The Weakened Parliamentary System in Sri Lanka

 

The Parliament of Sri Lanka is set to expose its weakness yet again, on the 20^th 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.

 This does not mean that the Electoral Process in before 1979, which is well known as First Past the Post System (FPPS), and in place in many democratic countries, is completely free of all these ill effects, but binds the political party leaders to be respectful of its party   members, as the members of the political party will have room for thought for their conscience constituency and within his own electorate. A contestant need not be answerable the voters, who elect them, and as long as the present electoral process is intact, there is no point talking about democracy within the parliament, a process made the leaders to be autocratic in order to preserve the numbers.

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 19^th amendment of the constitution during 2015-2019 regime, now it he has been provided with very autocratic 20^th 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 8^th 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!