Architect of the 19th Amendment condemns it as ‘The Curse of Lanka’
Sirisena snuffs out the lone candle that shone solitary light on his presidency
If there is one solitary candle that serves to dispel the darkness of Maithripala Sirisena’s otherwise lacklustre rule as President of Sri Lanka, it is the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
When it was enacted due to his strenuous efforts during his first hundred honeymoon days as the newly elected president in April 2015 by a Parliament which voted 215 with 9 abstaining and only one against it, it was heralded as his supreme moment of achievement: his shining hour when a Lankan president kept to his election pledge to strengthen the pillars of democracy of the country, even sacrifice his own executive powers he had just been vested with in the cause of the people’s freedoms. It was the peacock feather in his presidential cap, not even his worst detractors could deny him credit. The nation stood rooted in gratitude at the spectacle of a man publicly castrating himself of his executive powers for the nation’s greater good.
Four and a half years into his presidency, the candle’s flame still burns, the nation pours its oil to keep the wick alight but the man who claimed the laurels for its light now seeks to snuff the very candle he waxed into being. And condemns it as the ‘curse of Lanka’.
Last Sunday, in an extraordinary U- turn even by his own standouts of vacillation, he made his astonishing declaration. Calling for sweeping reforms to the country's constitution that he introduced in 2015 to be rolled back, he said the 19A was responsible for political instability.
“The 19th Amendment,” he declared, “is a curse and whoever comes to power at the next presidential poll should abolish it, if he loves the country. The 19th Amendment should be scrapped because it has led to a power struggle. It "has triggered instability. There is no single leader."
Sirisena said, "People believe that the president and Prime Minister are pulling in different directions. And the 19th Amendment is responsible."
It is as if the president, having found scapegoat after scapegoat to burden his many failures that mark the record of his short four year tenure, has come to the nadir of his imagination; and, having run out of other goats which had been slaughtered in the process, has now turned to
his own creation, the 19th Amendment, as the latest and last scapegoat available to blame and sacrifice at the altar of his now regular ritual killings done to atone his own cardinal sins of gross misgovernance.
In November 2016, in an interview with the Indian newspaper, the Hindu, he was asked: When you look back now, how does it feel? What do you consider your biggest success as President?
His answer: “Now 22 months have passed since I became the President. I am satisfied with my performance during this time. There are reasons for that. Firstly, I succeeded in getting the 19th Amendment to the Constitution passed in parliament. We actually proposed that the executive powers of the President be reduced immediately. The Supreme Court said major clauses cannot be deleted without a referendum. Furthermore, the Supreme Court told us what could be done with two- thirds majority in parliament. So we have changed clauses to the maximum extent possible with twothirds majority in parliament.
“Establishment of independent commissions is another reason. It was essential for the country to ensure [ protection of] human rights, democratic rights, fundamental rights and the freedom of the people. I have ensured that people get these rights; I have succeeded in doing that as President. I have given the maximum possible media freedom. There are no killings, abductions or cases of intimidation of media persons. They don’t have to leave the country any more. Those who had fled the country earlier have now returned. That is what people expected from me. When the people made me the President, they did not ask for food, water or clothes. They wanted a society where they could live freely and happily. I have given that to the people.”
The problem seems to be the president, instead of basking in the limelight and enjoying the accolade of introducing the 19th Amendment, he has to go and switch the lights off and blackout his own shining hour in Lanka’s recent history.
And to make matters worse for him, his own party secretary, Dayasiri Jayasekera, claimed this week that the president has been duped by the UNP, taken for a sucker by the crafty knights at Ranil’s Camelot, to getting him to engineer the 19th Amendment to the statute books.
Not a very nice and flattering compliment was it for the President of Lanka to be told by his own lackey, the General Secretary of his own party, the SLFP, no less, that he, Sirisena, is the sort of chappie was clay in UNP hands, knew whose naiveté knew no bounds?
Nor for that matter would it have been of any comfort to the electorate when the present general secretary of the SLFP cast ridicule on the president and cast him in the mould of a Quasimodo, bumbling about in Lanka’s Notre Dame Cathedral. For the six million and three hundred thousand odd voters who elected him to the highest office on the land in 2015, in the fullest confidence and trust, to be told now at this late hour, they had enthroned one whose attic was bare even as Mother Hubbard’s larder was bare, not only now but even then?
Dayasiri Jayasekera -- who pole-vaulted from the SLFP first in 2001 to the UNP, who then in 2013 pole- vaulted to Mahinda Rajapaksa camp and led a vicious ‘ hitang’, hutang’ campaign against his present leader Sirisena on Mahinda’s election platform, young hands and mouth his erstwhile terrible twin Wimal Weerawansa to spout vitriolic filth at Sirisena and who immediately gave up the Rajapaksa ghost on the latter’s defeat on January 9, 2015 and joined the Sirisena campaign without an iota of regret or remorse -- had to dig it in further when he said, “the President Maithripala Sirisena hadn’t been really aware of the implications of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, enacted in 2015.”
Not really aware? Does he mean that Sirisena was ignorant, clueless as to the import of the 19 Amendment he signed into law?
When the media questioned him why President Sirisena had pushed the UPFA parliamentary group to vote for the 19th Amendment thereby making available the required two-thirds majority to adopt it if he had been ignorant of the proposed law, MP Jayasekera said that the President had been betrayed by those he had reposed his faith in.
When the media reminded MP Jayasekera how President Sirisena had convinced nearly 70 UPFA MPs who were to vote against the 19th Amendment, to change their stand at the 11th hour, Jayasekera said that he, too, was aware of how hard President Sirisena campaigned for the 19th Amendment. But even Sirisena cannot be that ignorant and still be so determined to make a constitutional amendment bill part of the nation’s constitutional law, now can it, Mr. Jayasekera? What’s your agenda? That makes you cast scorn on Sirisena in a political double entendre beyond compare?
Of course, Sirisena’s denunciation of his own babe, the 19th Amendment, his disavowal of it due to ignorance of the import of its chapter and verse, his infernal description of it as the original sin of all Lanka’s woe, let alone his pathetic own; his confession of his responsibility to its conception, birth and enactment, his own willingness to be nailed to the cross for his ignorance as to its significance and consequences, it was just manna from heaven for Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Overjoyed by the President’s indictment of the 19th Amendment as the main culprit to the present turmoil and mayhem, Rajapaksa told journalists after visiting Dharmapalarama Vihara in Dehiwela on Monday that, ‘ it is great that President Maithripala Sirisena has finally realised the 19th Amendment is a mess’.
He rejoiced that the President had at last learnt that, “the 19th Amendment was brought in by his government has been a disaster. Nevertheless, it is a good thing that he has realised, after the lapse of four and a half years, that it is a mess. The country is in disarray owing to 19A.”
But merely because President Sirisena badmouthed the 19th Amendment neither did he wish to roll time ten years back to the year 2010 when the Rajapaksa regimes, capitalising on a nation intoxicated with the grape of victory over the Tamil Tigers introduced the draconian 19th Amendment and, in broad daylight, stole from the people their fundamental right to have democracy’s pillars further strengthened not weakened to gratify the megalomaniac lust for power overtly manifested in the visage of the triumphant Rajapaksa regime to rule forever with an iron fist concealed within a velvet glove, with a royal Rajapaksa dynasty to be foisted on the political landscape behind the guise of a democratic mask.
What Sirisena had to say last Sunday about the 18th Amendment was “The 18th Amendment to the Constitution is a dictatorial one but the 19th Amendment prevented a sound government.”
Responding to the President's remarks that both the 18th and 19th constitutional amendments should be repealed, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa who arrogated to himself under the 19th Amendment virtual absolute power, responded, saying, “The President was critical of both these constitutional amendments. However, the 18th Amendment is not an issue. President Sirisena, too, contributed to it by voting in favour of it in 2010.”
True. But, like truth is the first casualty in war; principals are the first to be sacrificed, to fall prey and perish in the tawdry battlefield of Lanka’s politics, not waged in the name of national interest but solely for the sake of personal advancement. When the voting public looks askance to such transgressions, why should politicians bother to uphold honour as their tenet to gain the people’s respect and their vote?
The president’s bugbear at present is that the 19th Amendment is the curse of Lanka. And why is that? Because, after four years in office, he has discovered it has limited his executive powers. And that a clash of personalities had occurred between him and the prime minister merely because they cannot see eye to eye on certain matters of state. Not to be outdone, the UNP Prime Minister also bemoans that the nation cannot drive smoothly ahead with a back seat driver nagging him at every turn and serving only to divert his attention.
But is that the purpose of any constitutional amendment? The law merely lay down the procedure. And it is to the protagonists to act in accordance with it. The 19th amendment is not a bespoke tailor made suit to fit the vital statistics of present players but demands all future incumbents in the role of president or prime minister to get themselves in shape to fit the suit the constitution garbs them with.
President Sirisena’s grouse is that “the 19th Amendment should be scrapped because it has led to a power struggle. It has triggered instability. There is no single leader."
Funny he should say that now. For didn’t he, in the 2014 presidential election campaign, use the abolishment of the executive presidency as his sole wolf whistle to entice the masses to cast their vote in favour? Did not he on every election platform, pledge to honour the promise to get rid of the executive presidency and see the return to parliamentary democracy within hundred days of assuming office? And didn’t the electorate place him on that exalted throne in order for him to destroy it?
The 19th Amendment enacted in April 2015, which clipped presidential wings to a certain extent and endowed the prime minister to fly high was a compromise, an expediency resorted to when his political mentor the late Venerable Sobitha Thera egged him on to action by publicly decrying the presidential delay to keep the pledge when he declared “the pan is hot and ready, where is the promised roti? “
Eleven months after becoming president and vowing at his swearing in ceremony to abolish the executive presidency and that he would never seek another term of presidential office, President Sirisena swore once more before the mortal remain of the Venerable Sobitha Thera minutes before it was consigned to the flames of the funeral pyre, his solemn, sacred oath to rid the country of the executive presidency in which lay embedded the concept of a single leader as the sole decider of the country’s affairs.
He has not been able to keep that promise; nor has he shown any inclination to keep his inauguration pledge not to seek re-election to presidential office in five months time. Instead he decries the day he enacted the 19th Amendment which forced the executive to share power with the prime minister and today condemns it as the curse of Lanka.
The tragedy is that Maithripala Sirisena was not born to rule; no star heralded his advent to reign. He was the expedient creation of the opposition of Lanka, the triumvirate of Chandrika, Ranil and the JVP leader, chosen as the common candidate, his sole role being to topple Mahinda Rajapaksa from his pedestal on which he intended to remain standing in a permanent pose of perpetual power.
Even as Rajapaksa discovered that no man is indispensable, Sirisena, no doubt, will find out the same applies to him. That he has become, in the public eye, Lanka’s weather cock, a man more than of ordinary mediocrity with his election to the Presidency nothing more than a quirk of fate. Easily dispensed with; and not one to be sorely missed.