly said that requesting brother Mahinda’s resignation was the most difficult decision he had to ever make. Is he then ready to sacrifice another brother?
The crux of the matter is how the President perceives the 21st Amendment. Having publicly acknowledged that he has made several blunders in his Presidency such as insisting on organic fertiliser and delaying International Monetary Fund Assistance, is he keen to aspire for a graceful exit facilitating the transfer of powers to a Prime Minister through a 21st Amendment?
Or, is the 21st Amendment yet another political ruse, a mere cosmetic exercise where Parliament will go through the motions of trying to enact the amendment and then, through mounting legal challenges and procrastinating, try to buy time till the supplies of gas, fuel and electricity normalise, hoping that the general public will then abandon the struggle?
There is also the chance that even if President Rajapaksa genuinely tries to enact a decent version of the 21st Amendment, the Basil brigade will try and scuttle it by voting against it in Parliament.
What everyone seems to ignore is the groundswell of support among the masses for the emasculation of executive powers of the Presidency. Any attempt to thwart the 21st Amendment, including subtle manoeuvres to enact a watered-down version will only result in an escalation of public discontent and anger against the government which is already at seismic proportions.
If the 21st Amendment is defeated, abandoned or diluted that anger can erupt in an ungainly and unprecedented manner. Once such forces are unleashed, they will be difficult to rein in with mere tear gas and water cannons.
We saw one such eruption on May 9. That cost the political career of Mahinda Rajapaksa. The next such eruption could cost the political career of Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
