Crisis puts off constitution change

Efforts to alter constitution will fail as the Govt is still short of majority, reports PK Balachanddran.

Given its failure to get its candidate elected as Speaker of the Sri Lankan parliament, the United Peoples' Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government has indefinitely postponed its plan to turn the current parliament into a Constituent Assembly for drafting a new constitution for the country.

HT Image

A top official of the Ministry of Constitutional Affairs told Hindustan Times that no further steps in this regard would be taken till the political situation acquired "clarity."

President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who heads UPFA, is also the Constitutional Affairs minister.

UPFA's candidate for the Speakership, DEW Gunasekara lost by one vote to the Opposition's candidate, WJM Lukubandara, in the vote on Thursday. Government is therefore naturally reluctant to introduce any measure which may result in another defeat.

The plan to change the constitution from the Presidential to the parliamentary system and the electoral system from the Proportional Representation System to the First Part the Post System is very contentious and controversial. The entire Opposition and the ethnic minorities are against it.

Any efforts to change the constitution will come a cropper, especially now, when the government is still in a minority short of seven votes.

A lot of spadework will have to be done before introducing a resolution to form a Constitutional Assembly.

Many critics of the UPFA, including those not necessarily hostile to it, feel that the government should first attempt to solve the urgent problems facing the people and then take up other issues like constitutional change.

Colombo University sociologist, Prof ST Hettige, feels that there are three main problems facing Sri Lanka: 1) bad governance 2) lack of economic development among the masses 3) ensuring and sustaining peace.

"Government should have taken up the issue of bad governance first. It is the easiest to solve because it does not need the vast resources needed for economic development and the long time needed for the restoration of lasting peace. Good governance is easy to bring about. And by itself, it can go a long way towards winning public support for a government," Prof Hettige said.

Thus far, the UPFA government has done precious little in the field of good governance beyond saying that relatives, wives and daughters of ministers should not be appointed as their personal staff. In Sri Lanka, it has been a practice among ministers to appoint their wives or daughters as their Coordinating Secretaries and give them telephones, a vehicle, clerical staff and a salary of SLRs 25,000/- per month.

The Sri Lankan Council of Ministers is still very large. Ministries are created only to give ministerships to ruling party MPs.Currently, 60 of the 66 Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) MPs are ministers.

The new government has restored the fertilizer subsidy for the farmers. But other than this, no schemes for economic development have been announced.

Nothing can be done, because UPFA has not been able to form a full cabinet yet. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the second largest party in UPFA, is yet to join the cabinet and the Council of Ministers. The SLFP and the JVP are fighting over the Mahaweli River Basin portfolio.

To being with, UPFA had the Buddhist monks' party, the Janthika Hela Urumaya (JHU) with nine MPs, as an ally in parliament. And with these nine, it could have got a majority in the House and carried on with important legislation, including the budget. But the JHU has turned very hostile now.

The JHU was to have been neutral in the Speaker's election. But UPFA abducted two of its MPs and made them vote for its candidate for Speaker. Annoyed, the JHU made another two of its MPs vote for the opposition in a subsequent ballot. This enabled the opposition to win. Angered by the defeat, UPFA MPs abused the monk MPs and threw books and other missiles at them in the House.

Asked if the government would be able to survive, Prof Hettige said that the matter was in the government's hands. "Having just won an election, it has legitimacy. So long as it acts in a way which ensures this legitimacy, it will survive, even if it is in a minority in the House. To keep up its legitimacy, it must address the pressing problems of the people such as those relating to governance, economic development and peace," he said.

Asked if the opposition would try to topple the government, Prof Hettige said that it would not do any such thing now or for some time to come, because it did not have legitimacy to do so. It had not got a mandate to rule.

"The opposition will wait for the government to discredit itself in the eyes of the people before making a bid for power," the sociologist said. But it will keep threatening, needling and unsettling the government.

Prof Hettige expects the SLFP and the JVP to iron out their differences and give a stable government in view of the popular mandate.If they did not, their political future would be in jeopardy, he said.

"The JHU (Monks party) may also come round to support the government at crucial junctures, again in view of their own mandate," he felt.

"In Sri Lanka now, there is a peculiar situation in which the ruling party has responsibility without the power, and the opposition has power without responsibility," Prof Hettige said.

But this does not augur well for stability, which is a sine qua non for good governance, economic development,foreign investment and the peace process.