PM Ranil Wickremesinghe’s Party has decided on retaining the Executive Presidency and ‘power-devolution’ under the existing ‘unitary State’ model
The cat is out of the bag – and at long last. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) has decided on retaining the Executive Presidency (as re-defined under 19-A) and ‘power-devolution’ under the existing ‘unitary State’ model. Along with a proposal for a ‘mixed model’ election, the party’s working committee has cleared these propositions for a new Constitution, now taking some shape, after all.
The devil is in the detail. The UNP cannot be blamed for surprising the nation with its sticking to the Executive Presidency and ‘unitary State’. As the working committee has pointed out, the proposals were already there in the party’s manifesto for the parliamentary polls in August 2015.
If none else had any energy or inclination to notice it, the UNP cannot be blamed. So what if they had included some party second-liners, leave aside cadres and voters. Definitely, the party’s allies in the ruling ‘Government of National Unity’ (GNU) did not protest. That includes President Maithripala Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), or the faction that he has been heading.
The UNP can also safely argue that it did not contest the presidential polls, only months earlier, for it to pronounce any position on the twin issues. If Sirisena, the presidential candidate that they had supported at the time – he ultimately won – had eloquently campaigned on these points, it was his problem. Or, it was the voter’s problem with him – and cannot be extend to cover the UNP or Sirisena’s chief campaigner and later-day Prime Minister in Ranil W.
The UNP’s proposals for electoral reforms are on the lines already placed before Parliament ahead of the parliamentary polls. It’s a mixture of the existing proportionate representation (PR) scheme and the forgotten first-past-the-post model. After dabbling with all kinds of ideas and proposals, the nation’s politicos – and academics, to a greater or lesser degree – have not understood that the taste of the pudding is in the eating, not otherwise.
It’s another matter that President Sirisena dissolved the House when he did and facilitated fresh parliamentary polls purportedly to live up to his commitment to dissolve the House just 100 days into becoming President, to make it reflect the new ground realities. He took more time, that was not the matter, but he did so to save not necessary his commitment to the electorate, but to save his UNP ally from embarrassment of a senior minister being possibly voted out by the House.
The UNP’s proposals are now full of possibilities – rather, political possibilities as the party desires and visualises. It may not have even provided for a ‘black swan’ possibility. Without questioning the motives of then party leader and PM, J. R. Jayewardene, it needs to be conceded that the present Constitution, with ‘Executive Presidency’ and all, only back-fired.
Not just the Tamil and Muslim minorities, but even a large section of the Sinhala majority have come to see the ‘Executive President’ not as the protector and defender of the rights and constitutional place of the former, as ‘intended’. But they now see him as the destroyer of all that the Nation and the Constitution(s) have stood for – or, expected to stand for.
It’s not just about what the UNP means by the office of ‘Executive President’. If ‘federalism’ is a bad word in the context of ‘ethnic reconciliation’, for many in the Sinhala community, ‘Executive Presidency’ is so for most others across the country. So, for the UNP, or any other, wanting to retain the same, whatever be the form and/or content, could mean that they are starting on a wrong-foot, and may also be not un-desirous of the same.
It has been proved, both during the days of Executive President and ‘Executive Prime Minister’ through these past years since Independence, that it’s just not about powers and nomenclatures, but about personalities, their own immediate circumstances, and past experiences. A rose is a rose is a rose, but then the reverse is also true. Giving the dog a bad name and hanging it may be the easiest way possible – and blaming others for it, too.
The UNP proposals also put the Prime Minister as the man answering Parliament and also the Executive. Whether intended or not, it gives the clear impression that it has been drafted only with the present-day personalities, parties and their collective circumstances in mind.
In a way, it’s a proposal for UNP wanting – or, not minding – the continuance of the status quo. If Sirisena wants to continue as President, and carry with him the present crop of party MPs on his side, the UNP may not object to it. In a future election, the party also seems confident of winning more MPs than in the past, unlike in 2015.
The UNP also seems to have calculated that former President and their combined arch-rival, Mahinda Rajapaksa won’t be available to campaign for the SLFP any more, as he did in 2015, with hopes of his becoming PM. Such a turn could ensure more seats for the UNP in Parliament than already. If Mahinda goes his own electoral way, it could be a further gain to the UNP. Or, so seems to be the party’s calculation.
Should the SLFP split formally, or the Sirisena-SLFP loses more seats in a new Parliament, their bargaining-power within the GNU could dwindle even more than already. The UNP can thus have a freer run of the government and the country than already – and possibly for a longer time, as long as Presidents Chandrika BK and Mahinda R had together for SLFP or, so seems to be the UNP logic and tactic.
If it’s a trade-off, and Sirisena and the SLFP faction identifying with him just now goes along, then the problem would be not for the UNP, but possibly for PM Ranil himself. Rather, once-local PM aspirants from within the party, now lying low, could become restless if a situation arose in which Sirisena would continue as President and Ranil as PM – Executive PM at that. Obviously, the Ranil leadership seems hoping to win the day, just as it has done since the change of fortunes after they had ‘discovered’ Sirisena to take on incumbent Rajapaksa and defeat him for them in the January 2015 presidential polls.
The alternative is even more advantageous to the UNP, or so it seems just now. The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, passed by the Sirisena-Ranil duo between the two rounds of polls, last year restored the original incapacity clause for the incumbent to occupy the presidency for a third term.
Self-serving, Rajapaksa had introduced the same through post-war 18-A, contested for a third term and lost it too, to Sirisena. There is no proposal now for reversing the effects of 19-A on this or other matters, under the new Constitution. Or, at least the UNP does not consider it necessary – and not without reason, possibly.
The continuance of 19-A clauses on the continuance of ‘Executive Presidency’, as it stands now, should make it palatable to Sirisena and the SLFP faction under his command. It would also mean that Mahinda R cannot contest the presidential polls another time – win or lose it.
Ahead of the presidential polls, Sirisena vowed to the people of Sri Lanka that he would not seek another term. He also voluntarily proposed that the term of the president should be reduced from five years to four. If Sirisena wanted to stay on in the race and in power, it should be no problem to the UNP, especially PM Ranil. If he were to eat his words, it’s his problem.
If however, Sirisena decides not to seek re-election, then it could be an easy walk-through for the UNP, both in the presidential and parliamentary polls, whenever held, and under the new Constitution, whenever passed. With PM Ranil seemingly the single-most popular leader – even if after Mahinda R – and the undivided UNP being the single-largest party still, the party could well have the two top posts in its pocket, before long. It could also help quell some of the avoidable bickering within the UNP of the time.
It’s just now unclear how the UNP, or the other GNU partners want the election of the new President to be – through direct elections, or through indirect polls, where Parliament, and maybe the Provincial Councils, alone would have to have a say. If PC members also have a say in the President’s choice in any form of ‘indirect elections’, then it would have been a part of the power-devolution proposals. This too remains unclear.
President Sirisena does not seem to be unaware of the possibilities and consequent manoeuvrings, against his position and larger party that he is supposed to be heading but not necessarily so. At every turn since assuming the presidency, he has always held back his counsel until all others had committed themselves to irrevocable positions of some kind.
At this state, Sirisena then goes public, and over the head of the party and the government, to have his say – and make others follow him, without whimper of a protest. The UNHRC probe was/is a case in point, so was the ‘Avant Garde episode’, and more recently, the anti-graft body’s probe, after specifically picking up ex-SLFP ministers alone.
It would thus look as if ‘Sirisena’s years with Rajapaksa’ have not been wasted. It’s thus that he seems to have suggested that PM Ranil talked to bête noire Rajapaksa over power-devolution proposals. That was when a Tamil-centric TNA delegation called on him, to discuss related issues.
PM Ranil has since met with Rajapaksa and TNA leader R. Sampanthan, together. As was to be expected – by President Sirisena and most others – the talks did not produce any results. It would not produce any, until Sirisena himself opened up his mind – and also talked openly to Rajapaksa, as well. For now Rajapaksa, has told the exact Opposite to Ranil-Sampanthan duo.
It would mean that Rajapaksa wanted the other two to talk (possibly) to Sirisena, and come up with a ‘joint proposal’ of the Government as a whole, for Rajapaksa and the Rajapaksa-centric Joint Opposition (JO) to consider. It’s saying a lot – and saying nothing, and saying it with candour, and even more convincingly so!
This commentary originally appeared in The Sunday Leader.
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N. Sathiya Moorthy is a policy analyst and commentator based in Chennai.
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