12th March 2000

When will wisdom dawn on them?

The core of the debate surrounding the need to reform the constitution of 1978 consisted of two issues. These issues were the abolishment of the executive presidential system and the devolution of power that would win the confidence of the minorities. These issues though separate in appearance are in fact interconnected.

There cannot be genuine devolution of power in a system where a great deal of power is concentrated in the hands of a single individual. If the devolution of power means the democratization of the political system by giving greater opportunities for various communities to join the process of decision making, it is impossible to think that such an objective can be realized within a dictatorial system that arbitrarily concentrates power in the hands of a single individual.

Let us first remember that the type of executive presidential system that operates in Sri Lanka does not exist in any other democratic country with a presidential system. It was a hotchpotch created by J.R. Jayewardene who added together selected features of two contradictory presidential systems for the purpose of fulfilling his power seeking and selfish intentions.

After enacting this special system, Mr. Jayewardene said that you can't turn a woman into a man and a man into a woman. After this system was established, the democratic political process too became a service institution subservient to his wishes. It was the president who decided where democratic freedoms should exist and where they should not.

At the same time, the parliament which had been the supreme institution which represented the sovereignty of the people became one that functioned at the behest of the president. The president was the commander-in-chief of the three armed forces as well as the executive head of State. He headed the cabinet which was appointed by himself and had the right to keep for himself any number of cabinet posts. He could address the parliament at any time he wished but was never accountable to it. Although he functioned as the founder of state policies, the parliament could not criticise him. The president had the power to dissolve a parliament which did not carry out his wishes but the parliament had no power to remove a president that it did not like. For such action, the parliament had only a very limited scope. The president also appointed the judges of higher courts but the president could not be prosecuted under any circumstance.

These powers and privileges of the president remain intact even today. As Dr. Colvin R. de Silva had pointed out it is difficult under this system to remove even a president who had gone mad. How tragic it is that parties representing minority communities such as the TULF and SLMC have descended to the position of saying that such a destructive and dictatorial system should continue in the belief that it benefits the minorities. There cannot be a sense in talking about the democratic rights of the minorities while supporting such a presidential system.

S. Thondaman was the first to bring forward the flimsy argument that the executive presidency should be preserved since the system benefits the minorities as they too have the opportunity to decide who the ruler should be in such a system. The fact that other minority parties accepted this argument on the basis of superficial reasons without much investigation shows the philosophical poverty to which these parties have descended.

It is true that minority communities have the opportunity to vote in the selection of the head of State in the existing executive presidential system. However, if the elected leader is a dictatorial ruler, the minority communities have little room for winning their democratic rights. It is in a system of liberal democratic administration and not in an inflexible dictatorial regime that the communities working for their rights on a racial, religious, cultural or professional basis will have a greater freedom for bargaining for their rights.

The Special Report

Editorial/ Opinion Contents