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Sri Lanka : Kumaratunga suspends Parliament : To hold referendum on a new constitution |
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Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga suspended Parliament to thwart a no-
confidence vote against her minority government, prompting the Opposition accusations that she was moving the war-torn country towards dictatorship. Mrs. Kumaratunga, whose People’s Alliance coalition lost its majority in the House last month when a key ally defected, also called an August 21 referendum on a new constitution to change the electoral system, a Government statement said. Parliament was prorogued with effect from July 10 after days of haggling between the Government and the Opposition over when the House would take up the no-confidence motion. The combined Opposition has 116 seats as against the Government’s 109 in the 225-member House, which Ms. Kumaratunga cannot dissolve until October 10, one year after it was elected. A suspension of Parliament was expected after Ms. Kumaratunga backed down last week on a vote to extend the emergency.
Sri Lanka’s Opposition United National Party (UNP) has vowed to take the issue to the streets and get President Kumaratunga impeached. The President has “wantonly subverted” Parliament and prorogued the House when it was to take up the no-trust motion. The announcement of a referendum on a new constitution on August 21 is “only a smokescreen to hide the truth”. The UNP’s stand is supported by other Opposition parties. Issuing the proclamation, Mrs. Kumaratunga said the present constitution did not allow the political will of the masses to be reflected faithfully in Parliament. Had it not been for the proportional representation system, the ruling People’s Alliance (PA) would have got two-thirds majority in Parliament, enabling it to get the draft constitution with a devolution package for the minorities passed. The referendum will include just one question, whether there is need for a new constitution or not. A simple majority is enough to gauge the people’s will.
Political leaders, who did not want to react to the move immediately, said the question for a referendum had been cleverly worded, as it was difficult to disagree with the proposition that the country needed a new constitution as a nationally important and essential requirement. A positive verdict could then be presented to Parliament as the people’s mandate to take up the draft constitution for the voting. However, the repeal and replacement of the constitution requires a two-thirds majority, which the PA will never be able to muster without the UNP’s cooperation.
Mrs. Kumaratunga presented a draft constitution to Parliament in August 2000, but it failed to get the approval of the House. The draft envisaged the abolition of the executive Presidency and a return to a full Westminster model of government, substantial devolution of powers as a solution to the ethnic conflict and a new electoral system combining the first-past-the post principle with some proportional representation. It also referred to the need to enhance human rights and democratic freedom already ensured by the PA Government.
Stunned by the midnight Presidential order proroguing Parliament and notifying a referendum, Sri Lanka’s Opposition parties that were attempting to oust the Government through a no-confidence motion on July 11 condemned the move as anti-democratic and authoritarian. “This is a very, very anti-democratic and anti-parliamentary act. The President did this because she was aware that the collapse of the Government was imminent,” said Mr. Krunasena Kodittuwakku, the spokesman of the main Opposition United National Party. The vice-president of the Tamil United Liberation Front, Mr. V. Anandasangaree, condemned the suspension of Parliament as a “disgrace to the country, and a disgrace to the Bandaranaike family which has a long history of parliamentary politics.” “She has run away from the no-confidence motion,” he said. The Tamil parties were not entirely satisfied even with the proposed new constitution that was presented by the Government to Parliament in August 2000 and hurriedly withdrawn before it could be put to vote. The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, which precipitated the current political drama by walking out of the ruling coalition, said even if the Government won the referendum, the task of drafting a constitution acceptable to all “would take months if not years, given the acrimonious relationship existing between the political parties”.
However, in proroguing Parliament and announcing a referendum, the Sri Lankan President has not only disarmed the Opposition, but virtually tied its hands. The UNP and other Opposition parties had submitted a letter to the Speaker asking him to schedule the debate on a non-confidence motion against the Government for next week. The letter was signed by 115 members of the 225-member House. The fear in the Opposition ranks till July 10 was that the Government would do its best to postpone the debate to August. That would enable the President to prorogue Parliament for the maximum stipulated period of two months, which would safely take her through to October, when she could legally dissolve the House. It was not expected that she would prorogue Parliament immediately, and even less so that she would announce a referendum for a new constitution. The wording of the question for the referendum, asking the people if they are agreeable to the proposal that “the county needs a new constitution which is nationally important and an essential requirement”, is such as to make it difficult for the Opposition parties to campaign against it. Almost everyone in Sri Lanka agree, that the 1978 Constitution - that is in operation today - gives the President unbelievable powers and needs to be replaced by a less authoritarian document. Indeed, it is this Constitution that empowered Ms. Kumaratunga to serve this political ace.
It is clear that the new constitution referred to in the question is none other than the Constitution Bill that her Government presented in Parliament in August 2000 and withdrew when it sensed it would be defeated. In the campaign leading up to the August 21 referendum, Ms. Kumaratunga is likely to dwell less on the devolution and conflict-resolution possibilities of a new constitution, as these would be controversial, and more on the possibilities of electoral reforms. She is likely to argue that the present system of proportional representation gives undue leverage to smaller parties, whose demands paralyse the functioning of the Government. The communique from the President’s Office giving reasons for the decision to prorogue Parliament and hold the referendum said as much. It said that although the People’s Alliance had won two-thirds of the seats in the 1994 and 2000 elections, that mandate was not “properly” reflected in the composition of Parliament.
The argument might go down well with the Sinhala majority community, that, irrespective of its political loyalties, sees the current political crisis in Sri Lanka as precipitated by the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress that walked out of the Government, reducing it to a minority. For its part, the Opposition might attempt to whip up a campaign against the referendum as a ploy by the Government to bring back the draft new constitution that was withdrawn from Parliament last year in the face of protests by the Buddhist clergy and Sinhala hardliners. The Opposition might also campaign that the Government is seeking to change the Constitution only to ensure its own survival. The referendum poses a big dilemma for the Tamil parties that supported the no-confidence motion against the Government, but which are not in principle opposed to a new constitution that promises devolution. But their decisions are more likely to be influenced by the fact that a new constitution irrespective of the extent of devolution it offers, would be unacceptable to the LTTE for the simple reason that it was not consulted on it. In any case, the LTTE had rejected the draft new constitution even as it was being drawn up.
Israeli envoy takes charge
Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan Muslim Congress has denounced the appointment of Israel’s first Ambassador in Colombo after the countries re-established diplomatic relations more than a year ago to cement their military ties. The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress issued a strongly worded protest after career diplomat David Matnai presented his credentials to President Kumaratunga. “This act of ideological bankruptcy reveals the duplicity of the government in its claim of advocating peace while implementing the agenda for prolonging the civil war,” said a statement by the Congress. “The Zionist regime of Israel relies on its defence industry for survival and these merchants of war will never permit the civil war....to cease,” the Congress said.
Sri Lanka announced in May 2000 that it was resuming its diplomatic relations with Israel. Sri Lanka had suspended its diplomatic ties with Israel in 1970 over its refusal to withdraw from Palestinian territories, but resumed limited links after 1983 when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam began fighting for a separate state for minority Tamils in the country’s north and east.
The decision to resume the diplomatic relations with Israel was taken last year in the aftermath of the military debacle against the LTTE at Elephant Pass. When the Government had to go on an emergency arms shopping spree, Israel was one of the sellers. A Sri Lankan mission began functioning in Tel Aviv soon after. But it took more than a year for Israel to put its envoy to Colombo in place. A previous attempt by the Israeli Ambassador to Bangkok to become accredited with the Sri Lankan Government a few months proved unsuccessful, and he went back without meeting the President. The recent exit of the SLMC from the PA might have made it easier for the Government to welcome the envoy this time. Although Sri Lanka resumed its diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv only last year, it has bought arms from Israel for more than a decade, and some of its elite security forces were trained by the Israelis. However, the protests from Muslim pressure groups began only after the formal resumption of the ties. Colombo tentatively reopened its doors to Israel in 1985, allowing it to operate an “interest section” from the US Embassy. But that too was discontinued in 1990.
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