News
CC takes shape: Members to be named this week
Appointments to the proposed Constitutional Council are to be finalised this week. President Maithripala Sirisena’s nominee to the Council is Power and Energy Minister and Jathika Hela Urumaya General Secretary Champika Ranawaka. Tamil National Alliance Parliamentary Group leader R. Sampanthan has been nominated to represent political parties or independent groups in Parliament other than the ones to which the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition belong.
The two other parliamentarians who will be in the ten member council are Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe and Chief Opposition Whip John Seneviratne while former Auditor General S.C. Mayadunne and former United Nations Under-Secretary General Radhika Coomaraswamy are tipped to be named as two of the three civil society members of the CC.
There is no decision on who the third member will be but a nomination will be made in the coming week, the Sunday Times learns.
The Speaker, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition will be ex-officio members of the CC with the Speaker as chairman. The quorum for CC meetings will be five members.
Once the CC is constituted, it will name members to nine independent commissions set up under the 19th Amendment.They include the Elections Commission, the Public Services Commission, the National Police Commission, the Auditing Service Commission, the Human Rights Commission, the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption, the Finance Commission, the Delimitation Commission and the National Procurement Commission.