Why Executive Presidency Will Remain
N Sathiya Moorthy
Chennai 18 February 2023
Now that the presidential election is going to be there later this year, the inevitable run-up-to-the-poll rumours about the imminent abolition of the Executive Presidency too have been resurrected after someone thought that the Aragalaya protests in 2002 had consumed it, full and proper. But every voter in the country knows that it was the biggest joke of the previous century and will remain so in this one, too.
The credit for conferring even limited respectability to those talks of abolishing the Executive Presidency should rest on incumbent, Ranil Wickremesinghe. By claiming that the Opposition was spreading rumours as if to make out that he would use the excuse to delay the presidential polls, he told a group of MPs how there were ‘no short-cuts’ in the matter. Yes, the abolition of Executive Presidency would require a two-thirds majority in Parliament and also a national referendum.
Ranil is not a fool not to have known that winning the referendum for the abolition of the Executive Presidency does not guarantee victory for him in the presidential polls. But a defeat certainly would ensure that he would lose the other too.
If the question is that with the abolition of the Executive Presidency, the nation would revert to a parliamentary form of governance, Ranil knows full well that his chances are even more limited just now. Rather, he needs to win the presidential poll, if at all he is able to make it, before hoping – and praying – that his combine wins the parliamentary election, too.
Purity of heart…
From the looks of it, whoever becomes President post-poll, the chances of his having two-thirds parliamentary vote for the purpose may not be achievable. The last time anyone had the chance, President Mahinda Rajpakasa in his second term (2010-15) especially let go of it.
Instead, Mahinda was possessed with the ambition of running for a third term in 2015 and amended the Constitution, to remove the two-term upper-limit clause. It is anybody’s guess if he would have had the Constitution amended if elected President at the time, or if he would have thought about a fourth term, fifth and sixth, given that there was no term-limit after the amendment.
The naked truth is that the government party at any given time needs two-thirds. That is because whoever was in power, the Opposition had always wanted the Executive Presidency to go. If the government thus made up its mind, then the amendment for abolishing the Executive Presidency could be passed unanimously in Parliament with all members present.
Likewise, if they work with the same purity of heart and sincerity of purpose, then the referendum later too would be passed by the highest number of votes which no candidate in any presidential poll could hope for. The record now stands in the name of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (CBK) in the 1995 elections. Post-war, too, Mahinda had to settle for 58-per cent vote-share against Chandrika’s 64 per cent in 1995.
Easier said than done
The question today is if a post-poll President will want to do it even if he does not have the two-thirds vote in Parliament? People are tired of it all from President Wickremesinghe SLPP under-writer Mahinda Rajapaksa and Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa. Even if they have other voices from the party saying it for them, it would still sound unconvincing.
In this background, if the JVP-NPP, which sees itself as the government-in-waiting makes such a poll promise that they would go in for the abolition of the Executive Presidency if elected to power, it may have some resonance at the ground-level. Then, they would move the resolution for the abolition of the Executive Presidency if elected to power and count on all political parties and groupings to vote for the relevant constitutional amendments – and also follow up on it with a referendum, on which again all of them would work together.
But it is easier said than done. Granting that the JVP-NPP leadership would have the ideological intention to walk the talk more than anyone else in the pack, in practical terms, they would have to consider something totally different. Even now, those who talk about winning the elections are talking only about the presidential election. No one has as yet considered the possibility of the JVP winning the parliamentary election, too – the two-thirds question can wait.
This is because when talking about the abolition of the Executive Presidency, the implication is that the scheme would be replaced by a parliamentary system as existed before the commencement of the Second Republican Constitution in 1978. This means for a leader to emerge, he should have a majority of elected MPs supporting him. Going by the current Sri Lankan scheme based on proportional representation in Parliament, the possibility of any single party, alliance and more certainly a leader winning a majority is next-to-nil.
Jump the coop
Going by experience, the so-called major political parties and their leaders who are also presidential/prime ministerial aspirants as the case may be do not feel comfortable with their allies. At present, they have got used to each other or one another but that is only a working relationship, not borne out of mutual love and/or respect.
Remember, how on the very eve of the presidential poll of 2015, you had leaders and parties desert the Rajapaksa camp as if they were waiting for that very opportunity to jump the coop. Leave aside, Maithripala Sirisena, who stabbed Mahinda in the back, as if in any palace coup of the yore, even those that had eaten out of the Rajapaksas’ hand for full ten years and more, overnight saw them as the greatest harm to democracy in the country.
The list is endless. Patali Champika Ranawaka, Dr Rajitha Senaratne and the rest of them all. Truth be told, barring Sarath Fonseka who had served the Rajapaksa team in his capacity as army commander at the height of the war and victory, not one of them have had any moral justification to stab at them. Better or worse still is the case of those that deserted the latter-day Gotabaya Rajapaksa regime.
The likes of Wimal Weerawansa, Udaya Gammanipilla, and the otherwise gentleman-politician, Vasudeva Nanayakara, they all owed their own parliamentary seats to what still was the ‘Mahinda magic’, which has vanished like anything that a magician produces out of thin air. He claims that their quitting the Gotabaya Government as Cabinet ministers was supposedly based on moral justification, did not wash then, would not wash ever.
In this background, which party or President would want to go in for abolishing the Executive Presidency if they are not guaranteed an automatic first term of five years under the parliamentary scheme that is to follow?
The JVP will be no exception.
Pesona to blame
For all this however, the problem is not with the system of Executive Presidency but in the persona of successive incumbents. The nation, especially its so-called urban elite and self-styled intellectuals have to accept that any popular leader in whose name a political party or coalition wins a parliamentary election, now or under a scheme without an Executive Presidency, would tend to be autocratic. He or she would not require special powers supposedly derived from the Executive Presidency scheme.
In this country, recall the days before the introduction of the Executive Presidency, and also recall how successive Prime Ministers had behaved. Recall in particular how a Prime Minister elected under the parliamentary scheme could push through the Executive Presidency just because he and the rest believed that his leadership had won the election for them.
Looking back, it’s now obvious that SLFP Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike lost the parliamentary election in 1977 and so very badly that the UNP under JRJ swept it – winning 140 of 168 seats, or a four-fifth majority. How did JRJ behave then and afterwards, until being forced to make way for his Prime Minister Premadasa, Sr under the two-term upper-mandate that he himself had inserted into the Second Republican Constitution?
As a politician brought up under the old parliamentary scheme, Ranasinghe Premadasa revolted but could do nothing against JRJ. That did not owe to the latter’s constitutional power, which was yet to be tested but to perceptions of his popularity. So, when his turn came, it could now be surmised, Premadasa, Sr, took out his past anger in ways that did not go down with the responsibilities of the presidency that he had come to occupy.
It became a habit for Premadasa’s successors, making people and politicians alike believe that it is all mandated under the Constitution. No, it instead derives from the popularity of individual leaders and the ability and willingness of their opponents from within to revolt when required and not when it suited them.
Premadasa bided his time, Mahinda too did it as PM under CBK, Maithripala Sirisena, though not the latter’s PM when he revolted, he chose his time. He won not because he could split the party in his favour as Sajith P could vis a vis Ranil in the unified UNP, but because the voters wanted the Rajapaksas out. Fullstop.
The rest, as they say, is history!
(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)
