President Mahinda Rajapaksa will abandon moves to amend the Constitution to enable him to contest any number of times for this post.
Instead, he has agreed ‘in principle’ to create the office of an Executive Prime Minister.
The change in thinking was conveyed yesterday by President Rajapaksa to Opposition UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. The two held a one-on-one meeting last morning at the ‘Janadipathi Mandiraya’ (President’s House) to discuss the proposed constitutional amendments and other political issues.
President Rajapaksa’s decision to back off from going ahead with the extension of his maximum two-term tenure comes just two days after Mr. Wickremesinghe had publicly declared he was willing to co-operate with the Government to abolish the executive presidency and create the post of executive Prime Minister.
He said such a move should not be detrimental to democracy. Mr. Wickremesinghe made these remarks when he first met national newspaper editors at his Cambridge Place office on Wednesday and at a public rally thereafter.
During yesterday’s meeting, Mr. Wickremesinghe agreed with President Rajapaksa to have a UNP-led United National Front delegation hold talks with a Government delegation on these constitutional changes. The first meeting will be held tomorrow at 5 p.m.
The UNF delegation will be led by Mr. Wickremesinghe and include UNP deputy leader Karu Jayasuriya, former Speaker, Joseph Michael Perera, Sri Lanka Muslim Congress Leader Rauff Hakeem and Gamini Jayawickrema Perera.
John Amaratunga was to be included but UNP officials said he was abroad.
It was likely that the discussions will necessitate the creation of separate committees to go into each of the specific subjects that are to be discussed. This might require the induction of more members into the consultative process.
President Rajapaksa and Mr. Wickremasinghe also discussed other matters, particularly issues relating to the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, electoral reforms and related topics. The UNP leader had pointed out that his party’s position had been spelt out during talks deputy leader, Jayasuriya held with Minister D.E.W. Gunasekera, who headed a parliamentary select committee on constitutional reforms.
Both leaders came to some consensus yesterday that a return to the British Westminster model of governance was not the best for Sri Lanka. However, they agreed that such a model could not be abandoned altogether and some of the good aspects would have to be incorporated in the proposed changes.
As a result of the new turn of events, draft constitutional amendments will not be presented in Parliament in the coming weeks as previously proposed by the Government. |
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