Is the 20th Amendment JVP’s Panic Reaction to Gotabhaya’s possible entry into Politics ?

Who wants the 20^th Amendment, the people of Sri Lanka or the JVP ?  

The people of Sri Lanka do not want the 20^th 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 20^th Amendment presented by the JVP is not only to remove the executive powers of the President , but also remove the elected President. Instead the 20^th 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 19^th 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 19^th 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 19^th 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 20^th Amendment which if passed even by accident would cause more trouble than the hastily adopted  19 A. It is surprising the 20^th 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 20^th 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 20^th 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 20^th Amendment to the Constitution no different from the disastrous 13Amendment to the Constitution which was forced  ino it by India.

Sri Lanka has a Royal lineage .  The past history of Sri Lanka  before it was colonised and terrorised by foreigners was ruled by great kings and each time it was ruled by  a Sinhala Buddhist  King  he united  the whole country under him, and  the country prospered. Hence,  the people of Sri Lanka- the Sinhala Buddhists who claim direct relation to that royal heritage have in their veins the pride of their great Sinhala  Kings and that is why even today a good leader capable of uniting the country and bring peace and security is popularly acclaimed as their ancients with their Kings.

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 19^th 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 20^th 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.