Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday stressed that the only way to restore stability to a destablised democracy, will be through a General Election.
He said according to our Constitution, sovereignty is vested in the people and not in Parliament.
“The manner in which the people exercise their sovereignty is through the franchise. I invite all those who respect democracy to give careful thought to these matters”, he said in a special statement delivered from the Prime Minister’s office.
The Premier said; “The UNP and its allies claim that the 19th Amendment repealed and replaced the old Article 70(1) of the 1978 Constitution, and that according to the new article 70(1), the President cannot dissolve Parliament until the lapse of four and a half years.
“They claim that an early dissolution will be possible only if Parliament passes a resolution by a two thirds majority requesting the President to dissolve Parliament. All the provisions relating to the dissolution of Parliament in the 1978 Constitution, were found in the old Article 70(1) before the 19th Amendment. If those provisions have been abolished, then there are no provisions in the present Constitution to dissolve Parliament in the event of a government losing a vote of no confidence, the vote on the budget or the statement of government policy,”Prime Minister Rajapaksa stated.
The Prime Minister said it is only in Sri Lanka that you will find political parties agitating against the holding of a General Election that has already been declared. In the gazette notification dated November 9, 2018 issued by the President in accordance with the provisions of our Constitution and the Parliamentary Elections Act, dates had been fixed to call for nominations from November 19 to 26, to hold the poll on January 5, 2019, and for the new Parliament to meet for the first time on the January 17. If things had gone accordingly, stability would soon have been restored to this country.
“Last year, in November 2017, there was the danger of the Local Government elections being postponed indefinitely because certain individuals had petitioned the Court of Appeal against the holding of the Local Government elections citing delimitation issues. However, when the Chairman of the Elections Commission declared that he will proceed to hold elections at least in respect of the Local Government institutions that were not subject to litigation, the then government reluctantly fell in line and agreed to hold elections. With that the petitioners who had gone before the Court of Appeal quietly withdrew their petitions. It was quite clear in that instance, that the court procedure was being misused for a political purpose.
“Today, six of the nine provinces in the country do not have functioning provincial councils. The previous government avoided holding elections to the provincial councils for more than one year. We held the Eastern Provincial Council election in 2008 even before the war had ended, immediately after clearing the province of the LTTE. Once the de-mining of the Vanni was complete, we held provincial council elections in the northern province as well in 2013. Today, without any war in the country, both those provinces do not have provincial councils. The previous government put off provincial council elections indefinitely by deliberately refraining from fulfilling the conditions relating to the delimitation of constituencies in Act No. 17 of 2017 which was rushed through Parliament last year just days before the Sabaragamauwa, North Central and Eastern Provincial Councils were to stand dissolved.
“The UNP and its allies claim that the 19th Amendment repealed and replaced the old Article 70(1) of the 1978 Constitution, and that according to the new article 70(1), the President cannot dissolve Parliament until the lapse of four and a half years. They claim that an early dissolution will be possible only if Parliament passes a resolution by a two thirds majority requesting the President to dissolve Parliament. All the provisions relating to the dissolution of Parliament in the 1978 Constitution, were found in the old article 70(1) before the 19th Amendment. If those provisions have been abolished, then there are no provisions in the present Constitution to dissolve Parliament in the event of a government losing a vote of no confidence, the vote on the budget or the statement of government policy.
While amending the old Article 70(1), the 19th Amendment also introduced a new subsection (2)(c) to Article 33 of the Constitution. What this new provision says is that ‘in addition to the powers, expressly assigned to the President by the Constitution or other written law, the President shall have the power…to summon, prorogue and dissolve Parliament’. The new provision that has been introduced to the Constitution in the form of article 33(2)(c) has not been made subject to Article 70(1) as amended by the 19th Amendment either.
The 19th Amendment shifted other provisions of the Constitution from one place to another in a similar manner. The old article 42 which declared that the President was responsible to Parliament in the execution of his duties was repealed and the same provision without any change in the wording, was reintroduced as Article 33A by the 19th Amendment. Only the drafters of the 19th Amendment will know why that was done. But the end result is that the President continues to be responsible to Parliament under the 19th Amendment just as he was before the 19th Amendment was introduced. The same applies when a power that the President had under the old Article 70(1) is reintroduced to the Constitution in the form of Article 33(2)(c).
“After the 19th Amendment, Parliamentary conventions have been preserved in our Constitution through Article 33(2)(c). If we ignore that Article and accept only Article 70(1) as amended by the 19th Amendment, then we will be faced with a situation where there is absolutely no provision in the Constitution to dissolve Parliament in the event the government is defeated at a vote on the budget, the statement of government policy or a motion of no confidence is passed against a government. Such a situation is completely contrary to Parliamentary tradition. If even the ceremonial heads of state in countries with parliamentary forms of government can dissolve Parliament and call for fresh elections at their discretion when the circumstances so require, how logical is it to say that the President of Sri Lanka who is vested with the Executive Power of the state on behalf of the sovereign people cannot dissolve Parliament no matter what happens in the country?
“How can it be said that the President does not have the power to dissolve Parliament when Article 33(2)(c) was specifically introduced to the Constitution by the 19th Amendment? It took only 56 votes in Parliament to pass into law Act No. 5 of 2018 which put in place a legal framework to hand over our war heroes to foreign courts. How then can one argue that you need 150 votes in Parliament to be able to pave the way for the sovereign people to exercise their franchise? I was recently given a copy of a report published by an inter-governmental organisation called the ‘International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’. The member states of this organisation include Germany, Australia, Canada, Switzerland and also India and Japan,”the Prime Minister’s statement added.