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The rhetoric of the Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) Presidency in calling on the public to ‘fill’ the Sri Lanka Parliament with members of his National Peoples’ Power (NPP) party in the General Elections on 14th November 2024, has given rise to significant democratic discomfort.

 ‘Strong majorities’ and political chaos

How can this not be so given that the President does not speak in a historical vacuum with our turbulent political past exhibiting exactly why this is such a disastrous eventuality? Slickly comforting reassurances from his Cabinet that the NPP will wear its mantle of power ‘lightly,’ does not suffice to calm this anxiety. This is so even with generous leeway afforded to the sincerity of some, (note the caveat), NPP candidates including several female activists gingerly dipping their toes into political hot waters.

But good intentions aside, Sri Lankans have seen, and heard, enough calls for ‘strong majorities’ that have disintegrated to political chaos sooner or later. For that matter, arrogant, ignorant or naïve leadership decisions have as much catastrophic effect as nakedly racist and communalistic politics which have thankfully receded from the political stage currently. Thus, acts of Presidents with crawling political sycophants in the House salaaming to their will, have had devastating consequences.

Sri Lanka’s declaration of bankruptcy in 2022 was a direct result of that deadly combination of forces. Declaratory judgments handed down by the Supreme Court have had little practical impact on those named and shamed. In other contexts, the enforcement of compensatory awards for culpable Presidential failures is akin to coaxing water from stone. Last year’s findings of negligence on the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks against former President Maithripala Sirisena and his defence, police and intelligence chiefs are a case in point.

No absolute power in the Presidency or in Parliament

That compensation was grudgingly doled out only a few weeks ago. In other words, Sri Lanka’s record of post 1978 ‘strong leadership’ has been less than stellar, to put it mildly. Essentially, this was why the assurance of the NPP as well as its main Opposition, the Premadasa-led Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) to abolish the office of the Executive Presidency was taken to heart by Sri Lankan voters. The demand was for less (not more) power to be vested in a single political force or office.

That caution applies equally to the Presidential office and to a monolithic Parliament. This sharp reminder is necessary given President Dissanayake’s demand to the people during an ‘electioneering’ rally that, (verbatim quote from the Sinhalese), “The need is for a strong peoples’ mandate. I hear talk in certain places about an Opposition. An Opposition? No. What we need now is a powerful Government… so, on 14th November, think no more of it but fill the Parliament with the ‘Malimawa’ (NPP candidates).’’

He explained that a ‘strong Government’ is needed to assess certain deals that are inimical to the national interest and to take certain decisions ‘strongly.’ But rather than asking for Parliament to be ‘filled’ with the NPP, which translates into a 2/3 majority, that point could have been made in a different way altogether. Absent such nuanced speaking, both the phrasing of that message and his emphatic delivery thereto raises alarm bells.

Security chiefs’ asking to ‘withdraw’ FR cases

On a previous occasion when giving a pep talk to his candidates, the President asked them to treat the miserable fate of Governments that grabbed huge parliamentary majorities but were unceremoniously thrown out by the people, as a warning. That executive address was far more measured. Meanwhile, reportage that the President had directed the Attorney General to ‘address allegations’ against law enforcement officers tasked with controlling the underworld, was equally problematic.

Apparently this had followed requests from ‘security chiefs’ to ‘withdraw’ fundamental rights cases filed against them during a meeting of the National Security Council. Is this news report, carried in multiple media, a result of abysmal media coverage, misdirected releases by the Presidential Secretariat if such had been released or a bad mixture of both? It is difficult to say. Regardless, the Attorney General is not in the business of ‘withdrawing’ fundamental rights cases.

Neither should the President be in the business of directing intervention in judicial processes on ‘requests’ by affected individuals, ‘security chiefs’ or not. In any case these references to ‘withdrawals’ in the news reports are wholly misconceived in law. The filing of fundamental rights challenges by citizens under Article 126 of the Constitution is not referable to the Attorney General at any stage of the process.

A conflict of interest and constitutional rights

In fact, even when petitioners have themselves applied to withdraw the rights cases filed by them, the Court (at least in past decades) has not permitted automatic withdrawal but called upon the petitioner to establish reasons for the same. This is because alleged constitutional violations go beyond being a concern of a private individual alone. And to stress the point, it does not matter if the petitioner in a fundamental rights case is a law abiding citizen or a member of the underworld.

Several judicial precedents have clearly affirmed that there must be equal treatment under the law even if the victim is ‘a hard core criminal, whose tribe deserves no sympathy’ (see, Silva v Kodithuwakku, IGP and others, 1987). If however, this Presidential call goes to compelling the Attorney General to appear for law enforcement officers implicated in fundamental rights cases in the Supreme Court, it is equally serious. We are told that ‘security chiefs’ have complained to the President that affected officers have had to pay for private counsel to defend them. But that is beside the point.

The state law office generally refrains from appearing for police officers alleged to have brutally tortured suspects in police custody. The President is not enabled to compel the Attorney General to change that practice. This question goes beyond a matter of conscience. When the state law office is coerced to defend police officers at a fundamental rights hearing and on another level, is required to file indictment against those officers in the High Court under the Convention Against Torture Act (the CAT Act 1994), an obvious conflict of interest emerges.

‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely’

Or is this request to the President to withdraw indictments filed under the CAT Act where a potential accused officer is involved in underworld operations? What will we have next? Requests by corrupt businessmen and politicians to ‘withdraw’ court cases filed against them on the basis that they funded/supported the party in power? Surely that was the stamp of previous political regimes which the NPP had vowed to change, was it not?

In sum, the one positive feature of the upcoming polls is the voluntary ‘retirement’ of discredited politicians of the ‘Rajapaksa brand.’ That said, Sri Lankan voters must regard all politicians, even a self-professed ‘man of the people’, with the realistic rider that, ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ In other words, what is needed is a working majority for the Government and an energetic Opposition for the constitutional balance to be maintained in the House.

For that, of course, the Opposition must be ‘politically healthy’ on its own part, including taking a leaf from the NPP book by refraining from exhibiting family members of candidates in public events. That said, it behoves President Dissanayake to exhibit more gravitas in his electioneering if he does not wish to be seen as calling for a one-party government on the feared style of the ‘hammer and sickle’ in Sri Lanka.

If however, his intention was precisely that, then this call must be rejected with the greatest force.