A conscience vote for 21A

Sri Lanka is in vertical decent from crisis to crash. The crisis which has already taken lives of citizens, a policeman and a legislator over the last weeks will be replayed tenfold and in more gruesome forms as the crisis turns into a crash. 

Food riots by starving citizens may not be far off, possibly with very young and old dying of hunger and lack of medicines. The predictions of the emerging scenario, unthinkable of Sri Lanka until quite recently, is frightening. How long before people turn on each other, once they have dealt with the rulers and the tribe of politicians?

Sri Lanka urgently needs international help to extricate itself from certain disaster. In the context of an evolving global scarcity of wheat and fuel which limits the financial assistance donors can offer, it has been established that Sri Lanka needs political stability fast, and convincing plans for debt repayment, in order to qualify. 

In this context, the passing of the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, which has been presented in Cabinet by the Minister of Justice to address at least partially the primary reason for the eruption of protests around the country, is a critical pre-condition for economic rescue and recovery.

The 21st Amendment responds to the country’s desperate situation most immediately, by taking much of the hyper-centralised powers of the 20th Amendment away from the President; powers misused, which resulted in bringing a once middle-income country to the current state of hopelessness. If passed, the 21st Amendment will prevent instantly, the unilateral decision- making of the President such as the fertiliser ban which led to the severe shortage of rice, and enable the recently-appointed Prime Minister and his new Cabinet to start the process of economic recovery. 

So then, this is the test of the parliament and the parliamentarians. Will they filibuster, or rally round in this time of need to vote for this amendment as their conscience dictates, or will they insist on their flights of fancy as to perfect drafts and legislation and refuse to come together to gather sufficient votes of two-thirds in parliament, for the sake of the suffering people? 

Why is there even a question? It is because there are several versions of the 21st Amendment. The one presented by the Cabinet is the first one to be presented in Parliament as per parliamentary norms. The Justice Minister’s draft has enough in it to urgently address the most consequential causes of the present crisis and can be written into legislation with a two-thirds majority. It has very deliberately left out any amendments of such a fundamental nature as to require a referendum.

Since there are no controversial clauses, it is the one most likely to gain consensus and also meets the criteria of urgency. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be as simple as that. It is already rumoured that the ruling party is split on the draft, or could split. Those whose conscience should be the most affected to the point of repentance, since it is the governing party that was most responsible for the dire straights the country is in, seem to be the most arrogantly unaware that they will have to compensate politically or pay dearly for their errors. 

One would think that an attempt to arrest the plunge into an abyss will be supported. But there is another draft being discussed. The main Opposition party’s draft is already submitted to the Supreme Court for consideration. It includes a section to abolish the presidency, which requires a referendum. They insist that theirs should be the one to be presented first in Parliament. They argue that the fundamental reason for this country’s varied problems is the executive presidency, and now is the time to get parliamentary approval for its abolition, even if the referendum is to be held later on an agreed-upon date. 

Such a fundamental change to the Constitution would clearly need hours and days of argument and counter-argument in Parliament. Every last member would want to have their say and at the end of such a lengthy debate while the few dollars left fast depletes, there is unlikely to be the support of two-thirds of the House for it. The issue is too fraught, tied up as it is with the provincial councils and proportional representation, to resolve all the contradictions to everyone’s satisfaction fast enough. 

The Opposition claims that they reflect what the people want and cite slogans from the Aragalaya as evidence. This is as convincing as their initial claim that the Justice Minister’s draft of the 21st Amendment adds more powers to the presidency rather than reduces them. The cognitive dissonance of such a barefaced lie was resolved only when they were forced to admit that this is indeed the case if compared to the 19th Amendment which obviously came before the 20th Amendment which created the existing uber-presidency. It wasn’t super clever to try such a sleight of hand. 

The Aragalaya everywhere has a common demand which is now too well-known to attempt to misrepresent. It is ‘Gota Go Home’. How does one extrapolate from that to ‘Abolish the Executive Presidency’? Some of the political movements and parties supportive of the Aragalaya with members camped out with the protesting citizens have declared that they are indeed for the abolition. However, it is not in any way displayed as uniformly or yelled as loudly by the protesters themselves as by various members of the Opposition. There may be a time soon that the politicians could convince the people to vote for that amendment. This surely isn’t the time to undertake that beyond raising the issue and even discussing it at length, but in their own time. 

Given the disagreements within parties as between them, and the manifest need for the 21st Amendment to be passed soon, this may be the right time for political parties to allow a conscience vote by their members. A conscience vote can be cast when a party does not insist on an official party line and therefore its members can vote according to their individual conscience. 

I hope Parliament passes this upcoming test, which will go some way towards reassuring the people that the 225 aren’t really that bad, and that they are capable of setting aside their differences to respond collectively to people’s desperation at this critical time for the country. 

Drafting a better Constitution is a noble endeavour and should certainly be undertaken sooner than later. But surely, not today. For now, all we are hoping is that Parliament will give the Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe draft a chance, and that all political parties will allow a conscience vote so that the path is open for urgent economic rescue and recovery to begin. They absolutely owe it to the people.