Who wants the
20th Amendment, the people of Sri Lanka or the JVP ?
The people
of Sri Lanka
do not want the 20th Amendment. They will instead accept an
amendment to the 19A to give back to the President the Executive Powers taken away from him to enable him to dissolve
the Parliament or sack the Prime Minister who the people of the country do not
want any more.
The 20th
Amendment presented by the JVP is not only to remove the executive powers of
the President , but also remove the elected President. Instead the 20th
Amendment proposes the election of a
member of the Parliament as the
President by the members of the Parliament. In other words under 20A the future
President of Sri Lanka would not be a person elected by the people.
Hence the 20 A is for the benefit of JVP
which cannot win more than six parliamentary seats at an election. The JVP with
this amendment expects to have a President favourable to it elected in the
Parliament , and a Prime Minister
favourable to JVP prepare the list of Ministers of the Cabinet to be sent to the
President for his pseudo approval? The President will be under the control
of the Cabinet of Ministers. The
President of Sri Lanka elected under 20A will not represent the People, but the
Parliament. What a prospect for the
people of Sri Lanka
?
But voila
the JVP would at last hope to have Ministers
in a future Government which would be
not of the people, by the people and for the people !!!
A pandit
says the Executive President could be
done away with as the Supreme Court can do the controls an Executive President
is expected to do. What nonsense !! We
saw how the Yahapalanaya managed to deviate from Supreme Court decisions to
pass undesirable Parliamentary acts like the Local Government Election Bill
with which the Country is now burdened with more than 8000 Provincial Council
Members.
We even saw
the Supreme Court giving a wrong interpretation to a clause in the Constitution
in the impeachment of the Chief Justice. The 19th Amendment should
have been removed as it does not stand the challenges the people are faced with
unable even to remove an unpopular Prime Minister or dissolve the Parliament.
What is the guarantee that ruling given
by the Supreme Court is not carried out by a
cunning Prime Minister led by foreign anti Sri Lanka forces, using other means to deviate from the SC ruling
?
With the 19th
Amendment to the Constitution Sri Lanka is already facing a dilemma with a powerless
President unable to sack an unpopular
Prime Minister or dissolve the Parliament. From the day one the Sirisena
Ranil Government was instituted it had not been a voter friendly government.
Further
more the Sirisena Ranil Government does
not represent any more the people it elected, and remains rejected by a massive vote of the people
against the candidates of the UNP and SLFP at the Local Government elections. But now the Executive President whose powers have been
reduced by the 19th Amendment is left with only a few of his former
supporters in Parliament.
The
Yahapalanaya Government does not follow democratic principles making a mockery
of democracy in the Sri Lanka
Parliament. The Speaker of the Parliament today is an official unable to take independent
democratic decisions on his own being led by the nose by his party leader the
Prime Minister. He allows seditious, and offensive speeches, subjecting
selected members of parliament for vilification made regularly by a Minister a former Army Commander who does
not understand subtle diplomacy, or knows
how to control his speeches and behave respectably within the
Parliament.
The speaker
of the Parliament refused to accept a
group of more than 50 Parliamentarians as the opposition of the Parliament and
instead appointed the leader of a group of Parliamentarians-TNA representing only one Community of the Country
with 16 members as the leader of the Opposition, because his party had signed
an agreement with the government which had promised to make them the Parliamentary Opposition.
In this
situation is this the correct Parliament
in which to introduce a very controversial inacceptable Constitutional
Amendment like the 20A propose by JVP which does not even represent a
respectable percentage of the people of the country ?
In the
meantime it becomes apparent that an “invisible hand” moves the
unpopular pseudo Marxist JVP to propose a 20th Amendment
which if passed even by accident would cause more trouble than the hastily
adopted 19 A . It is surprising the 20th
Amenment comes with India
proposing development of North and East and the unpopular Prime Minister Ranil
W visiting the North and signs agreements promising plans for the development
of the North and East.
The
American Ambassador states that USA
will go hand in hand with Sri
Lanka in its development projects. But USA has so far given nothing for the development
of Sri Lanka .
Why has India taken up the development of the village of Venerable Late
Sobhitha Thero in Anuradhapura .
Strange coincidences along side JVP’s
move to present the 20th Amendment to the constitution. At a recent
Hiru TV program Salakuna JVP leader admits that the 20 Amendment was written by
people he is not ready to name.
JVP went
with capitalist UNP to denounce the Rajapakses and make them unpopular, hoping that people will rally round them as a
people friendly political party. But in the meantime the name of another Rajapakse is being brandished as a possible Presidential Candidate and a popular
one at that, there is therefore a panic
reaction within the Yahapalanaya
Government and those of its supporters.
It is in
that situation that the JVP has been suggested by the “invisible hands moving ” behind it to prepare a plan instead of removing the
executive powers of the President, to
remove the President himself from being elected by the people, so that the
chances of the other Rajapake to be elected at a future Presidential election
becomes nul and void.
That is certainly
why the JVP now presents the 20th Amendment removing the
constitutional right of the people to elect
a President by their vote, but instead elect a President in the Parliament from
amoung its members.
Hence as the other Rajapakse is known to be able to do the right thing by the people
and fearless to ask interfering foreign enemies
to roll up their mats and make a quick
escape, it is possible those enemies of Sri Lanka may have sounded the JVP of the danger of
their falling out of political power and having to spend years in political
wilderness, has come up with a 20th Amendment to
the Constitution no different from the disastrous 13Amendment to the
Constitution which was forced ino it by
India.
Therefore, a
President should represent that glory of the past. A President with executive
powers is necessary when the Parliament with their elected representatives fail
to deliver the services expected of it to the people.
The
Yahapalanaya Government of the Present Parliament is not people friendly as
some of its members have forgotten the reason why they had been elected, and
instead of attending to the welfare of the people, they are attending to their
own welfare, committing even daylight robberies of the Central Bank.
The
Yahapalanaya Government prepared the
situation to suit their purpose by passing the 19th Amendment, which
has made to-day’s Parliament ineffective and a burden to the people with the
executive powers of the President curtailed making him unable to redress the situation by changing the Prime Minister- the cause of all present ills
of inefficient Yahapalanaya Government
with a Parliament which cannot even be
dissolved by its President.
In this
situation presenting a 20th Amendment to the Constitution is a sheer
suicide of the Parliamentary democracy in Sri Lanka . It is also the end of
the more than 2600 years history of Sinhala Buddhist heritage, which the
minority Tamil and Muslim Communities, and the UNP and JVP ignore. Because the
Sinhala Buddhist culture and Buddhism is not their concern.
Therefore,
the 20h Amendment proposed by the JVP should be rejected, and the Excuive
Presidency preserved. We should continue
with the 1978 Constitution without attempting to write a new Constitution now.
The 20 th
Amendment is not what the people want today. The people are tired of the
Yahapalanaya Government which has deceived them. The Yahapalanaya and the JVP have done nothing to
improve their condition of living. The poor are getting poorer. The prices
of every consumable commodity are
daily on the increase. The Ministers responsible come to TV not to speak
of solutions but merely to say that
things are better than it had been during the previous Government.