Form of Government suited for development: Presidential or Parliamentary?
There is now an intense public discussion as to what form of government suits Sri Lanka (SL) after the presentation of the 19th Amendment of the constitution to parliament.
Reasons for amendment
Why should, in fact, the 1978 constitution be amended? Firstly it exceeded the power of parliament to govern the country; there were no checks and balances; the President enjoyed immunity from prosecution. The 18th amendment introduced in 2010 made it worse – centralised all power; absolute power led to absolute corruption; a reign of fear and lawlessness began to take hold.
The standard of living of the people also had deteriorated due mainly to high indirect taxes imposed on practically all consumer goods; the resulting protection of domestic production or import substitution did not create the jobs desired by the unemployed but in fact worsened the inequality of incomes; investments which could have solved joblessness were discouraged not only due to the absence of a suitable environment but also due to corruption that siphoned off funds that could have been used for the purpose/investment. Some Sri Lankans including professionals therefore left the country in their thousands in search of employment; the unskilled among them landed lowly jobs; in certain countries, the latter were treated as slaves; the remittances of their hard earned wages created a sense of complacency particularly among the ruling circles that there was nothing wrong with the economy.
People’s needs
So when the people of the country voted at the elections on January 8 they appeared to show that they were not only thoroughly opposed to the Presidential form of government but were also dissatisfied with an economic system that did not deliver the standards of living they desired, though the rulers bragged about the high rates of GDP growth.
All this gives rise to the assumption that the people of the country opted for a parliamentary form of government led by a Prime Minister which would ensure better living conditions. The question then is does the 19th Amendment which proposes a government headed by a President with certain non-essential and ceremonial types of powers give the people what they wanted?
Systems of Government
Let us pause for a few moments and consider the various systems of government that the world has seen. According to the literature (e.g. International Briefing Paper 27, Systems of Government, Democracy Reporting, 2012) on the subject there are (a) the Presidential system where in the main the President holds executive power and runs the day-to- day affairs of government, while the parliament has legislative power, (b) the parliamentary cabinet system where the parliament holds legislative power and at the same time conducts government via a cabinet of ministers headed by a prime minister. The President on the other hand is granted certain ceremonial and rubber stamping powers of legislation and (c) the semi Presidential or ‘hybrid’ system in which the President holds certain executive functions in addition to the dissolution of parliament, while the parliament deals with legislative powers; some of the executive powers are also held by a cabinet of ministers topped by a prime minister.
Parliamentary or Hybrid System?
According to the draft bill on the 19th Amendment, the President while being the head of state and the leader of the government will also be the commander in chief of the security forces. The subjects assigned to him are the promotion of ethnic and religious harmony as well as the creation of conditions conducive to holding free and fair elections. This does not look like a hybrid system of government although not a full-fledged parliamentary system either.
Advantages and Disadvantages
The disadvantage of this hybrid system is that the presence of a directly elected President may create future situations which may end up with dictatorial presidencies as in the case of the last. However, there is an advantage of a true hybrid system with the President being able to hold certain executive powers particularly after the introduction of provisions like the removal of immunity to be brought before a court of law and impeachment for omissions and commissions, to hold him in check (there is some doubt that these may work) to counter such dictatorial tendencies.
The advantage is that it may provide political stability especially because the President could take control in times of national or political conflict (if given sufficient powers to intervene in case of a political or other crisis) which can occur due to the peculiar conditions prevailing in the country e.g. the racial and religious hatreds and the possibility that political parties here may not sometimes be able to form a government as in the case of Israel recently. The parliamentary system can also be slow for such reasons in addition to the tendency to ‘talk and talk’ with no decisions being taken.
Thus a further advantage of a hybrid system with checks and balances is the possibility of assigning to the President the monitoring/coordinating executive functions the need for which arise from overlapping portfolios of the ministers. For this purpose the provision for the President to promote ethnic and religious harmony and create conditions necessary for holding free and fair elections may have to be broadened and in addition allowed to contest a second time as consistency of the right economic policies has to be maintained at least for 10 years as demonstrated by the success of some of the economies of East Asia like South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. Actually their export oriented growth policies have been consistently followed for 20- 30 years.
Visionary leadership
Though the rulers of some of these successful countries have been described as authoritative, those of South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore “were credited with visionary leadership” and “in Korea monitoring of key economic variables (notably exports) was an obsession” as revealed by the paper by Danny M. Leipziger, Vinod Thomas, Lessons of East Asia: an Overview of Country Experience, the World Bank, 1995.
Similarly it is essential for a President of SL under a hybrid system to have such a long term vision of improving the common wellbeing (as he can and should rise above the rest in government and the opposition) and be intensely dedicated to export expansion (as it is a major strategy for increasing the real incomes of the people in a small economy, the domestic economy being too small to drive economic growth) and other subjects.
Consensus on a Winning Culture
In order to achieve a vision, it is the responsibility of a leader is to build consensus on a winning culture (shared attitudes, values, goals and practices- Harvard Business Review, February-July 2014) relevant to his/her future vision of working for the wellbeing of the people, as indicated by the following quote: “they (leaders and bureaucracies) achieved national consensus in development goals and had centralized political apparatus to implement their fairly interventionist strategies” (Danny M Leipziger, Vinod Thomas, Lessons of East Asia: an Overview of Country Experience, the World Bank,1995).
The leader has to indicate to the people how the culture turns into day-to–day action. In the case of SL, the specifics of such everyday action could be described as contributing to building an environment conducive to investment by avoiding racial and religious conflicts and good governance, to maintaining law and order, saving ones income as much as possible, acquiring the soft (good values, integrity, hard work, creativity, communication in English, etc) and technical skills demanded by businesses, continuously increasing and adding value to outputs from available inputs (productivity) and so on. Such consensus building could be assigned to the President. In undertaking this he (and in fact the Prime Minister and the ministers) could talk to the people continuously in precise terms (transparency) and explain to the people in a language they understand. The late Lee Kuan Yew is believed to have talked to gatherings of people for hours on end, on such terms to build such consensus on a vision and culture for Singapore.
Another requirement to enable the reaching of a consensus is to take action to reduce inequality of incomes (the poorest 20 per cent of the population accounts for 4.4 per cent of the household income while the richest 20 per cent account for 54 per cent of the household income according to official data which indicates the heavy inequality in SL) to gain public trust by way of investing heavily in people e.g., improving the productivity of rural agriculture (on which 16-17 million people depend directly or indirectly in SL) and health/education. For instance in South Korea, the ‘Semaul un dong’ land consolidation and re-plotting movement, in Malaysia, the increasing of incomes of the bhumiputras and in Singapore, the housing programme for the poor are supposed to have reduced racial/national tensions and induced trust and tolerance among the people by achieving reasonable equality of incomes.
Thus, this is the crucial time the 19th Amendment and even other constitutional reforms have to be used by the leadership of the country to make a meaningful and positive change for the long term wellbeing of the people.