The Weakened Parliamentary
System in Sri Lanka
The Parliament of Sri Lanka is
set to expose its weakness yet again, on the 20th of July 2022, when
it convenes to elect the nation’s executive president to guide its members, a
person who is unmandated electorally and rejected by people’s sovereignty in many
as many attempts to become Chief Executive of this Island Nation; if otherwise
only, the Parliament of Sri Lanka can uphold status as the August Sabah of this
beautiful Island.
I referred this process as
“yet again” at the beginning, because the parliament itself has been rendered as
a very weak institution since 1979, by the executive presidential system and by
the present electoral process that elect the members of the parliament, which
has many ambiguities all that make mockery of people’s mandate, yet it is
called sovereign mandate of the people, very contradictive.
We all encountered how the
Executive Presidential System suppressed the Parliamentary system used its
members as just pawns of the Executive President and even the Speaker of the
Parliament is not an exception for that matter. There was a very exceptional
occasion in 2018, when Speaker of the Parliament defied the Executive President
who disposed the incumbent prime minister and drafted a new prime minister,
which was later declared illegal by Supreme Court. Though all these episodes of
power grabbing appear to be weak psychic of human behavior, the electoral
process as well has immensely contributed through weak psychic men exploiting it
to maximum to weaken the entire parliamentary system.
How the
Electoral Process weakens the Parliamentary System
The contestants for the parliamentary seat, heavily
depended on the party leader to be a contestant to begin with, she/he has no any other alternative than submissive of consciously to
a party leader, pawning their ability to work independently according to
their own conscience of what her/his constituency need and be part in overall
requirement of the Nation. Present
electoral process has totally deprived this component of working for the own
constituency and conscience, important part of parliamentary democratic system.
In contrary, it has created a dynastic system of worshiping a particular leader
to be-
1. in the
contestant list,
2. sustain
the numerous privileges by the system
3. part
ever swelling cabinet portfolios
4. part
of collecting the spilling of the dynasty etc.
The Change brought about by Ranil Wickremasinghe
It took Ranil Wickremasinghe two
years to come to parliament, after he and his political party had been comprehensively
defeated by peoples’ mandate, and the comeback did not occur through a fresh mandate,
but through a rather lapsed and modified list of names submitted to Election
Commission, two years earlier – a complete flaw full process that breached the sovereign
mandate of the people. Whereas It took only 24 hours for massive crowd to come to Colombo despite transport difficulties in protest against the system, a clear indication of how much people are frustrated of the situation.
Ranil Wickremasinghe shall not
interfere in any judicial processes, as it has been reported that he had a
knack of interfering in judicial processes despite intact of 19th amendment
of the constitution during 2015-2019 regime, now it he has been provided with very
autocratic 20th amendment as well. He may throw out the Presidential flag and
addressing method, but the autocratic system is intact at the disposal, to whom
who displayed the characters of autocracy to grab the one and only membership allocated
to United National Party through the flaw full electoral system. Ranil
Wickremasinghe uses the term “Fascism” very frequently, which means a political system in which the rulers control
every aspect of the system without permitting opposition and dictatorially breach
the people’s mandate, - and thus Fascist character displayed within the
political party has destroyed and removed that 74-year-old political party from
the of Sri Lankan political history, the men who appointed you as Acting President
as well have displayed fascism to destroy this nation. The spontaneous public nonviolent
upraise against that fascist system cannot be Fascism, for a conscience full mind,
however it is loosely applied.
When the
Parliament promote him from Acting President to be President for the rest of
the Presidential term of the 8th President (a correct forecast off a
weakened parliamentary system) – the four-decade old habit of Executive Presidency
controlling the Parliament will turn upside down – few members of the
parliament will control the Executive President, a fascist within his own party
will become a puppet of another fascist group.
This is what the well-educated
younger generation opposing now and upraised against, and the utter failure to provide
the basic requirements for the day-to-day life to general public pushed them as
well to upraise. What does the parliament will do in the coming days will be monitored
closely, whether it is strong enough to address the people’s struggle for day-to-day
life as soon as possible or just another continuing political circus of weaker parliamentary
system.
Apparently, a change, but not the exact systematic change general
public expecting!
