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The proposed 20th Amendment was not the first box on the people’s tick list that demanded the nation’s foremost attention. Given the increasing instability of this government as it depended on the whim and fancy of an incongruous majority opposition for day to day survival, the pressing need for an immediate general election outranked all else.

President Maithripala Sirisena: A man of his word. Pic by Indika Handuwala

Thankfully the 20th Amendment Waiting for Godot is at long last over. Friday night’s announcement that Parliament stood dissolved must be welcomed with a hail of hallelujahs. Evidently the President, along with the Lankan public, had come to the end of his tether and decided enough was enough, that the mockery must stop, the pandemonium must be put down. But for some time it had not seemed that way.

Due to an intransigent opposition exploiting its majority hold in Parliament and placing its own agenda before the nation’s, the government appeared to be losing direction; a ship of state foundering in a whirlpool, rendered rudderless with the skipper seemingly more anchored to quelling the brewing mutinous storm in the galley than to braving the challenge posed by the swell and surge of the roaring deep and to steering the vessel into calmer waters with all eyes hooked on the voyage ahead.

The people waited for the singular cry ‘Polls Ahoy’ but no shout came from the lone lookout on the ship’s crows nest at the masthead of any sighting of the promised land, except to announce the circling flight of a homing albatross in the shape of the 20th Amendment, which gallingly refused to touch down on deck, in spite of all the winsome wooing and cooing done to seduce it to come aboard.

Maithripala Sirisena promised in his election manifesto that he would change the Executive Presidential System within 100 days of taking office. He pledged ‘to introduce a constitutional structure with an executive that is allied to the Parliament through the Cabinet’. The result was the 19th Amendment. Though it did not significantly reduce the powers of the executive presidency, it at least abolished the abominable 18th Amendment which had concentrated near absolute power in the Mahinda Rajapaksa presidency since 2010.

The 19th Amendment strengthened the national institutions vital to the proper functioning of any democracy by restoring its lost independence. It also introduced constitutional councils to act as a check and balance on executive power and to secure the impartiality of institutions such as the judiciary, police, elections, auditing and the office of the Attorney-General. It also gave the public a legal right to information. All in all, the 19th Amendment dealt with safeguarding and even enhancing people’s rights.

Thankfully, despite the grotesque antics of the UPFA opposition who even managed to degrade the august chamber of Parliament by turning it into a sordid den for a midnight feast held in the guise of an all night fast to express their protest against the ‘rights’ bonanza for a people long denied the privilege, the President was successful in securing its passage to have it enshrined in the Constitution by a five sixth majority.

It was the sort of legal enactment that would have justified even an inordinate delay in holding elections or taxing to the utmost the energies of the nation to have it embedded in the mother of all statute books. It was the alpha star in the legislative constellation that shone brightest since it reflected the aspirations of a free people who hold in their collective corpus the inalienable sovereignty of Lanka.

But could the same be said of the other major constitutional change, Maithripala promised to implement in his 100 day plan, namely electoral reform which formed the basis of the proposed 20th Amendment? Especially if it entailed having to endure a never ending wait to see it passed?

For the first time in its parliamentary history, Lanka has a minority government, which has come into existence due to extraordinary circumstances. It has received its legitimacy from the fact that Maithripala Sirisena rode to the presidency by campaigning on the basis that he, if elected, would appoint Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Prime Minister of a national government, mainly made up of members of both the UNP and the SLFP; and thus the UNP-led minority government can claim to a mandate from the people to govern, albeit, temporarily.

But, though its official leader is President Sirisena, the majority party in Parliament, the SLFP, is itself a house divided. A significant number of its members are not camping at the party’s traditional Darley Road political office, but found moonlighting, even in gaudy day, seeking refuge in the former SLFP president Rajapaksa’s political office at a Buddhist temple, Abhayarama at Narahenpitiya where the old faithful of that corruption tainted Rajapaksa regime now flock to pay homage to their messiah Mahinda and to assiduously follow his precepts, abide by his tenets and await his next advent.

The guiding Rajapaksa philosophy now emanating from this hallowed temple grounds, the jingle bells that now religiously ring Mahinda’s political message, the ‘jayawevas’ of Rajapaksa supporters that have replaced the ‘sadu, sadhus’ of Buddhist devotees, all dictate to an alarming degree the vicissitudes of this nation’s political life. Worse, they had, commanding a majority of the majority party, successfully given rise to the crisis in Parliament and in government.

Common sense dictates that no minority government can survive for long and that fresh elections must be called to break the deadlock. President Sirisena, however, had declared that Parliament would be dissolved only after the 20th Amendment was passed into law. That turned out to be an impossible dream, an unreachable star. And with the nation’s long overdue business further held up with such terminal instability in government, the question that must be asked now is whether the 20th Amendment was worth the wait?

Whilst the 19th Amendment was inspiring in its idealistic purpose to further advance the democratic rights of Lanka’s citizenry, dealing as it did with the rights of the people, the dry as dust proposed 20th Amendment concerned in the main the rights of politicians and abysmally failed to stir and capture the public imagination. If the 19th Amendment dealt in matters sublime and trod the high ground, then the proposed 20th Amendment dealt with matter more mundane and had taken the low road engulfing the public in an apathetic mist of boredom and sheer indifference.

For the last two months and more, the 20th Amendment had continued to hug the news. And politicians on all sides of the political divide had unitedly treated the subject as if the masses had nothing better to do than listen to their long drawn debates and analyse and ponder over their convoluted justifications or give earnest ear to their prolix ridden appeals why this country needs a 275-seat Parliament to better represent the people’s interest compared to a 237-seat or a 255-seat House or whether the people’s interest could just as well be served by sticking to the present 225-seat parliament.

Politicians had continued in this tiresome vein nonstop believing perhaps that their discussions engrossed the masses’ attention when perhaps the voter’s mind was more fittingly and thrillingly bent on fantasising a drive in the new Lamborghini URUS two-seater convertible. If talk of the seat limit was not enough to occupy the ambit of politicians’ capacity to bore the public to death, they then proceeded to discuss the second stage of the beached whale they had brought and left stranded in parliament. This area of the subject concerned how many seats out of the set limit could be reserved for those who failed to be first-past-the-post winners, so they too could enter Parliament through the side door via the preferential list.

And to confuse the voter and confound the Elections Commissioner, there was even the suggestion put forward by minority parties to have two ballot papers for the voter. One ballot paper was to be used to vote for the preferred party; the other to vote for the preferred candidate. What could this possibly mean? Did it mean that you could vote for the UNP on the party ballot as your favourite party and choose, for instance, Mr Sampanthan of the Tamil National Alliance as your best loved candidate?

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe this week charged the SLFP of employing delaying tactics. He said, “All what is before the Opposition Leader today is to support the objective of his party leader. The Opposition has rejected the 100-day programme and their leader. They appointed Maithripala Sirisena their party leader and is now engaged in clandestine operations to remove him.”

That then was the crux of the matter. The reality was that power had fled the banks of the Diyawanna and taken residence elsewhere. The people’s representatives in the majority opposition party did not give expression to the people’s concerns, no longer echoed the people’s voice, but instead, making use of the parliamentary podium, vociferously attempted to deflect the allegations of corruptions levelled against them; and, instead of championing the people’s interests, blew another’s horn to make real another’s pipe dream.

Their thumping majority in the House accorded them the power to reject any bill the Government may bring and this enabled them to throw the spanner in the works and bring the entire government machinery to a halt at any time of their choosing. This majority also conferred upon them the power to successfully pass any no confidence motion against the UNP prime minister even on the flimsiest of grounds and thus topple the government overnight at the drop of a party hat. . With such a dual sword in their armoury, no wonder then they wished to see the life of this moribund parliament artificially prolonged. They sucked the lifeblood of a people and nearly bled the nation dry.

On Thursday cabinet spokesman and Minister Rajitha Senaratne admitted that it had become difficult to introduce electoral reforms. Yet he insisted that Parliament would be dissolved only after the proposed 20th Amendment to the Constitution was enacted. President Sirisena did not want to dissolve the legislature without implementing at least the main pledges he had given the masses, the Minister emphasized. “I admit there are difficulties in achieving a consensus on the 20th Amendment Bill introduced to change the electoral system. But, the next general election will be held only after the bill is passed” he said.

President Sirisena is a man of his word and it was admirable that he was determined to honour his election pledges. But it is the common vice of unscrupulous men to exploit the virtues of others to their own benefit. To them, to those who desired to delay the last breath of this parliament, Senaratne’s assurance would have been sweeter than honey. To the people it was life’s rendition of Beckett’s absurdist play Waiting for Godot where two characters endlessly wait in vain for the arrival of someone called Godot who never turns up. The question for the nation was whether the 20th Amendment was worth the fruitless wait?

If not for Friday night’s decision to dissolve parliament and call for fresh elections, Sri Lankan Flight 2015 would still be taxiing the runway and going round in circles. News from the control tower would have indicated that until a new passenger manifest was completed and a new cockpit crew had boarded the craft, takeoff would be further delayed. Now with the president finally deciding on elections, it is time to fasten your seat belts. Godspeed to all.